About Jacana Media
Since 2002 we have published at the cutting edge of critical, adventurous and independent South African literature.
Having secured, through a buy-out, a future for the company in August 2019, we are now the only major South African publishing house that is independent and owner-managed.
We are a ground-breaking and fiercely independent publisher, producing books in the fields of the arts, natural history, lifestyle, fiction, South African history, current affairs, memoir and biography, children’s books and public health. We publish work from some of the most imaginative, award-winning and clear-thinking minds of our time. Our books respond to the challenges of the moment and certainly inform and frequently change the national conversation.
Jacana Media won the Bologna Book Fair award for Best African Children’s Publisher in 2018. We have made it a proud tradition to publish in all 11 official South African languages.
The Jacana Literary Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation, runs literary awards; the Sol Plaatje European Union Poetry Award for best poetry in all languages, the Dinaane Debut Fiction Award and the Gerald Kraak Award and Anthology, a collection of exceptional works which explore, interrogate and celebrate the topics of gender, sexuality and human rights.
We are the original publishers of The Caine Prize for African Writing.
Through our publishing and through the Jacana Literary Foundation, we give voice to the unusual, the brilliant, the queer and the brave. It’s our future after all.
