It's the usual whirlwind production schedule for the Caine Prize book this year. We couldn't do anything until we received the stories from the Writers' Workshop in March and the shortlist of five stories was announced on 1st May.

So in the last couple of weeks it's been all systems go to turn everything around in a few weeks and get the book to the printers in order to have the copies in shops before the award on 2 July. The eBook will be available too by the way...

And not only the content is on a fast turnaround - it's also hard to create a cover until we have some material to work with. So this year cover inspiration comes from one of the shortlisted stories, African Violet, and the design is courtesy of our co-publishing friends, Jacana Media.

As last year, a group of intrepid bloggers are reviewing each of the shortlisted stories in turn in the run up to the award - they are already on the second story so keep an up-to-date with Blogging the Caine Prize through zunguzungu over the next few weeks.