Welcome!
Welcome to the 8th Uppsala International Literature Festival. This year we expand our literary horizons further and present a number of authors from Nigeria, a country of immense cultural output. With a population of more than 230 million people, covering approximately 250 ethnic minorities and 500 different languages, Nigera is not only Africa’s largest nation, but has also been a significant producer of culture for centuries.
Nigeria has produced writers such as Wole Soyinka, the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize in literature, and other world-renowned writers such as Ken Saro-Wiwa. It has also produced numerous novelists and poets who have an international impact today. Many of these authors challenge traditions and patriarchal values. You will meet some of them at this year’s festival.
The festival also offers presentations of highly topical books about the state of Israel. We will meet authors who engage in discussions about Israel, the significance of the Holocaust today, having a Swedish-Jewish upbringing, and how the term anti-Semitism is used today. There will also be conversations about public international law and poetry.
The obligations of public international law and the role of the author in times of violence are also the topics of a posthumous publication by the young Ukrainian writer, Victoria Amelina, who was killed in a Russian missile attack while working on a book of testimonies about the human consequences of Russia’s invasion. Her fate and work are presented by a close friend from PEN Ukraine.
The Uppsala International Literature Festival’s ambition is once again to present literature and writing from other cultural spheres and create spaces for conversations about literary creation around two of the major conflict zones of our time.
You are warmly welcome to participate in the program!
Lost land and Jewish revenge
Two Swedish writers and public figures who have written extensively about their Jewish heritage engage in a conversation about what that heritage means in the world we live in today.
Opening of the 8th edition of the Uppsala International Literature Festival
The opening speech will be given by Lola Shoneyin, author, poet, founder and leader of the Book Buzz Foundation, an organization dedicated to promoting literary and …
Literature make you grow
”When you read a book, it makes you think…form opinions and develop your own ideas. For me, that’s all it’s about,” says Lola Shoneyin, award-winning poet and author and outspoken feminist from Lagos, Nigeria.
Readings of young poetry about vulnerability in Nigeria and Sweden
Logan February and Hanna Rajs have both been described as very promising young poets. February, or Logan Toluwalase Akinwale, which is her real name, was the youngest ever …
Literature’s path from luxury to necessity in Nigeria
Poets and writers Logan February, Lola Shoneyin and Abubakar Ibrahim have all been described as provocateurs who disrupt the traditional order not only in their homeland Nigeria but throughout Africa.
Public International Law and Poetry
In his book ”The Facts”, the Swedish poet and author Johannes Anyuru has tried to remedy the ”post-factual condition” that determines the discourse around Israel’s warfare in the Gaza Strip.
A literary superstar and challenger of taboos
In Nigeria, he has been described as a literary promise for the whole of Africa. Journalist and author Abubakar Ibrahim has covered the conflict with Boko Haram in several reports and has been awarded prizes for his portrayal of women’s fates as a result of this conflict.
Black women’s bodies as fetishes in a white world
In novels such as ”In Every Mirror She’s Black” and ”Everything Is Not Enough” Lolá Akínmádé Åkerström depicts, through a rich gallery of characters, different women’s destinies …
The Ukrainian War and Women’s Resistance – an Unfinished Work to Be Published Posthumously
In her tragically unfinished book, written during Russia’s brutal campaign to annihilate Ukraine, Victoria Amelina writes about the feeling of experiencing reality as a nightmare.
The construction of Blackness as the preservation of inequality
The American author, poet, playwright and essayist James Baldwin is known for his controversial themes around race and sexuality.
To him racial concepts such as “white” and “black” are illusions…