NBO LitFest 2024

Adania Shibli and David Olusoga with Ayisha Osori

Hay Festival Lviv Bookforum Series: History & homelands

Saturday 29 June 2024, 5pm EAT –  Green Bunk stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara

There’s truth in the African proverb: “Until the lion tells his tale, the hunt will always glorify the hunter”. Conflict and revisionist history result in the systematic destruction of a people, their homes and cultural heritage. In the face of such devastating erasure, the artist is called upon to serve as griot and keeper of names. Sometimes, their mere existence, whether in exile or in their homeland, is enough resistance. Award-winning Palestinian author, Adania Shibli and British historian, writer and filmmaker, David Olusoga OBE explore their memories of home.

Featured writers: Adania Shibli and David Olusoga

Moderator: Ayisha Osori

Supported by Open Society Foundations

Concert

Saturday 29 June 2024, 6pm – 10pm –  Green Bunk stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara

Music performance by chart-topping local acts, followed closely by a live DJ set.

Nguru Karugu, Sarah Waiswa and Ngartia Bryan with Beverly Ochieng

On identity

Sunday 30 June 2024, 12pm EAT –  Green Bunk stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara

To exist in fear or wracked with guilt diminishes our ability to fully engage with others. While these feelings can be self-propagated, external factors such as hostility, closed mindedness and non-acceptance serve as barriers. How we self-identify shouldn’t limit our ability to safely move through the world. Hear from Ngartia Bryan, Nguru Karugu and Sarah Waiswa, artists whose work bravely expands all the ways we can see ourselves by breaking silences and taboos through poetry, publishing and photography.

Featured artists: Nguru Karugu, Sarah Waiswa and Ngartia Bryan.

Moderator: Beverly Ochieng

Presented by BBC Africa

Justine Wanda, Magunga Williams and Astar Njau with Anyiko Owoko

Digital storytelling

Sunday 30 June 2024, 1pm EAT –  Green Bunk stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara

Netizens have come to expect diverse, creative and educational content on a daily basis. Kenyan content creators have not failed them. Merging culture and technology, these creatives have distinguished themselves through engaging digital content and amassed thousands of dedicated followers.

This panel spotlights creative voices working online today. Justine Wanda is a comedian creating pithy, civic education work via her Fake Woke series on X and Instagram; Magunga Williams, also known as The Real G, is a writer whose blog has been awarded several times while Astar Njau, hosts Cleaning The Airwaves (CTA), a YouTube channel that features interviews that educates, inspires and positively entertains.

Featuring artists: Justine Wanda, Magunga Williams and Astar Njau

Moderator: Anyiko Owoko.

Jon Lee Anderson and Tom Odula

Perils of doing the right thing

Sunday 30 June 2024, 1pm –  Ikulu stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara

Two decorated journalists with starred careers engage in an in-depth conversation about the realities of engaging in their work. Tom Odula, journalist, speaks with Jon Lee Anderson, an American journalist, investigative reporter, and war correspondent who is presently a staff writer for The New Yorker.

Featured writers: Jon Lee Anderson and Tom Odula

Chidi Nwaubani, Alex Gakuru and Naddya Adhiambo Oluoch-Olunya with Andrés Schipani

AI: friend or foe?

Sunday 30 June 2024, 2pm EAT –  Green Bunk stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara

In comparison to the previous Ages, the Information Age is evolving at rapid speeds. Innovations are being realised within a short span of years instead of centuries. The earliest versions of Artificial intelligence (AI) softwares were released in the 1950s making the idea of programmes mimicking “human thought” a possibility within our lifetime. Free-to-access AI art and text generators have gone mainstream, seen as the next necessary and disruptive step by sections of society and wholly condemned for their plagiaristic modus operandi and soullessness by many others.

Are there benefits yet to be considered? Are there issues being overlooked in the name of progress? Technology rights defender, Alex Gakuru, Chidi Nwaubani, Nigerian founder of LOOTY, a website that brings artefacts closer to home through immersive 3D experiences and Naddya Adhiambo Oluoch-Olunya, an Animation Director working in animation, comics and music, weigh-in on this new reality.

Featured artists: Chidi Nwaubani, Alex Gakuru and Naddya Adhiambo Oluoch-Olunya

Moderator: Andrés Schipani

Supported by Google Arts x Culture

Djamila Ribeiro and Brenda Wambui

Black feminism

Sunday 30 June 2024, 2.15pm –  Ikulu stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara

Brazilian feminist thinker, writer and activist, Djamila Ribeiro and Brenda Wambui, a digital media consultant and researcher working at the intersections of technology, media, feminism and identity, find common grounds between African and black feminisms.

Featured writers: Djamila Ribeiro and Brenda Wambui

Supported by Open Society Foundations

Edwige-Renee Dro, Richard Ali A Mutu, Shafinaaz Hassim and Stanley Gazemba with Cristina Fuentes La Roche

South to South conversations. Africa39: reflections on a decade

Sunday 30 June 2024, 3pm EAT –  Green Bunk stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara

In 2014, the Hay Festival and Rainbow Book Club Project announced a selection of 39 African writers under the age of 40 who had the potential and the talent to define the trends that would mark the future development of literature on the continent. This was the third such gathering and it consisted of exciting voices selected from 200 submissions researched by the late Binyavanga Wainaina.

How well have the authors fared? Hear from Congolese author, Richard Ali A Mutu, Ivorian writer and translator, Edwige-Renee Dro, South African author and public sociologist Shafinaaz Hassim and Kenyan writer, Stanley Gazemba reflect on ways in which the spotlight impacted their writing careers.

Featured writers: Edwige-Renee Dro, Richard Ali A Mutu, Shafinaaz Hassim, Stanley Gazemba.

Moderator: Cristina Fuentes La Roche

Supported by Open Society Foundations

Film Screening & QxA: uNobuntu

Sihle-isipho Nontshokweni and Nombeko Nontshokweni with June Gachui

Sunday 30 June 2024, 3.30pm – 4.50pm –  Ikulu stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara

What do mothers do when they experience abrupt loss? uNOBUNTU is a short documentary that serves as a portrait of the quintessential, post-millennial South African family; a devoted daughter helps her mother fulfil her life-long dream of publishing a treasured 40-year-old manuscript. Watch a free screening of uNobuntu followed by a Q&A with the mother-daughter duo, Sihle-isipho Nontshokweni and Nombeko Nontshokweni.

Featured writers: Sihle-isipho Nontshokweni and Nombeko Nontshokweni

Moderator: June Gachui

Presented in collaboration with Book Bunk’s The Missing Bits Project, supported by the British Council’s Cultural Protection Fund, administered in partnership with the UK’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport.

Zakaria Ibrahimi in conversation with Nesrine Malik

Decolonising perspectives on social change

Sunday 30 June 2024, 4pm EAT –  Green Bunk stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara

Almost 15 years after the “Arab spring”, social movements in the region operate in a rapidly changing environment, characterised by spiralling economic crises and growing financial inequality. Over the past 5 years, the Fund for Global Human Rights has supported a group of researchers to develop distinctly decolonizing perspectives on change.

This session will feature Zakaria Ibrahimi’s work on how the digital space in Morocco can be an area of both repression and liberation. The researcher will enter in conversation with Nesrine Malik, Sudanese-born journalist and author about what decolonization really means, and why it matters.

Featured writers: Zakaria Ibrahimi

Moderator: Nesrine Malik

Supported by The Fund for Global Human Rights

Bernardine Evaristo in conversation with Wanjiru Koinange and Angela Wachuka

Live Recording: A palace for the people podcast

Sunday 30 June 2024, 5pm EAT –  Green Bunk stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara

Booker Prize winner Bernardine Evaristo OBE FRSL FRSA is the featured guest on “A Palace for The People”, a podcast unearthing pieces of Nairobi’s history that support and feed the restoration process of the McMillan Memorial Library and its branches in Makadara and Kaloleni. This recording session shall be hosted by the Founders of Book Bunk; Angela Wachuka and Wanjiru Koinange before a live festival audience. The trio will explore how the restoration of libraries plays a crucial role in challenging and reshaping the hegemonies of the past, with Evaristo offering her unique perspective on how reviving and revitalising community spaces can foster inclusivity, diversify historical narratives, and empower communities.

Featured writer: Bernardine Evaristo

In conversation with: Wanjiru Koinange & Angela Wachuka

Supported by Open Society Foundations

Live DJ

Sunday 30 June 2024, 6pm –  Green Bunk stage. Eastlands Library, Makadara