Attending Literary Events and Book Festivals

What I've learnt so far....

Hiiiii, long time no blog post😅 I know it's been a while and to be honest, I'd say I've been caught up in different things. Anyways, welcome to another blog post my dear reader🤗 I hope you have been well? Let me know in the comments.

As someone who is really passionate about writing and publishing, literary events are functions I look forward to being a part of. Within the past year, I’ve been privileged to attend Ake Arts and Book Festival twice, Narrative Landscape Open House, Rovingheights 2022 Book swap event, How to Write about Africa workshop organized by Wale Lawal and The Dawn Project literary prize giving and award ceremony.

Literary events help me connect with writers, storytellers, authors (it’s really nice to get your books signed), publishers, book lovers and people who love to read in general. Meeting people who are already doing what you want to do and getting advice from them saves time and energy.

I attended How to Write about Africa workshop back in school (it was organized by UCJ, Unilorin) and I learnt more about storytelling and writing creative non-fiction. Many thanks to Wale Lawal for teaching and UCJ Unilorin for hosting.

At Narrative Landscape Open House Event, Eghosa Imasuen, the executive director and also the author of Fine Boys was kind enough to chat with us and he explained the process that went into republishing Chimamanda’s collection and other books. He also talked about other areas of publishing like the business side and books cover art which has to convey what the book is about. It was a wonderful event. Watch my Instagram reel about it here

At Ake Festival, I enjoyed great panel discussions about topics like Using film to drive narrative change in Africa, Impact of artificial intelligence on Africa (where people shared honest opinions about chatGPT😅), Building a sustainable publishing industry in Africa, Nigeria’s gender wars (this panel was the hottest🔥great respect to Aisha Salaudeen🙌), etc. We also had book chats with Wole Talabi, DK Nuoro, Bolu Babalola, Petina Gappah, Abubakar Adam Ibrahim, Dipo Faloyin, Olusegun Aganga, Stephen Buoro, Omolola Ijeoma Ogunyemi and many other brilliant authors.

On the second day, we had an African book quiz which was interesting and very chaotic😂😂 Ake Festival was a very fulfilling and great experience, it’s fast becoming a yearly tradition and I loveeet. I met Made Kuti too❤ All my pictures from Ake are here

The Dawn project was a prize-giving and award ceremony which had the likes of Iretiola Doyle, Prof Akin Abayomi, Mrs Folasade Ogunsola (the Vice-Chancellor University of Lagos) among other dignitaries present. The event rewarded people who had participated in the competition and I liked that it included creatives from junior secondary school to university level and it had categories like music, essays, poems and art.

I made a reel about Rovingheights book swap event last year, you can watch it here

Going to all these events has made me more exposed to the literary space and has improved my social skills to an extent. If you’re someone who enjoys reading and writing (fiction or non-fiction), I think it’s important to attend literary events if you can. It expands your knowledge and you get to meet people with common interests. If you don’t know where to start, or you don’t know when these events happen, you can follow accounts like Rovingheights, Ake Festival, Narrative landscape, Republic Journal and Lola Shoneyin and from there you can curate your timeline to see book-related events.

My Ake Festival book haul😍

What's your take on literary events and book festivals? Are they something you look forward to or you're just neutral about them😅 Let me know in the comments. If you're writing exams currently, I hope they're going well?

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Yours in love,

LamLam❤