For as long as I can remember, I’ve lived among storytellers and books. My grandpa had what he fondly called a “green room”, a sanctuary for himself and his most important literature: the Holy Bible, a 1982 Hymnal, English and American classics (his cloth-bound copy of Austen's Emma was gifted to me as a teenager), timeless African writers – giants like as Chinua Achebe, and the writings of other prominent, influential and revolutionary men like Mandela, Martin Luther King Jr, and Malcolm X. 
 

Books were my first companions and an inseparable part of my childhood. I hadn’t pursued them. In many ways, it felt as though they had found me.

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As a small child, I would spend hours paging through my grandmother’s pocket-sized Reader’s Digest, FEMINA, and Drum magazines, mesmerised by the fonts and faces that filled their pages. Later, my mother’s home study, lined with a series on ancient civilisations, became my refuge from “playtime” with my sisters, as I lost myself in the stories of distant rulers and empires: Egypt first, then Mesopotamia, followed by Rome and Persia. If you had asked me then what I wanted to be when I grew up, I would have said, without hesitation, “I want to discover stories and I want to write books.”

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Decades later, that same desire still burns brightly. After years immersed in the publishing world, guided by exceptional mentors and collaborators in South Africa and abroad, I am proud to introduce Nyenyezi Books.

 

I dream that across the African continent and beyond, Nyenyezi Books will stand as a home for luminous writing, brilliant minds, and bold, award-worthy stories that illuminate our shared humanity.