The third edition of the Macondo Literary Festival 2023 will be hosted in Nairobi, Kenya from September 15 – 17, 2023. The festival theme is “disrupting home.”
The Macondo Literary Festival was first hosted by THE Macondo Book Society, founded by author Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor and journalist Anja Bengelstorff, in Nairobi in 2019. The festival’s name comes from “Macondo,” the fictional place where magical things happen in the novel One Hundred Years of Solitude by Colombian Nobel Laureate Gabriel Garcia Márquez. It was aimed at initiating and encouraging the engagement of a wider public with literature and its creators as a means of societal growth. Read our reporting on the event by clicking here.
In 2022, the festival returned for its second run after a two-year pandemic break with many leading names in African letters attending. For those who missed the action, the sessions were filmed and are available on the festival official YouTube channel which you can access by clicking here. You can also check out photographic action captured by Paul Munene by clicking here.
The organisers of the festival have shared that the third edition, Macondo 3.0, is set to return in September yet again. They promise a pan-African festival as they plan on inviting authors from all parts of the continent: The Arab, English, French, Portuguese, and Spanish writing language zones in conversation across perceived limitations, barriers, and silos. It will all run under the theme “disrupting home.”
We shall keep you abreast of events as the festival comes closer. For now, we recommend that you block off that weekend to meet some of the coolest writerly folks.
