Condé Nast Traveler magazine has listed the Macondo Literary Festival among the 9 best literary festivals in the world. If you haven’t attended one of their festivals yet, now is the time.
Named after the fictional town in Gabriel García Márquez’s One Hundred Years of Solitude, the festival embraces the spirit of magical realism, storytelling, and the profound exploration of human experiences.
Macondo’s mission is to foster a space where literature not only entertains but also interrogates society, history, and politics. Through its dynamic panel discussions, workshops, readings, and performances, it seeks to elevate African voices, engage with global literary trends, and create dialogues that transcend borders.
The Macondo Book Society is a non-profit organization founded by journalist Anja Bengelstorff and award-winning Kenyan author Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor.
A Platform for African Writers
One of Macondo’s core aims is to provide a platform for African writers to share their work, engage with their peers, and participate in critical conversations around the continent’s literary landscape. It celebrates the richness and diversity of African languages, stories, and traditions, while also pushing the boundaries of genre and form. Through its panels and workshops, writers delve into complex themes such as identity, colonialism, gender, migration, and technology, showcasing the continent’s past, present, and future through its literature.
As a celebration of pan-African writing, the festival has always included authors from both within the continent and from the diaspora, demonstrating its commitment to amplifying African voices, promoting cross-cultural dialogue, and nurturing emerging talent with global points of view around the experience of Africanness.
The Sea is HIstory
This year Macondo’s theme is looking outward from the borders of Kenya towards her sea trading partners of the past. The festival will bring together authors from Africa’s Arab, English, French and Portuguese writing language zones in conversation with writers from the Indian Ocean worlds. This year’s geographical extension pays tribute to those historical ties, setting the stage for a powerful reflection on how history, identity, and memory are shaped by the sea.
We call it the “Indian Ocean”, but is this the only name you know? How about the Swahili Seas, Ziwa Kuu, the Erythrean Sea, the Western Ocean, the Eastern Ocean, the Ethiopian Ocean, or the Afrasian Ocean….
The festival promises to offer rich discussions centered on the ocean’s role in both erasing and preserving stories, histories, and cultures. In this context, the sea becomes a metaphor, not just for movement and migration, but for forgotten narratives and submerged histories that continue to shape the present. Macondo wants us
to imagine worlds beyond perceived ideological, imagined and geographical boundaries.”
The festival title is borrowed from Derek Walcott’s poem “The Sea is History.” You can find it here.
Chigozie Obioma. From Sidewalk Citizen | Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor
Among the notable African authors on the programme such as Nigeria’s Chigozie Obioma and Kenya’s own Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, we find a long list of international writers: MG Vassanji (Canada), Hamza Koudri (Algeria), Shubhangi Swarup (India), João Melo (Angola), Johary Ravaloson (Madagascar/ France), Shubnum Khan (South Africa), Jeferson Tenório (Brazil) and Janika Oza (Canada).
The conversations that emerge from these discussions challenge literary norms and provoke new ways of thinking about narratives, storytelling, and the power of words.
As well as literature the festival embraces performance poetry, storytelling, music, dance and film, featuring performance poets Mufasa, Nyash, Slim Shaka and Stella Kivuti; visual storytellers Yvonne Muinde and Naddya Adhiambo Oluoch-Olunya and ground breaking choreographer Adam Chienjo. Chienjo will present The Ocean Speaks, a contemporary performance reflecting upon the pre-colonial, colonial and current significance of Ocean in the formation and current state of Africa, especially Kenya.
The festival’s low entrance fees aim to enable access to the event’s variety of engagements to wide-ranging audiences, including book enthusiasts, aspiring writers, and anyone passionate about African histories in literature, storytelling and their effects on charting out possible futures.
Panel discussion at Macondo Literary Festival 2022. Image: Macondo Literary Festival.
The Sea is History offers not only the expected authors’ panel discussions, but also workshops on fantasy fiction and nature writing, an info session on book publishing hosted by eKitabu, a book launch and meet-the-author events plus the above mentioned film, music and dance.
There is also a Children’s Corner, with its own programme and featuring Wangari the Storyteller, Dr. Dino J Martins and Muthoni Thang’wa. So bring your littles along and nurture their love of literature.
For lovers of literature, intellectual debate, and artistic expression, the Macondo Literary Festival is a must-attend event that continues to put Nairobi on the map as a global literary hub.
Macondo Literary Festival runs from Friday 2o through Sunday 22 September at Kenya Cultural Centre. The full programme can be found here and tickets are available on Kenyabuzz