Language carries memory, and every tongue tells a story. In this panel, writers Priya Hein and Marcia Douglas and translator Daniel Hahn explore the journeys between the mother tongue and other languages, tracing how identity, history and imagination flow across linguistic borders. From the intimacy of first language to the expansive reach of global tongues, we examine the creative possibilities and tensions of writing, translating and reinventing stories in multiple languages. How do writers honor the rhythms, idioms, and silences of home while reaching readers in other linguistic worlds?  What is gained, and what is transformed, when a story migrates into another language? Through personal reflections and literary readings, the panelists will trace how language becomes a living current, bearing chronicles of being, heritage, homeland resistance, and renewal across shifting shores of meaning, nations and generations.

Hosted by Duncan Yoon

How do we fully awaken to the other protagonists in our lives and living:  landscapes, air, skies, trees, waters, fauna, and flora: the book of nature unfolding in every moment? This panel journeys into how the stories of our natural world are channeled through the storyteller’s craft, deepening our sense of reality and rooting us in the world. How has nature also been instrumentalised to exclude people? What gestures is global Africa making to reclaim a story of custodianship? How do artists engage with nature not merely as setting, but as a vital presence with its own contradictions, as muse and source of inspiration? 

With Dino Martins, Michelle Angwenyi, Paula Kahumbu

Hosted by Ilija Trojanow

To what extent do the ghosts of our pasts have the powers to consume us? Priya Hein’s new novel Tamarin, out this September with Indigo Press, takes us to the beach of La Preneuse, known as the taker of souls. The island is haunted with tragedy and the remnants of colonial rule, but it is also home to Anita Ram, the main protagonist. We are excited to launch Priya’s second novel on the continent to which her work pays tribute to. 

Hosted by Godwin Siundu

Our seas carry worlds and assorted histories of civilisations and peoples. Writers from these shores meditate on the ocean as a site of becoming, of teaching, memory, archive, retrieval, and movement; of world- and future-making. They discuss it as geography, metaphor, and archive. As home and passage, contested, desired, and claimed. Can these vast waters continue to carry the fragile cargo of our futures? 
With Yamen Manai, Kevin Jared Hosein, Karen Lord, Javier Ortiz Cassiani

Hosted by Dino Martins