When the Zimbabwean editor Irene Staunton and her husband Murray McCartney set up their publishing business in 1998, it seemed natural to call it Weaver Press. Their modest HQ, in the back garden of their home in Emerald Hill, a northern suburb of Harare, looked out on the many intricate nests of the weaver bird that peppered the landscape.
This week, the company is celebrating its 25th birthday. The location has not changed and the team has rarely exceeded the staff of two. But in the words of one distinguished Zimbabwean scholar at the University of Oxford, Weaver Press has “quietly shaped post-independence Zimbabwean literature”.
