Open Book Festival 2024

Before the rupture that disconnected our intimate relationship with the land, every family or community had a story keeper, a healer, a seer, listening for the stories their people needed. the land still calls. we have simply forgotten how to listen, how to hear. but remembering is always only a choice away. in this one-day poetry workshop, Toni Giselle Stuart will guide you to slow down, step into the silence & listen to the stories calling within you.

Let’s workshop a flash pamphlet together! Join Karavan Press founder, Karina Szczurek, for this two session workshop series that will culminate in a printed pamphlet.
First session - (Monday, 3 June, 10am – 4pm)
Second session - (Saturday, 8 June, 10am – 1pm)
NB: Please note you will need to be available for both sessions.

Aspiring and published authors should not miss this three hour workshop facilitated by Samantha Waligo and Helené Coetzee. This intensive session will equip participants with the knowledge and practical skills to effectively market their books within the South African context. Beginning an overview of the SA literary landscape, and will move from there to marketing avenues, traditional and digital marketing strategies, and creative practice. This is an interactive workshop so be prepared for some brainstorming and if you have published, you are welcome to bring your own book!

This workshop will focus on the fundamental elements of screenwriting, essential for beginners as well as a great way for intermediate writers to refresh the concepts. The interactive session will cover story, character, world and the development process. A notebook and pen are required - come prepared to write!

Join Kirsten Deane and Melissa Sussens of the Red Wheelbarrow Poetry Collective for an autoethnographic writing workshop, a practice that uses the individual`s experience to explore wider society. Participants will be asked to choose a personal experience that touches on a societal issue, and will then be taken through a process of transforming those experiences into poetry. The participants will be given an opportunity to practice how to use their experiences to advocate for change by linking it to a larger community and South Africa as a whole. Writers of all skill levels are welcome to participate.

The story you are telling yourself about your life or others` lives is probably too small, and might even be untrue. This short memoir course, backed by neuroscience, will reconnect you with the playful tools you were born with to release old locked stories into surprising possibility. Facilitated by Dawn Garisch, author, doctor and founder member of the Life Righting Collective

We all know reading’s important, and presumably we all love it, or we wouldn’t be here, but why do we love it? Is it a solitary pursuit or can it build community? Do you have to finish what you start? Is reading passive or active? Join facilitator Alistair Mackay to explore what being a reader can mean.

Join Bongani Kona (editor of Our Ghosts were once People) to explore the ins and outs of translating trauma and grief onto the page. Participants will work through a set of writing exercises and shared readings to find language for what feels unbearable

Join award-winning writer, illustrator and translator, André Trantraal for a biographical comic workshop that explores visual storytelling. Please note that this is not an illustration workshop, it is specifically about visual storytelling through the medium of comics. Some illustration experience is a plus.

The worlds we make out of our words are important. Beyond physical space and time are the cosmological worlds of our stories, which belief systems they`re governed by, which narratives they create or contribute to, and what the emotional ecosystems of our characters tell or ask us about the world at large. In this full day story workshop, we`ll do some worldbuilding and imagine and re-imagine together to strengthen the worlds of our words.Writers across all mediums welcome. Facilitated by Kelly-Eve Koopman.

In a world where we are constantly inundated with statistics, news reports and viral social media posts depicting the horrors, inequities and misfortunes that plague us, a commitment to joy is an act of radical intentionality! Join Vuyokazi Ngemntu to explore tools, devices and exercises to help access and articulate moments of delight, contentment and elation on the page

Empatheatre co-founders Neil Coppen and Dylan McGarry will be exploring the last 10 years of their award-winning theatre company Empatheatre’s work towards sculpting empathy in South Africa and around the globe through innovative public storytelling processes. Sharing principles, practices and processes of the Empatheatre methodology, including co-design, ethics of representation, political acupuncture, theatre-based research and their iterative “call and response” practice.

Empatheatre’s newest production, Unruly stars Andrew Buckland. Unruly is part of the international research project Unruly Natures which explores baboon/human interactions across the Cape Peninsula. The production is an extension of Unruly Natures research process and has been designed to help audiences reflect on the many complexities of human-baboon interactions in their neighbourhoods and regions.