The Accra International Book Festival Awards 2018 shortlists were announced on December 27, 2018. The awards are the First Book Award and Independent Writers Award. The Accra International Book Festival Awards are open to writers of any nationality writing in English and French and whose work can reshape the world. The shortlist announced this year […]
Abdulrahman “Abu Amirah” Ndegwa is the winner of the African Writers Trust Publishing Fellowship. The African Writers Trust was founded to bring together African writers in the Diaspora and on the continent to promote the sharing of skills and other resources. Some of the activities of the organisation founded in 2009 by Goretti Kyomuhendo include […]
RadioBook Rwanda launched at Goethe-Institut Nairobi on Thursday, December 13, 2018. RadioBook Rwanda is an international collaboration aimed at producing short stories by contemporary Rwandan writers both as podcasts and beautiful pocket-size print editions combining new art and writing. It is a collaboration between Huza Press from Rwanda, Kwani Trust from Kenya and No Bindings […]
Peter Kimani will chair the panel of the Caine Prize for African Writing 2019 judges in an announcement made on December 19, 2018. He will be joined by Sefi Atta, Margie Orford, Olufemi Terry, and Scott Taylor. The Caine Prize for African Writing is one of the most influential awards in African writing. The Prize […]
The Re-imagined Storytelling Festival 2018 was hosted at the Alliance Francaise, Nairobi on December 15, 2018. Here is a snapshot of the festival. Storytelling is the art of telling stories in public to an audience for their listening (and viewing) pleasure. Storytelling has been making serious inroads into the Kenyan literary space in the last […]
Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature 2018 shortlist was announced on December 17, 2018. The Mabati Cornell Kiswahili Prize for African Literature was founded in 2014 by Dr Mukoma Wa Ngugi (Cornell University) and Dr Lizzy Attree to recognise writing in African languages and encourage translation from, between and into African languages. The project […]
Omaima Al-Khamis was announced the Naguib Mahfouz Medal for Arabic Literature 2018 winner at a ceremony in Cairo, Egypt on December 11, 2018. Naguib Mahfouz was an Egyptian writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1988 and passed on in 2006. In 1996, the American University in Cairo Press set up the annual […]
The Golden Baobab Prize 2018 shortlist was announced on December 16, 2018. No finalist will be awarded this year. The Golden Baobab Prize, established in 2008, celebrates outstanding African writers and illustrators of children’s literature. It honours manuscripts and illustrations for children that reflect the diversity of life, experiences, and cultures across the African continent. […]
Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor read an excerpt from her highly anticipated sophomore novel The Dragonfly Sea at the “Freedom Conversations” event at the Laico Regency Hotel, Nairobi on November 30, 2018. Jalada Africa and Edinburgh International Book Festival jointly hosted eight delegates from Uganda, Tanzania, Rwanda, Ethiopia and Kenya at the first Outriders Africa symposium. These […]
The third edition of what is quickly becoming Southern Africa’s premier literary festival, the Abantu Book Festival 2018, was hosted in Soweto, South Africa from December 6-9, 2018. The Abantu Book Festival was founded in 2016 for black readers, writers, performers, scholars, publishers, booksellers, and abantu interested in literature. It was a revolutionary idea by […]
Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani was announced the Raven Award 2018 winner for her young adult novel Buried Beneath the Baobab Tree on December 5, 2018. The Raven Award is given annually to an artist whose work creatively represents some aspect of mimetic theory. The winners come from the stage, screen, fiction and the visual arts which […]
Ben Okri will headline Berlin’s African Book Festival 2019. The festival with the theme “Transitioning from Migration“ is in its second year. In April, African writers met in Berlin for the African Book Festival 2018, the first of its kind in the European city. That event organised by the InterKontinental and curated by Olumide Popoola, […]
The judges for the Writivism Short Story Prize 2019 and the Koffi Addo Prize for Nonfiction 2019 were announced on December 5, 2018. Writivism is an organisation that does activities around the writing ecosystem. Based out of a Kampala, Uganda headquarters, the organisation organises a literary festival, an annual writing competition, mentoring for young writers […]
The Swahili Literary Festival 2019 is set for Mombasa, Kenya from March 1-3, 2019. This will be the first running of the festival in the coastal city with the theme “Celebrating Achievement.” A new initiative called the Swahili Literary Festival is set to be hosted on the coast of Kenya by the Swahili Pot Hub. […]
As part of a blog tour featuring Tolu’ A. Akinyemi, the Nigerian poet whose most recent poetry collection is Dead Dogs Don’t Bark agreed to answer five questions. Dead Dogs Don’t Bark is the second poetry collection from Tolu’ A. Akinyemi. The poems speak to all age groups as they feature finding your inner talent, […]
