Petina Gappah will be the keynote speaker at the Heroe Book Fair 2022 which runs in Mombasa, Kenya from May 5-7, 2022. The festival theme is “Emancipation.”
Heroe Book Fair is a Pan-African literary event bringing together Anglophone, Francophone, and German speaking writers, poets, publishers, and literary enthusiasts for a couple of days celebration of their literary works and achievements in Mombasa, Kenya. The first edition of the festival founded by writer and children’s book author Lorna Likiza ran in 2021.
The festival for 2022 organised by Lorna Likiza and Culture Africa Founder, Hans Hofele, is a hybrid event hosted at the Close The Gap Hub at Ratna Square, Mombasa. The festival will include panels, workshops, readings of poetry and prose, book launches and signings, boom chats, and loads more. There will be sessions for adults as well as for kids.
The organisers have announced the festival keynote speaker to be Zimbabwean lawyer and author Petina Gappah. Petina Gappah is no new name to anyone who follows the African literary community. She burst onto the scene with the debut short story collection An Elegy For Easterly (2009). The book won the Guardian First Book Award and was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Orwell Prize and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for Fiction. Since then, she has written The Book of Memory (2015), Rotten Row (2016), and Out of Darkness, Shining Light (2019).
Other guests of the festival will be Khadija Abdalla Bajaber, J.D. Kizza, Johary Ravaloson, Fiston Mudacumura, Partick Byiringiro Uwimpuhwe, Albert Mwamburi, Sakina Taki, Bene Lu, Pindiwe Mgijima-Mabhena, Nyiko Mthembi, Kadija George, Sandra Tamele, Okenna Nzelu, Dr Xolisa Guzula, Leine Daini, Lorato Trok, Ulrich Talla Wamba, Ekiuwa Aire, Ally Abdallah Baharoon, and Georginah Makini.
