Tag Archives: Storymoja Hay Festival 2013

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All roads lead to the Storymoja Hay Festival 2013

The biggest literary event in Kenya will be happening this weekend as the Storymoja Hay Festival 2013 makes its way to the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi. There will be a series of events for all of you who have an interest in the written word. For those just like to party you are covered as well.

The events of this huge festival will start out with a VIP event on Thursday 19th September at the Museum dubbed Party with Stars. Its a VIP event so you will be parting with Kshs5,000 to access the event and for that you get to listen to the funky beats of June Gachui, Denise Gordon and the Different Faces Band as ‘Motown Goes to Storymoja!’ This Kshs5K also allows you to check out the one extra event.

After this VIP event you can also attend performances like Storytelling, music, Spoken Word, theatre shows (‘Vagina Monologues’ and Sitawa Namwalie’s ‘Silence is a Woman) and the Kanga Karnival spice up the global line-up (14 countries represented!) including *Teju Cole, Warsan Shire, Auma Obama , Mukesh Kapila and Peter Godwin. All this for Kshs1,500 for a season ticket and Kshs1000 for a Day ticket. The best part of it all is that half the proceeds of premium events (concerts,
theatre shows) go to start a Library.

Oh. You can also buy books there….

 

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Dr Paula Kahumbu and Motown for the Storymoja Hay festival

The biggest story where the literature business is concerned is the Storymoja Hay Festival happening in September. It has emerged today that Dr Paula Kahumbu is the Storymoja Hay Festival Director. The Kenyan born and bred lady is famous for her wildlife conservation garnering her accolades from across the globe. I’m not really sure what this will mean for the festival seeing as she is an environmentalist and its a literary event. Perhaps she will be spearheading a campaign dubbed, “hands off our royalties” for authors in the same vein as the “hands off our elephants” that has been doing so well to allow us to to know about this racket.

Also of interestes to me right now is the Motown goes to Storymoja Concept. This will see singers led by June Gachui alongside Denise Roberts, Edward Parseen and his Different Faces band and a bunch of others doing Motown inspired music. This event will be happening on 19th September 2013. I’m looking forward to that.

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Teju Cole for Storymoja Hay Festival 2013

Teju Cole

The Storymoja Hay festival has hosted many distinguished writers including Ben Okri the famous Nigerian author, Giles Foden of the I wrote The Last King of Scotland fame among many others.
The 2013 edition of the festival will be happening in September and is set to rock the national museum of Kenya. One of the biggest of the festival authors is Nigerian born writer Teju Cole. Cole is a writer, art historian, street photographer, Distinguished Writer in Residence at Bard College. He has written quite a bit with his biggest work being Open City which is available in Kenyan bookshops. For the links to his awesome work check out his profile on the storymoja website.
Its going to be a good one this year I feel.