The Nuance of Inclusivity: Being in charge of Storytelling Matters

Inviting voices from different LGBTQI+identities, guaranteeing gender balance and getting black voices a seat at the table: these are still not general practices in the literary world. Many strive for it but actual progress is slow.

Writer Dalilla Hermans, Raf Njotea, Ébissé Wakjira-Rouw, and agent Jessica Craig (US) discuss why changes at the top, both in publishing as in the festival circuit, are necessary for an inclusive literary literature. In a real inclusive literary climate power really gets redistributed.

The third edition of the Asmara-Addis Literature Festival (In Exile)

For centuries, writers and artists have been expected to operate under the principle that less is more & to adhere to the power of subtlety. Though this may have produced great art, it might have also inversely led to a loss. As well as exploring what this looks like, the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival (In Exile), in its third edition, will give a stage to the opposite side of subtlety & restraint: exuberance and loudness. Say It Loud will invite Belgian-based and international guests to talk about the art of unsubtlety and going against the grain. It will dive deep into the process of creation without filters, speak the unspeakable, break down the doors to all sides of our imaginations, and show us what happens when freedom to make art is bottomless and unrestricted.