African Literary Cities (ALC) project is once again collaborating with Open Book Festival (OBF) for the 2024 edition of the event taking place at the Homecoming Centre in District Six. The project is sponsoring two panels, Reading the Streets and Cities of Trauma, on 6 and 7 September respectively. By bringing together authors, book enthusiasts and performers, Cape Town’s biggest book festival creates an inclusive space for important conversations. It is set to explore a range of themes including mental health, fatherhood, creativity, and the impact of history on the present.
ALC is a three-year project (2023 – 2025) funded by the National Research Foundation. It is headed by Dr. Laura Nkula-Wenz, African Centre for Cities (ACC) and Prof. Polo Moji, English Literary Studies at the University of Cape Town. The project motivates for a transdisciplinary, multimodal mapping of the literary urban ecologies of African cities, centring the intersection of literariness and cityness through a dual focus on materiality and the imaginary. Its key interest is to map how the literary functions as/in place-making in the contexts of dynamic African cities.
Nkula-Wenz explains that the partnership is an example of how scholarship can not only interface with but also be produced in collaboration with an interested public. She elaborates: “Our partnership with Open Book has been central to our African Literary Cities project because it allows us to interface with both authors and readers of African literature. The panel conversations allow us to engage pertinent questions around the nexus of the urban and the literary and also converse with authors who have creatively teased it out. We believe that this generates original vantage points from which to understand African cities in their vital multiplicities.”
While not directly part of Open Book this year, the ACC has a long-standing relationship with OBF, which the festival’s Frankie Murrey says has seen them collaborate on events that centre challenges faced by those living and working in Cape Town, as well as sessions exploring the literature that comes out of cities generally. “The relationship is one that has reflected – time and again – how insights into the urban spaces we occupy can better equip us to understand Cape Town’s citizens, and aid us in creating inclusive and relevant spaces,” Murrey says.
The full festival programme is available on OBF’s website, and tickets can be secured via Webtickets
