Something Wicked, South Africa’s first (and only) magazine devoted to horror and science-fiction short stories – which featured breakout works by largely unknown authors and stunning full-page illustrations by a talented group of (primarily) local artists – was started in 2006 by Joe Vaz, in partnership with Vianne Venter. Over the years the publication has had its ups and downs, largely due to financial problems (a major one being the cost of printing on paper skyrocketing to prohibitive levels over the past few years, a problem that has seen even established magazines with massive financial backing folding left and right), but, nevertheless, it gained a patient, understanding, loyal following all over the world due to its focus on quality publishing. The readership understood, and celebrated, what the magazine was trying to achieve and therefore was largely unfazed by the delays and problems.
The same readership now mourns, for the publishers have announced that the current issue, number 10, will be the magazine’s last in print.
The death of the print version requires a suitably macabre eulogy (should someone wish to write one in the comments below), but, equally, Something Wicked’s achievements should be celebrated. The magazine set precedents that will be hard to follow and there are many lessons to be learned – especially for those wishing to traverse the quagmire of niche publishing in this country.
I interviewed Joe to hear his thoughts on the magazine’s successes and (sometimes very gory) hiccups – and on what brought him to the decision to stop printing.
Where did the idea come from and how did it all start?
The idea has been around for decades in magazines such as Cemetery Dance, and Interzone, Fantasy & Science Fiction, and Weird Tales. What frustrated me was the fact that there was no South African alternative for these international magazines, the realisation that South African genre fiction writers really had no outlet for their work.
Horror and SF short-story magazines have been around in the UK and the US for decades and yet in 2006 there still wasn’t a single publication of that type in South Africa. So one night around 3am I thought to myself, “Why don’t you do it?” So I did.
Talk us through the typical process of putting an issue together.
It starts with receiving and reading piles and piles of submissions and selecting seven to 10 stories for the magazine. Once the stories have been selected contracts are sent out to the authors and every single story goes through a preliminary edit by Vianne Venter. Every edit is then sent to the authors for their approval and correction.
At the same time art is being commissioned from various artists for each story.
Once the edits come back from the authors the stories go through a second edit and a final approval. They then get proofed by our wonderful proofer, Mark Sykes, who sends us back his edits and notes. Vianne goes through each story one last time and sends me final “to print” versions of all the stories.
By that point I have received final art and have begun prelim layout on the magazine. While all that is going on DVD, game, and book reviews are being sourced and written, columns are being commissioned, and interviews are being conducted.
Once everything is ready to go I will do a final layout followed by one last proof of design and reviews. We then send everything off to the printer and pray we haven’t made any major errors. Once we’ve signed off on the proof the print run goes ahead and the magazines are delivered to the distributors.
Meanwhile the web site is being updated, publicity information is being sent out to magazine reviewers, the e-book version is being laid out, and invoices are being collected and claimed.
Once the magazine is delivered subscriber’s copies are packaged and posted off.
Rinse and repeat.
How did you manage to organise international distribution?
I did some research and found out who was distributing similar types of magazines and contacted the distributor. I then sent them some sample copies, which they sent out to their retailers. They then contacted me with an order request.
The magazine featured both writers and illustrators. Who were some of your favourites and what were some of the success stories?
Again, there are many more, I just can’t remember them all.
Success stories, well there’s Sarah. We were her first published credit. She won our first ever short-story competition and went on to work for Clockwork Zoo as a writer on URBO: The Adventures Of Pax Africa, followed, to date, by two published novels.
We published Abigail Godsell’s Making Waves when she was just 15 years old. For me personally this was always the point of Something Wicked, to be able to inspire and reward a teenage writer and, hopefully, help nurture a talent that she will continue to explore.
In terms of the magazine’s successes, I guess just looking at my subscriber base and realising that we have readers in Japan, Australia, all throughout Europe, the USA, and Canada is pretty fucking awesome. Who knew this little project could reach so far?
What did the readership especially enjoy? I recall at one point you were considering widening the scope, which was horror, to include more science fiction.
It’s all across the board. One of the things that Vianne and I are especially proud of is the diverse reactions we receive to the stories. What it means to us is that there is something in there for everyone. Some of our favourite stories will sometimes not even blip with some readers while others will completely fall in love with them.
We decided to broaden the scope from horror to horror and science fiction simply because I felt it would appeal to a wider market and because I love science fiction.
Something Wicked Issue 1 - cover art by Vincent Sammy
Talk us through the problems you encountered that eventually caused you to have to make the difficult decision to stop printing the magazine.
Finally a simple question.
Something Wicked has only ever had two problems: time and money.
Throughout the history of the magazine it has never turned a profit, though over the last year we have managed to begin to break even. As a result most of the financing of Something Wicked has come from paying work that I do. What that boils down to is when I am earning money I don’t have the time to run the magazine, and when I am not earning money I don’t have the finances to run the magazine.
We cut a huge break in 2008 when the National Arts Council gave us partial funding (which covered about half of the printing costs for five issues) but inevitably a business needs to turn a profit.
Something Wicked has always been Vianne and myself with a lot of help from friends (Sarah Lotz, Digby Young, Erik G, Mark Sykes, and Brett Venter) but the bulk of the work has always been just the two of us and since we’re not getting paid for the work inevitably Something Wicked ends up on the back burner when actual paying work comes through.
In the last year both Vianne’s and my career have picked up significantly, which has completely obliterated our time. So, once again, the magazine ends up suffering.
We are hoping to keep it alive online but at this stage I’m still working out the kinks. It looks like one of the few possibilities is if I step down as editor as it seems to be my lack of time that is slowing the progress of the magazine. We’ll see.
What were some of the most important lessons you learnt about publishing due to this project and what do you think is important for those that might want to start a similar project to know?
Start online.
Seriously, keep your overheads as low as possible. We started in print and right from the beginning we started losing money.
Printing paper is ridiculously expensive (easily 90% of our per-issue cost).
Build up a fan base through online marketing and publishing and then start pulling in the advertisers.
Be prepared to work for free for at least two to three years. Once, and only once you’re turning over a profit, hire some staff to help you out.
Do that for a couple of years and you may be lucky enough to move up to printing on paper.
But to be honest the print industry is an extremely difficult place to start building a business. The work never, ever stops. Every deadline you make is just the beginning of another one. As businesses go, I am glad I started Something Wicked, and I am extremely proud of the work we have done over the last few years, but it’s not a great way to earn money. It is definitely a “for-the-love” business.
Any regrets?
I regret not being able to get back to writers fast enough. I know exactly what it’s like to send a story through to a publication and have to wait months and months for a response. Other than that, none whatsoever. Every mistake is a lesson, every experience, good or bad, is a learning opportunity and the more you learn the better off you are in the future. And if you’re gonna lose a bundle of cash over four years, at least pick a fun way to do it, which this was.
Issue 10 of Something Wicked is available now and some back issues can still be bought online – though, now being collector’s items, they won’t be around for long.
Alert! BOOK SA is not entirely convinced of the genuineness of the call, but Granta magazine is apparently looking for help compiling the top African short stories of the past 50 years. The following notice has been found poking out of various online literary thickets:
The Granta Book of The African Short Story
Edited by Helon Habila and Binyavanga Wainaina
This anthology will bring together the best of the best African short stories published in the last 50 years. You are invited to recommend any great short story you have read in a collection, a magazine, online, or heard on the radio, but it has to be by an African author.
The story could be in English, French, Portuguese, Arabic, or any major African language, but the final language of publication will be English. Send story title, author’s name, and any publication information you have to help us track your recommended story. Send before April 30, 2010, to: africastories2010@gmail.com
Is it real? BOOK SA will be calling Granta later on to find out. Even if not, however, the exercise of considering Africa’s top shorts might be worthwhile. From South Africa, off the top of my head, I’d recommend Siphiwo Mahala’s “The Suit Continued” and Ivan Vladislavic’s “The WHITES ONLY Bench” as strong contenders.
Alert! The title story of Petina Gappah’s juggernaut debut collection, An Elegy for Easterly, has been shortlisted for the world’s richest short story prize, the £25 000 UK Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.
Rules in general are restrictive. I am told by creative writing teachers that many would-be writers imitate that great short-story writer, Raymond Carver. This leads to an almost-rule — consider the fact that there are other ways of writing, besides Carver’s.
Read very widely, and all kinds of different authors. The American writer Michael Chabon has made fierce fun of that other traditional piece of shortstory wisdom — that a story should show a single emotion perfectly and end in an epiphany. Chabon said rightly that a piece of short fiction could tell a story, could set out to entertain, could contain a helterskelter of disparate things and happenings, and still be a short story.
Meanwhile, in other matters Sunday Times, but rather closer to home, Gappah has signed with South Africa’s largest English weekly to write a 900 word column once a fortnight, as she tells her fans on her blog:
Finally, for people like Jonathan Masere who missed my Zimbabwe Times column, I am thrilled to say that the Sunday Times South Africa has offered me a column. At over half a million, the Sunday Times has the largest circulation of any weekly newspaper in South Africa, and it also circulates in neighbouring countries including my own Zimbabwe. I have great admiration for editor Mondli Makhanya, and columnists like Justice Malala and Ben Trovato so I am very pleased indeed to be part of the Sunday Times family.
The first column in the series was apparently published yesterday, thought it doesn’t seem to have appeared online at TimesLive yet. We’ll keep a watch out for it – and if any reader should spot the relevant link, please post it as a comment below. Thanks!
Alert!Petina Gappah’s debut collection of shorts stories, An Elegy for Easterly, has been shortlisted for a 2009 Los Angeles Times Book Award – namely, the Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction.
The prize carries a purse of $500 – which seems a bit stingy for a major US newspaper’s award? – and the winner, along with a whole bevy of others, will be announced on Friday, April 23 in Los Angeles.
We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: Good luck to Gappah!
Alert! There are still thirty-and-a-half writing days left to knock a short story into shape for the annual Commonwealth Foundation Short Story Competition, which closes at the end of the month.
The competition bears a structure similar to the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize: regional winners are first chosen (prize: £500) and go on to compete with one another for the top gong, which carries a purse of £2000.
Here’s all the info you need to enter:
The Commonwealth Short Story Competition is an annual scheme to promote new creative writing, funded and administered by the Commonwealth Foundation and the Commonwealth Broadcasting Association. Each year around 25 winning and highly commended stories from the different regions of the Commonwealth are recorded on to CDs and broadcast on radio stations across the Commonwealth.
Anyone aged 19 or over who is a citizen of a Commonwealth country can enter, whether a professional or amateur writer. Commonwealth citizens who are 18 or under can enter the Commonwealth Essay Competition.
Stories should be original, unpublished, written in English and no more than 600 words long. Entries will be submitted in plain text via the online application form.
In addition to the first prize and four regional prizes, this year there will be special prizes for the best story for children and the best story concerning Science, Technology and Society, the Commonwealth Day theme for 2010.
There is no entry fee. Only one entry may be submitted per person. This can either be a general entry, or a story on the Commonwealth Day theme, or a story for children.
Alert! The title story in Petina Gappah’s An Elegy for Easterly has been longlisted for a lucrative new annual literary award sponsored by the UK’s Sunday Times, the Sunday Times EFG Private Bank Short Story Award.
“Elegy” is one of twenty stories on the longlist, which also includes Kay Sexton, “a former glamour model who now writes erotica”. The award is set to be judged by Brit lit heavyweights Nick Hornby, Hanif Kureishi and AS Byatt, as well as the Times‘ literary editor Andrew Holgate and one Lord Matthew Evans.
Here’s the Times‘ announcement and longlist:
Sexton is joined on the long list for the prize, which is open to published authors from anywhere in the world and carries a prize of £25,000, by Simon Robson, a Rada-trained actor, and Charles Mosley, former editor-in-chief of Burke’s Peerage.
Tremain, who won the Orange prize in 2008 for her novel The Road Home, said: “It’s a tough form of writing because you must have cohererence in just a few thousand words, while with a novel you can have some ‘bagginess’.”
Six of the longlisted authors are also award-winning poets, including Jackie Kay and John Burnside.
To mark the advent of the new award, its director and Times‘ short story editor Cathy Galvin presents readers with an new short by Kureishi, “A Terrible Story”:
When Eric slammed the front door it was cold outside and raining hard. With winter already coming, he was reluctant to go out. But he’d said he’d meet Jake at seven and he couldn’t let him down. Not that he had far to go; it took Eric five minutes to get to his local place.
He hurried into the bright, warm and almost-empty cafe, hung up his coat and sat down. The waiters knew him and brought him the wine he liked without his having to ask. Eric went there most days, to read the paper, make phone calls and work on his computer.
He drank half a glass of wine straight off, to calm himself down after arguing with his wife a few minutes earlier. She and their nine-year-old son had been at the kitchen table doing the boy’s homework, but, having had a glass of wine, Eric had felt inspired to expatiate on the current political situation. His wife told him to shut up, and he hadn’t wanted to; he had something pressing to say. His wife asserted he always had something important to say at the wrong time. Didn’t he want his son to succeed or would the boy be a cretin like his father? The spat accelerated. “You don’t listen to me!” “You don’t speak at the right time, when we want to hear you!” “You’re never receptive!” “You’re a fool!” Eric shuddered and giggled, as he thought of the two of them freely insulting one another, and the boy looking on.
Alert!SA PEN has issued its call for entries for the £10 000 2011 PEN/Studzinsky Literary Awards – which are judged by JM Coetzee – and has announced that Margie Orford is set to replace Shaun Johnson on the PEN executive.
In a not-altogether-welcome shift of policy, SA PEN has reverted to the geographical scope of its award that was in place before it secured sponsorship from current benefactor John Studzinski. That is, only residents of SADC’s fifteen countries may enter, whereas the inaugural award was open to the whole of Africa. (See the press release below for the full list of eligible countries.) Happily, the lack of any age restriction on entrants appears to remain intact.
3 000 to 5 000 word short fiction entries in English are invited from 1 March 2010; submission details will be posted to the SA PEN website on that date; no final closing deadline appears to have yet been set.
Here’s the complete press release from SA PEN:
2011 PEN/STUDZINSKI LITERARY AWARDS
Entries invited from 1 March 2010
The South African Centre of International PEN (SA PEN) is pleased to announce the launch of the second in the series of PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Awards.
Entries for the award for original short stories in English are called for from 1 March 2010 and AFRICAN PENS, a compilation of the short-listed stories, will be published in mid-2011.
Prizes totalling £10 000 will once again be donated by American philanthropist and global investment banker, John Studzinski. The first, second and third prizes will be £5 000, £3 000 and £2 000, respectively.
Nobel Laureate and SA PEN Honorary Member, J.M. Coetzee, will once again select the winning entries.
The 2011 PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Award aims to encourage creative writing in southern Africa and will offer talented writers an exciting opportunity to launch or develop a literary career. Twelve contributors to our earlier HSBC/SA PEN series have now published their own books, including Ceridwen Dovey who won the 2008 Sunday Times Fiction Prize. Petina Gappah, an early winner, went on to sign a three-book contract with Faber & Faber in the UK and Farrar Strauss & Giroux in the US. Three of the five short-listed stories for the Caine prize for African Writing first appeared in AFRICAN PENS 2007 – the model for AFRICAN PENS 2011. The story POISON, set in a threatened Cape Town, and written by author Henrietta Rose-Innes, was chosen by J.M, Coetzee as the winner of the 2007 HSBC/SA PEN Literary Award and it went on to win the 2008 Caine Prize of £10 000.
Our 2009 project, led by author Shaun Johnson, received over 800 entries from writers throughout Africa, but this year we revert to appealing only to writers living in the fifteen countries of the Southern African Development Community (SADC*). The genre is still the short-story, this time between 3 000 and 5 000 words.
SA PEN is pleased to announce that author Margie Orford has agreed to take Shaun’s place on the SA PEN executive and that the Editorial Board for the 2011 award will comprise:
Anthony Fleischer (Chairman), novelist and President of SA PEN Dianne Case, popular children’s author John Gardener, English teacher, retired Head of Kingswood College & Bishops, published numerous articles and Bishops’ 150 year history of the school Jeremy Lawrence, writer who has worked in journalism and publishing in London and South Africa Adré Marshall, retired academic, author of book on Henry James and sundry poems, translator (French/English) Peter Merrington, novelist, professor extraordinaire at the University of the Western Cape, ceramicist and motorcyclist Margie Orford, writer and sometime journalist Anne Schuster, novelist, poet, creative writing facilitator and publisher J.M. Coetzee – Nobel Laureate (Final judge)
Writers who are citizens of SADC countries* are encouraged to prepare short stories for submission. Further information and detailed rules of entry will be posted on the SA PEN website, www.sapen.co.za, from the 1 March 2010. Previous publications featuring the shortlisted and winning stories from the 2005, 2006 and 2007 HSBC/SA PEN, and 2009 PEN/STUDZINSKI Literary Awards are: AFRICAN COMPASS (2005, New Africa Books), AFRICAN ROAD (2006, New Africa Books), AFRICAN PENS (2007, New Africa Books), NEW WRITING FROM AFRICA 2009 (2009, Johnson & KingJames Books).
* SADC countries: Angola, Botswana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Lesotho, Madagascar, Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Seychelles, South Africa, Swaziland, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.
Alert! Billy Kahora, one of the major forces behind Kenya’s Kwani? lit-o-sphere, has caught the attention of the editors at Granta magazine – who’ve chosen him for their new writer showcase, or more properly their New Voices showcase, which brings the web fresh fiction six times a year.
Kahora’s short story is called “The Gorilla’s Apprentice”. Read it in full:
That last Sunday of 2007, just a few days before Jimmy Gikonyo’s eighteenth birthday – when he would become ineligible to use his Nairobi Orphanage family pass – he went to see his old friend, Sebastian the gorilla. Jimmy sat silently on the bench next to the primate’s pit waiting for Sebastian to recognize him. After a few minutes, Sebastian turned his gaze on Jimmy and walked towards the fence. The gorilla’s eyes were rheumy, his movements slow and careful. Their interaction was now defined by that strange sense of inevitable nostalgia that death brings, even when the present has not yet slipped into the past.
Jimmy removed the tattered pass from his pocket and read the fine print on the back: This lifetime family pass is only for couples and children under eighteen years of age.
There was a sign on the side of Sebastian’s cage: ‘Oldest Gorilla in the World. Captured and Saved from the Near Extinction of His Species After the Genocide in Rwanda. Sebastian, 56. Genus: Gorilla.’
The Caine Prize for African Writing has just announced its judging panel for the 2010 prize – for which entries closed on the 31st of last month. A shortlist will be announced sometime in April.
Press release
The judges of this year’s Caine Prize for African Writing were announced today. The panel will be chaired by The Economist’s Literary Editor Fiammetta Rocco, and joining her are Granta deputy editor Ellah Allfrey, Professor Jon Cook of the University of East Anglia, award-winning novelist Hisham Matar and Georgetown University professor Samantha Pinto.
This year 115 qualifying stories have been submitted to the judges from 13 African countries. The judges will meet in April to decide on the shortlisted stories, which will be announced shortly thereafter. The winning story will be announced at a dinner at the Bodleian Library in Oxford on Monday 5 July.
Last year the Caine Prize, described as Africa’s leading literary award, was won by Nigerian writer EC Osondu. [Click here for coverage of Osondu's win.] Chair of judges Nana Yaa Mensah said at the time “a tour de force describing, from a child’s point of view, the dislocating experience of being a displaced person. It is powerfully written with not an ounce of fat on it – and deeply moving.”
Work in Progress and Other Stories: The Caine Prize for African Writing 2009 by The Caine Prize For African Writing Book homepage EAN: 9781770097506 Find this book with BOOK Finder!
Something Wicked, South Africa’s first (and only) magazine devoted to horror and science-fiction short stories – which featured breakout works by largely unknown authors and stunning full-page illustrations by a talented group of (primarily) local artists – was started in 2006 by Joe Vaz, in partnership with Vianne Venter. Over the years the publication has had its ups and downs, largely due to financial problems (a major one being the cost of printing on paper skyrocketing to prohibitive levels over the past few years, a problem that has seen even established magazines with massive financial backing folding left and right), but, nevertheless, it gained a patient, understanding, loyal following all over the world due to its focus on quality publishing. The readership understood, and celebrated, what the magazine was trying to achieve and therefore was largely unfazed by the delays and problems.
Alert! Author and academic Ashraf Jamal will give a reading from his collection of short stories, 
