about

RETIRED ACADEMIC
PUBLISHING BOOKS FOR GOOD 

In 1994 , I undertook a research trip into a remote area of southern Africa to find a band of  former hunter-gatherers,  the Ju|'hoan people of the Kalahari Desert in northern Namibia.

It was a life-changing experience. I saw them find a water root by digging below an unlikely tendril baking in the sand.  I heard them tell an ancient folktale, (sisters, Python and Jackal, wicked treachery and scatalogical humour, death and rebirth, and always, community.) I saw how tenderly they lived on the land and how passionately they danced to heal.  

When I left they said "Do not forget us'; 'Tell of us.'  I went back often  to the Nyae Nyae Conservancy to learn more.

In time, I wrote three books, fictions based upon how recent colonialism affected the San,  pre- and post-Apartheid, including during the South African Bush war. These are the only novels of this kind and have been endorsed by the community. Income from sales goes to support education for Ju|'hoan children so that one day they may fulfil their elders' wish  and become 'paper people'.

And that they may one day write their own stories. 
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Author Candi Miller writing field notes beneath a baobab tree in the Kalahari Desert, on her first research visit in 1994.
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