Africa39

Africa39 brought to worldwide attention some of the best new fiction from Africa south of the Sahara. It was a Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Club project celebrating Port Harcourt UNESCO World Book Capital 2014.

What was Africa39?

The selection and celebration – through a festival and an anthology of stories/extracts – of the most promising 39 authors under the age of 40 from Sub-Saharan Africa and the diaspora. Africa39 was a Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Club Project. The judges selected from as many as 200 submissions researched by Binyavanga Wainaina, founder of the Nairobi-based literary magazine Kwani?, and the writer’s names were unveiled in Port Harcourt and at the London Book Fair in 2014. In October 2014 the Port Harcourt Book Festival took place in Nigeria, coinciding with the Rainbow Festival. Additional events took place in London and New York, in partnership with Arts Council of England, the British Council and Literature Across Frontiers, among others.

What is Hay Festival's ‘39 Project’?

As one of the leading literature festivals in the world, Hay Festival has always been interested in highlighting new talent and has collaborated with the UNESCO World Book Capital project in numerous cities. This title is awarded to a different city every year to celebrate the quality and variety of its initiatives to promote books, readership and the editorial industry.

The 39 Project consists of the selection of 39 writers under the age of 40 who have the potential and the talent to define the trends that will mark the future development of literature in a certain language or region. The 39 Project was realized for the first time in Bogotá (UNESCO World Book Capital 2007) and for the second time in Beirut (UNESCO World Book Capital 2010), resulting in both cases in a literature festival in each city with the 39 selected authors from each region (Latin America and the Arab World): four days of literature, debate and the love of books together, with an anthology published of stories/extracts by the authors.

How were the authors selected?

The selection of the 39 writers was made using the following criteria:

• The writers were chosen by a panel of well-known judges
• The selected writers had to be under the age of 40 and to come from the region or diaspora
• The selected authors needed to have at least one work of fiction published and potential for development
• Publishers, literary agents and critics from all over the world were consulted to create the longlist of authors.