PROFILE 

Nurjehan Aziz and Mawenzi House celebrate 40 years of championing diversity BY SHAZIA HAFIZ RAMJI

▲ Nurjehan Aziz

NURJEHAN AZIZ: DESI NEWS

IN CARYL PHILLIPS’S BOOK OF ESSAYS, Colour Me English: Reflections on Migration and Belonging, the Kittitian-British novelist writes that the only way up Mount Kilimanjaro is “pole, pole,” which in Swahili means “slowly, slowly.”

It would not be an understatement to compare publisher Nurjehan Aziz’s career to scaling Kilimanjaro; her press, Mawenzi House, is named after the mountain’s second-highest peak. In the fall of 2020 – after 39 years of publishing – Aziz received the highly prestigious Ivy Award, presented to an individual who has made an important contribution to the world of Canadian publishing.