Zimbabwean Lawyer and Writer, Petina Gappah, is the keynote speaker at the Heroe Book Fair, Edition 2. Founded in November 2019 by Kenyan Writer and Children Book Author, Lorna Likiza, the 2nd Edition will take place from May 5th-7th, 2022 at the Close The Gap Hub at Ratna Square, Mombasa, with the theme, Emancipation.
Heroe Book Fair is a Pan-African literary event bringing together yearly in Mombasa, Anglophone, Francophone and German speaking writers, poets, publishers and literary enthusiasts for a couple of days celebration of their literary works and achievements.
Organized by both Lorna Likiza and Culture Africa Founder, Hans Hofele, the event is hybrid and has in its 1st edition given a platform to both renowned and emerging writers and poets with notable ones being; Tete Loeper, Hassan Ghedi Santur, Ingrid Arlington, Scholastique Mukasonga, Salma “Salummy” Abdulatif, Nana Ekua Brew-Hammond among others.
Indeed, it is such a great honor to have Petina Gappah grace this year’s edition as the Keynote Speaker.
More About Petina Gappah
Gappah boasts an impressive writing resume.
In 2016, she was named the African Literary Person of the Year by Brittle Paper
The following year in 2017, she had a DAAD Artist-in Residence Fellowship in Berlin.
Her first book, An Elegy For Easterly, is a collection of Short Stories published by Faber and Faber in the UK in April 2009 and in the US, in June 2009. The book proved a huge success and was shortlisted for the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Award, the Orwell Prize and the Los Angeles Times Art Seidenbaum Award for Fiction. It won the Guardian First Book Award in 2009 and has since been translated to several languages.
Subsequently, her first novel, The Book Of Memory was published in 2015. Rotten Row is her 2nd Short Story collection and was published by Faber and Faber in 2016. Her latest book is Out Of Darkness, Shining Light published in 2019 and which won the 2020 National Arts Merit Awards for Outstanding Fiction Book. Gappah has equally written for a couple of top media outlets and currently resides in Accra, Ghana.
Additional Sources: Wikipedia
Petina Gappah Image Credit: Marina Cavazza
