2012 Kwani? Litfest: Conversations with Writers and Artists from The Horn

Titled Conversations With The Horn: Writers, Artists In Exchange, this year's festival will host Somali poet Hadraawi, Sudanese-English novelist Jamal Mahjoub & Eritrean writer and historian Alemseged Tesfai to share their work with writers from other parts of the continent. These include Egyptian writer and activist Nawal El Sadaawi & Nigerian and Ghanaian novelists, Helon Habila and Kojo Laing. They will also be joined by writers from Mozambique, Namibia, and Cameroon.

Following different themes over the years at the Kwani? Litfest, this is the first time that we have invited a combination of different writers from the Horn to be part of a celebration of literature and its role in our lives. Recent developments in the region have created points of convergence that warrant intra-continental literary, artistic and intellectual conversations. To begin with, new writing has emerged in places where little writing at least in Anglophone Africa had been seen in the mainstream and hence Egypt, Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and South Africa are not the only players in a global republic of letters. Some of the most recent exciting contemporary African Literature has come from the so-called countries of the Horn by writers such as Meaza Mengiste, Dinaw Mengestu, Nadifa Mohamed, Abraham Verghese, Abdulrahman Waberi & Sulaiman Addonia. These follow in the rich literary traditions set by Nuruddin Farah, Tayeb Salih and many others.

2012 Kwani? Litfest :