Sitting inside Jacana’s book pitching session for new book manuscripts after getting funding from Hawthornden Foundation

By Edward Tsumele, CityLife Arts Editor
One author presented a book pitch that seeks to reveal happens behind the bushes at initiation schools, a time honoured scared ritual that in its past sought to build the character of boys to prepare them into growing into young men with a clear purpose in life and eventually into responsible adults.

However this time and tested culture of i practised mainly in African society, including by several ethnic groups in southern Africa has found itself plunged into controversy as a result of bad practices and greedy by those in charge of these initiations, resulting in some cases with bodily injury to the young to the initiates and even in extreme but unfortunately growing cases even death to the initiates in the hands of untrained and unprofessional initiation school runners. Such cases are a common feature in newspapers during the initiation season in South Africa every year.

…From Limpopo, a graduate of the initiation school himself, told panellists at the Jacana recent book pitching session, in which I had the privilege to sit in and listen, says he has been researching the practice of initiation for years, and he claims to have found a link between the hot issue of Gender Based Violence and what the young boys are taught at initiation schools. If approved for publication, the readers will be able to go inside the initiation schools and get to witness what happens in the bush, where he claims young boys’ minds are brainwashed and encouraged to develop a much, patriarchal attitudes that later develops into mistreating women.

This pitch seemed to intrigued an all-women panel comprising, book store owner Sewela Langeni, Jacana publisher Bridget Impey and Sunday Times books editor Jennifer Platt who asked tough questions to the young writer. I would have loved to also sit on the afternoon session with another panel comprising Griffin Shea (founder of Bridge Books and the African Book Trust), Dr. Alma-Nalisha Cele (literary podcast co-founder and online book merchant), as well as Bridget Impey and Maggie Davey, Jacana Media’s publishing directors, but unfortunately had to leave for another engagement.

“What i want to know is that are you prepared for the potential push back that a book of this kind may get from a section of society? And also are you prepared to go out and play the role of advocacy for the reform of the initiation system that you seem to want to advocate for in this book, especially because there maybe even threats to your life,” Impey asked.

The young author remained adamant, and said he was prepared to face his detractors. “The problem is that women are dying like flies. I know that at initiation schools for example, one is told never to reveal the secrets, and if you did you would go mad. But If by revealing these secrets I will be addressing the issues of women dying like flies through gender based violence, then let me be rather mad,” he said.
These sessions were as a result of a surprise funding from an international foundation that came through an email, one after Johannesburg day, landing in Impey’s inbox.

“It was unexpected, and indeed that day was a strange day. We were visited David, a musician from the East Rand in the morning who came to do a solo performance for Jacana. He said he had heard about the work of Jacana during Covid-19, in 2020, when there was a total shut down (which affected several businesses, including the publishing industry) and decided that he was going to bless us by his solo performance. His performance and gesture was an uplifting experience. But then he left in the same way that he came, without leaving his contact details,” Impey explains the strange circumstances that day at Jacana offices I Milpark, Johannesburg prior to receiving that email with good news.

“When i received the email, I almost deleted it as I thought it was one of those internet scams. I am happy that i did not. And when I read it further, it was unbelievable especially because it was unexpected and the email was short and straight forward: that is saying that we had been nominated by some one to received this grant for publishing and we were happy to accept it. That was it,” an excited Impey told CITYLIFE/ARTS in an interview during a break from the pitching session aptly titled From Pitch to Publication.

 The good news is however that The Jacana Literary Foundation (JLF) has received a grant from the Hawthornden Foundation, whose mission is rooted in supporting exceptional contemporary writers of all kinds, to carry out various existing and new initiatives to develop writers in South Africa.
 
From Pitch to Publication – the publishing equivalent of Shark Tank or Dragon’s Den – is one such initiative of the JLF.
The picthcing session was preceded by a media release that CITYLIFE/ARTS received, accompanying the invitation to sit in, and we were immediately interested..
“We know that there are treasures that remain unearthed, and this project aims to provide a platform for writers to present their work to a panel of industry professionals. The panel will ask questions and offer invaluable comments and insights for the pitchers.

 
The JLF will host the third season of From Pitch to Publication on Monday, 25 March at the Jacana Media offices: 10 Orange Street, Auckland Park, Johannesburg. From the 13 writers who are set to pitch their work, a set of candidates will be identified whom we believe will benefit from mentorship to refine their manuscripts for publication. There may also be offers for others to sign a publishing deal with the JLF’s publishing partner, Jacana Media.
 
Our esteemed panel, including Sewela Langeni (author and founder of Book Circle Capital), Jennifer Platt (Sunday Times book editor), Griffin Shea (founder of Bridge Books and the African Book Trust), Dr. Alma-Nalisha Cele (literary podcast co-founder and online book merchant), as well as Bridget Impey and Maggie Davey, Jacana Media’s publishing directors, are excited to meet the pitchers and hear more about their work and their vision”

Indeed I found the session quite interesting the pitchers confident, and the outline of their manuscripts quite tight and their story lines catchy. Indeed the adjudicators will have a hard time to pick their favourite.
All those who pitched their ideas were selected from the manuscripts that were submitted as part of Jacana Media’s annual call to writers to submit scripts that was open last year in October running for three months.

“In that call we received over 700 manuscripts and these were selected from that batch. So this is a continuous process and we will communicate with those whose scripts are still to be looked at,” said Bridget. Jacana per year publishers about 40 titles per year, making the company one of the stars of the independent publishing sector in the country.

Those who pitched their book manuscripts during this round of pitching should be receiving the feedback during this week or next week.
(What is good about this funding is that it enables us to appoint mentors to work with writers to shape their scripts that have potential but need some more work done on them,” explained Impey.