The Storymoja Hay Festival is organized in collaboration with Storymoja and the Hay Festival (UK). It will be held on the 19th to 22nd September at Nairobi National Museum, Nairobi. This year, author, art historian and distinguished writer in residence at Bard College Teju Cole is also participating.
This year’s festival theme is: Imagine the World! Waza Dunia!
Founded in 2008 The Storymoja Hay Festival is a four day celebration of stories, ideas, writing and contemporary culture through storytelling, books, live discussion forums, workshops, debates, live performances, competitions, mchongoano and music. This year, there are over 60 events. The festival attracts the most exciting local and international writers and thinkers.
The Schools Programme and the Storyhippo Children’s Village offers exciting activities and sessions for children ranging from creative writing classes, dance and theatre camps, publish your own book session and fun science experiments.
Meet with the brightest thinkers from home & abroad; literature, technology, innovation, self-development, wealth creation, art and music.
Highlights | Film screenings:
The Global Seminar – Documentary Filmmaking in Kenya: The Art of Science Storytelling
Saturday 21st, 11:00, Ford Hall
Film screenings of The Matriarch, Curse of the Gazelle King, Nature’s Nurturers, Re-alignments: A Zebra’s Story, The Lost Boys of Laikipia.
Followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers; Muhinza Bushoki, Kevin Midigo, Loise Njagi, Maryanne Wangui Njuguna, Victor Oloo and teaching assistant Karim Kara. Presented by Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, the Princeton Atelier &the Program in Visual Arts of the Lewis Center for the Arts, & by the Princeton Environmental Institute
New Year’s Eve
Saturday 21st, 17:00, Discovery Hall
The Kenyan premiere screening of the Commonwealth Short Film New Year’s Eve. As a New Year’s Eve party plays out, Baraza is forced to find the courage to come clean. He risks shattering an entire way of life. Followed by a Q&A with filmmaker Wanjiru Kairu.
Highlights | Talks:
Voicing The Unspoken
Saturday 21st, 11:00, Storymoja Amphitheatre
Warsan Shire, Dr Neal Hall, Mongane Wally Serote and Njeri Wangari
Warsan Shire (Teaching My Mother How to Give Birth) won the Brunel University African Poetry Prize. Dr. Neal Hall (Nigger for Life) has won over 10 prizes for poetry in book festivals around the world. Mongane Wally Serote (Yakhal’Inkomo) has won the Ingrid Jonker Poetry Prize, the Noma Award for Publishing in Africa and was a Fulbright Scholar. These multiple-award-winning poets read from their work and talk to Kenyan Poet, Njeri Wangari (Mines and Mindfields) about asylum, war, love, loss, borders, insanity, race, identity and inequality.
Teju Cole in conversation with John Sibi-Okumu | Open City
Saturday 21st, 13:00, Louis Leakey Auditorium
This story of a young Nigerian-German psychiatrist in New York City five years after 9/11 was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and won both the PEN/Hemingway Award and the Internationaler Literaturpreis. ‘A powerful and un-nerving inquiry into the human soul. Open City is
a profoundly original work, intellectually stimulating and possessing of a style both engaging and seductive.
– Time Magazine.
John Sibi-Okumu is a Kenyan playwright (Role Play and Minister Karibu) journalist and actor best known internationally for his role in The Constant Gardener.
The Commonwealth Writers Conversation: The Untold Story
Saturday 21st, 13:00, Ford Hall
The first in a global series of conversations invites writers, artists and thinkers to discuss the subjects and themes that are sometimes met with silence in societies around the world. This is the place to talk about how to communicate the difficult and the unsayable, whether through words or other forms of expression. Panelists include Chief Nyamweya and Keguro Macharia. Tell us on email or twitter what you’d like to discuss with the panel.
Saturday 21st, 15:00, Kanga Tent
Ng’endo Mukii, Tazim Elkington, Zukiswa Wanner, Renee Mboya
The film-maker of Yellow Fever, Ng’endo Mukii chats with Tazim Elkington, Zukiswa Wanner and Renee Mboya about the shades of discrimination arising from our convoluted ideas around beauty and skin colour.
Black Identity
Sunday 22nd, 11:00, Kanga Tent
Dr Neal Hall, Mongane Wally Serote and Binyavanga Wainaina
Mongane Wally Serote was arrested by the apartheid government and spent nine months in solitary confinement. His poems explore themes of political activism, the development of black identity, and violent images of revolt and resistance. Dr. Neal Hall’s award winning book Nigger For Life, reflects his painful discovery that in ‘unspoken America’, race is the one thing by which he is first judged, by which he is first measured and against which his life and accomplishments are measured. Binyavanga Wainaina is the founding editor of Kwani? literary journal. His no-holds-barred Granta essay How to write about Africa drew wide-spread international attention. His memoir One Day, I Will Write About This Place made Oprah Winfrey’s list. In a free ranging discussion, these three powerful writers explore black male identity.
Ciné Kenya 