2021 recap: James Murua Literary Livestream with Frankfurter Buchmesse

In our look back at 2021, we focus on the James Murua Literary Livestream which we ran in conjunction with Frankfurter Buchmesse with financial support from the German Federal Foreign Office.

In 2020, we introduced the James Murua Literary Livestream in partnership with our friends at the Frankfurter Buchmesse (Frankfurt Book Fair). The idea was to show the publishing communities in Germany and the continent and how similar or different they were. We had guests like Maaza Mengiste, Antje Rávik Strubel, Ondjaki, Philipp Khabo Koepsell, Mariette Tchamda Mbunpi, Annette Michael, Nyana Kakoma, and Mariela Nagle.

In 2021, we continued with the same project with guests from Germany and other European countries and African writers engaging monthly starting in March. The discussions included how the writer’s identity affects their work, the writer at risk, the festival ecosystem, writing in the Arabic, Francophone, and Lusophone spaces, writing in the LBTQI space as well as a special on the poetry scenes in both DR Congo and Germany. Here are all the videos for those who want to catch up with the happenings over the year;

Tsitsi Dangarembga, Volha Hapeyeva, and Ralf Nestmeyer