In 2006, a small but supportive publisher helped Zimbabwean author Valerie Tagwira make the transition from doctor to published author, picking up her first novel, The Uncertainty of Hope.
Then based in the United Kingdom, Tagwira had sent out her manuscript to UK and Australian publishers and received 13 rejections. Two years after it was published by Weaver Press, it won one of Zimbabwe's National Arts Merit Awards, the country's highest recognition in arts and culture.
Today, she remains grateful to that publisher, Weaver Press.
"When nobody else would, Weaver Press gave a voice to the stories that I felt compelled to tell as a novice writer," Tagwira told Al Jazeera, paying tribute to Irene Staunton, the publishing house's publisher and editor. "Irene's patience and expertise as an editor inspired me and brought to fruition my long-held dream of becoming a published writer."
But now, after a quarter of a century of operation, the Harare-based independent publisher will close its doors at the end of this year, signalling a bleaker literary landscape for the southern African nation.
Weaver Press is based in Emerald Hill in northern Harare, a previously whites-only suburb in the colonial era, hardly an obvious setting for the country's most vibrant and diverse publishing house.
But since 1998 when it was co-founded by Staunton and her husband Murray McCartney who has served as its director, it has hoisted the voices of up to 80 fiction and over 100 nonfiction writers from Zimbabwe. The house has had interns over the years and, for a short while, a fully-fledged employee, but has been mostly run by the duo.
On December 7, a 25th-anniversary gathering brought together some of its authors and the country's literary luminaries – authors Shimmer Chinodya, Petina Gappah, and Chiedza Musengezi; the poet and retired university lecturer Musaemura Zimunya; former education minister and memoirist Fay Chung; and retired priest and writer David Harold-Barry.
The birthday bash was also a funeral even if that was left unsaid at the gathering.
"Weaver Press will go dormant at the end of the year," Staunton said in an interview at their home-cum-office, using a euphemism for the imminent shutdown.
A source: https://www.aljazeera.com/features/2023/12/28/in-zimbabwe-a-small-publisher-that-helped-launch-big-voices-shuts-down
