Lidudumalingani has today been revealed to be the curator of the African Book Festival 2022 which runs in Berlin, Germany from August 26-28, 2022. The festival theme is “Yesterday. Today. Tomorrow”
Since 2018, writers from across Africa and the African diaspora have converged on Germany’s capital for the annual African Book Festival. The festival in the last few years has established itself as the leading meeting place for writers and poets in the European country. These have included headliners José Eduardo Agualusa, Ben Okri, and Chris Abani,
The festival has today announced the dates it will be running in 2022, August 26-28, as well as its curator. Since it started, it has been curated by Olumide Popoola in 2018, Tsitsi Dangarembga in 2019, and Kalaf Epalanga in 2020. With the Covid pandemic, the festival was truncated in the two years of 2020 and 2021 so there was no curator for this year.
The festival organisers have today announced the curator who is Johannesburg-based writer, filmmaker, and photographer Lidudumalingani. In 2016, winning the Caine Prize for African Writing propelled him to literary stardom. Shortly after he was awarded the Miles Morland Scholarship for his yet-to-be-published debut novel Let Your Children Name Themselves, cementing his fame. His short stories and essays have been published in various anthologies, and his photographs exhibited in galleries. He regularly writes for the Johannesburg Review of Books and is currently working on his first novel, a non-fiction book, and a feature film.
The event will once more bring together the stars of contemporary African literature in the German capital. The programme will include readings, concerts, panel discussions, poetry, and comedy. The theme of the 2022 edition explores the connections between writers – the way older writers hold the hand of the young writers when they write, and how, in turn, they too hold the hand of the writers coming after them.
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