As part of the Cape Flats Book Festival's 5th birthday this year, a small team from Woman Zone was very honoured to be invited, not only to facilitate some panel discussions, but to give a writing workshop called FLOW. But in between sessions, there was the opportunity to do some serious eavesdropping - so take a listen here, and be sure to watch out for details of next years Festival!

Burning Down the House (Karavan Press), a collection of anarchic essays by a new generation of activists and scholars began its journey on a Feminism course given by lecturers Charisse Louw and Stella Viljoen at Stellenbosch University. In writing their pieces, 16 contributors have breathed new, provocative perspectives into the word, and at our Book Club, they shared just some of their thinking processes.

In the third and final episode in this series (for now), we very proudly bring you The Glasgow Women's Library as she was the primary inspiration for own much smaller edition in Cape Town. Do take a listen, and if you know any other women's libraries, anywhere in the world, do let us know as we'd love to be in touch. Meanwhile, happy listening!

For the second in our series on Women's Libraries, we visited The Feminist Library. Housed in a significantly historic old building with a story of its own to tell, we found it tucked away in Peckham, South London - and filled with fascinating material.

As a very small Women's Library based in Cape Town at Artscape, we wondered how other Women's Libraries worked. So we set off to the UK where we found three! First up we took a visit to the one at The London School of Economics. Take a listen, and watch this space for two more.

Photographer Ajay Lalu is donating proceeds from A Mountain Divides, his book about Cape Town's famous ' Klopse' minstrel parade, to shoot4purpose, an initiative empowering women through photography.

To mark the end of 2025, The Women's Library was 'fully booked' with a big fat Book Swap and the back stories of a brace of book babes in the publishing biz. Happy listening - and happy holiday reading!

The Smallest Ones  (Penguin Random House) is a personal account of survival in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo of the early 2000s. Captured by rebel soldiers, Popina Khumanda, and many others were captured tortured and raped. Amazingly, Popina and her older sister managed to escape, and find their way to South Africa. But their nightmare was not over. Popina writes about this journey with unflinching honesty in a testament to the power of hope and resilience.

Through a campaign called #Doekwithadifference, the Cancer Alliance https://canceralliance.org.za/ wants every woman to know that whilst it can be a killer, Cervical Cancer is also 100% preventable. In the first in a series of Story Cafe's and in partnership with Woman Zone and Artscape, they share the info.

Author and founder of the hugely popular victim-focused podcast series True Crime South Africa, NICOLE ENGLEBRECHT speaks to Beryl Eichenberger about the making of the series and about her fourth book, BARE BONES: Cold Cases from True Crime South Africa (Jonathan Ball).