The Abuja Literary Festival 2018 for June in Nigeria

The Abuja Literary Festival will run from June 28-30, 2018 in Abuja, Nigeria. This announcement was made by the team who run the Abuja Writers Forum.

The Abuja Writers Forum was set up to encourage the creative writing potentials of Nigerians and te larger African space. One of their objectives is to promote the development of Nigerian Literature in English and indigenous languages. The forum has hosted some of the names that you would know about in the Nigerian publishing and media industry like Dul Johnson, Jide Badmus, Austin Oroko, Zainab Suleiman Okino, as well as Halima Aliyu and Benjamin Ubiri.

The organisation began its literary activities in June 2008 and they have decided to celebrate this milestone in the least stressful way they could imagine; setting up a literary festival. With this in mind they have announced the return of the Abuja Literary Festival to mark the tenth anniversary of the Abuja Writers Forum.

The festival will feature bookrama sessions with authors from within and outside Abuja, panel discussions, film screenings, drama performances, an international art and photo exhibition, poetry performances, a book exhibition and a script-pitch.

There will also be a five-day drama workshop designed for potential dramatists between the ages of 18-35 focusing on developing scripts relevant to societal development and will be facilitated by two experienced dramatists. This initiative is coming at the right time as only yesterday, the Nigerian Literature Prize announced that they received fewer entries in drama this year.

There will also be a one day digital media training for the workshop participants as part of the Festival. The objective is for them to recognise that story-telling has now become multiplatform and they should start appreciating relevant digital tools for writing, editing, formatting and production. This is significant because digital literacy has become important across board, and creative writers need to become aware of the enormous potential the platform offers for production and distribution.

More information on this festival will be released in the coming weeks including on featured writers and we be shall keeping you abreast of it all.