300 review copies (150 prepub, 150 postpub) sent to reviewers, booksellers, librarians, bloggers, others. Available as an e-ARC on Edelweiss. Blog tour with book giveaways. Goodreads giveaway. We will seek features and reviews from newspapers, magazines, and journals. We will seek blurbs and endorsements from bestselling African and African diaspora authors including NoViolet Bulawayo, Tsitsi Dangarembga, Helen Oyeyemi, Masande Ntshanga, Akwaeke Emezi, and more. We will create a reading guide for book clubs and others interested in reading the book in a group setting. The reading guide will be printed in the book and will include a Q&A with the author. We will seek out book clubs who are interested in the book and offer the chance to win a SKYPE visit with the author. Promotion at book fairs and trade shows--ALA annual, ALA mid-winter, African Studies Association, etc. We will submit the book for all relevant awards. Promotion online via Catalyst's website, email newsletter, and social media (blog, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube) with author and publisher interviews, chats, and guest posts. Simultaneous e-book and print release. Readers Guide available.
Including 2022 Caine Prize winning story "Five Years Next Sunday" by Idza Luhumyo, 2022 Nommo Award shortlisted story "Shelter" by Mzobi Haimbe and 2023 O'Henry Prize for Short Fiction winner "Mother" by Jacob M'hango
This genre-spanning anthology explores the many ways that we grow, adapt, and survive in the face of our ever-changing global realities. These evocative, often prescient, stories showcase new and emerging writers from across Africa to investigate many of the pressing issues of our time: climate change, pandemics, social upheaval, surveillance, and more.
In Disruption, authors from across Africa use their stories to explore the concept of change—environmental, political, and physical—and the power or impotence of the human race to innovate our way through it. From a post-apocalyptic African village in Innocent Ilo’s “Before We Die Unwritten,” to space colonization in Alithnayn Abdulkareem’s “Static,” to a mother’s attempt to save her infant from a dust storm in Mbozi Haimbe’s “Shelter,” Disruption illuminates change around and within, and our infallible capacity for hope amidst disaster.
Facing our shared anxieties head on, these authors scrutinize assumptions and invent worlds that combine the fantastical with the probable, the colonial with the dystopian, and the intrepid with the powerless, in stories recognizing our collective future and our disparate present.
Disruption is the newest anthology from Short Story Day Africa, a non-profit organization established to develop and share the diversity of Africa’s voices through publishing and writing workshops.
