Why subscribe?
Modjaji Books is an independent publishing house based in Cape Town, South Africa founded in 2007. We mostly publish southern African women writers. Our list includes novels, short stories, memoirs, poetry, some reference books and African Small Publishers Catalogues. We are proud members of the International Alliance of Independent Publishers.
We will share our concerns, mistakes, triumphs, and everything in between – while acknowledging that being a small, self-funded publishing house in the 21st century is challenging, to say the least.
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If you would like to support Modjaji Books, heaven knows we need all the love and support we can get, please click this link to our website
Your donations will go towards paying for the printing costs of new titles, paying interns a fair wage for their work, and assisting us in paying our freelancers on time. The list is long.
About Colleen Higgs
Colleen Higgs founded Modjaji Books and is the only full-time staff member and director.
At first, Colleen started the press to publish two collections of poetry, Fourth Child and Life in Translation, because she had caught the publishing bug while working at the Centre for the Book. She imagined it could be a hobby, a thing she did in her spare time. And then Ron Irwin approached her to publish Whiplash by Tracey Farren. She realised she couldn’t in all fairness keep her job at the Centre for the Book and publish Whiplash, an extraordinary big novel that got her working full-time for Modjaji Books. Whiplash was later made into a movie, called Tess. Since then she has published about 200 titles for Modjaji and our other imprint Hands-On Books.
Colleen is also a writer, and in 2020 her most recent book came out, a memoir called my mother, my madness, published by another small press, deep south, based in Makhanda.
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