FROM October 3–5, 2025, writers, poets, thinkers, translators, and lovers of literature from across Africa, the diaspora, and Asia will gather for four days of readings, panels, workshops, film screenings, performances, and community gatherings at the Tokyo African Literature Festival (TALF).
With the theme, “Reclaiming Memory, Imagining Worlds,” TALF 2025 invites literature lovers to explore ancestral memory and resistance, and the futures that African and diasporic writers are imagining and building. How do stories survive, travel, and transform across languages, geographies, and generations? What new worlds are being written now?
Headlining the festival, according to the organisers of the festival – a cross-cultural celebration of African literature, language, and imagination, set in the heart of Tokyo, would be Kenyan writer, Troy Onyango and Nigerian writer and filmmaker, Onyeka Nwelue. They will be joined by renowned Nigerian scholar and novelist, Professor Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo, to further strengthen “the festival’s commitment to showcasing the depth and diversity of African storytelling.”
A statement from the festival secretariat reads in parts:
What to Expect
• Author Readings & Conversations – Hear from some of the most compelling African and diasporic voices in contemporary literature—emerging and established.
• Interactive Panels & Keynotes – Deep-dive into the intersections of literature, migration, translation, history, futurism, queerness, and more.
• Workshops – Join generative and craft-based sessions for writers of all levels, led by guest authors and literary professionals.
• Film & Visual Storytelling – Screenings and discussions exploring storytelling beyond the page.
• Pop-up Book Fair & Small Press Market – Discover independent African publishers, rare titles, and literary merchandise.
• Youth & Community Programming – Events for families, schools, and young readers, including storytelling hours, open mics, and cultural activities.
Why Tokyo?
TALF is the first festival of its kind in Japan—a space where African and Asian literary worlds converge. Tokyo, with its rich literary history and growing intercultural communities, is the perfect city for conversations that challenge borders and expand.
Profiles
TROY Onyango is a London-based writer and editor from Kisumu, Kenya, and the founder of Lolwe, a Pan-African literary and arts platform. He is also the owner of Lolwe Books, an independent Pan-African bookshop with branches in both Kenya and the UK. His debut collection of short stories, For What Are Butterflies Without Their Wings, was published in 2022. His work has appeared in TIME, Prairie Schooner, Doek!, Wasafiri, Isele Magazine, Johannesburg Review of Books, AFREADA, Dgëku Magazine, Nairobi Noir, and Transition, among other publications. He was the winner of the inaugural Nyanza Literary Festival Prize and first runner-up in the Black Letter Media Competition, as well as a finalist for the Caine Prize for African Writing, the Short Story Day Africa Prize, and the Brittle Paper Awards. He has also been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. An alumnus of the Caine Prize Workshop, Miles Morland Workshop, Jalada Workshop, Goethe Workshop, and the Kwani?-SLS Workshop, he has also been a writer-in-residence at the Ebedi Writers Residency in Nigeria. He holds a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Nairobi, an MA in Creative Writing (with distinction) from the University of East Anglia—where he was a Miles Morland Foundation Scholar—and an MA in African Studies from SOAS University of London. He is a judge for the 2026 International Booker Prize.
ONYEKA Nwelue is a Nigerian scholar, filmmaker, jazz musician, and publisher whose interdisciplinary work spans literature, cinema, and cultural studies. He has authored over 40 books, including The Strangers of Braamfontein, which won the Crime Fiction Lovers’ Awards and was described by Nobel Laureate Wole Soyinka as “raunchy.”
At the age of 18, Nwelue moved to India, where he wrote his debut novel, The Abyssinian Boy, which won the TM Aluko Prize for Fiction and the Ibrahim Tahir Prize for First Book in 2009. While spending time in Ottapalam, Nwelue was inspired by his visit to Malayalee writer, Asha Menon to write The Mysterious Tea Shop in Palakkad. His contributions to African literature and cultural discourse have earned him three nominations for The Future Awards Africa.
Nwelue has held several academic positions globally. He was an Academic Visitor at the University of Oxford, a Visiting Scholar at the University of Cambridge, a Visiting Research Fellow at Ohio University, and a Research Associate at the University of Johannesburg and a Guest Lecturer at NSS College, Ottapalam. His research interests encompass diasporic narratives, transnational organised crime in literature, and the intersections of African and global cultures. His latest work, The Nigerian Mafia: Mumbai, the first in a ten-book series set across ten countries, has been longlisted for the 2023 Chinua Achebe Prize and winner for the 2023 ANA Prose Prize. The novel is currently being adapted for film by Indian filmmaker Ramesh Raparthy. Nwelue serves as the Director of the Africa Center Mexico, where he continues to explore and promote African cultural narratives within global contexts. His latest offerings are A Japanese Professor in Accra and Think Like a Japanese.
AKACHI Adimora-Ezeigbo, a multiple award-winning prolific writer and international scholar, has taught in three universities in Nigeria – University of Lagos, Alex Ekwueme Federal University Ndufu-Alike, Ikwo (AE-FUNAI) and Ebonyi State University, Abakaliki, in Ebonyi State – as well as in South Africa and the United Kingdom. She was a three-time Head of English Department at the University of Lagos (Unilag), and received the Best Researcher Award in the Arts and the Humanities from Unilag in 2005. She has been awarded visiting Fellowships in the United Kingdom, South Africa and Germany and has given keynote lectures in universities in the USA.
