2026 KWELI INTERNATIONAL LITERARY FESTIVAL

We couldn’t be more excited to share that the 2026 Kweli International Literary Festival will be held from November 14 - December 10.

This fall, our hybrid festival will feature virtual and in-person readings and conversations with debut and award-winning BIPOC writers, craft talks, workshops and much more, as well as the year’s best opportunity to connect with agents, editors, and fellow creatives of color during the opening weekend of the festival.

As always, it’s our honor to invite longstanding beloved authors of color to speak alongside recent debuts and rising stars who are generous enough to share their honest publishing journeys with you, as well as shine light on the most urgent issues of the day through their art. It is our privilege to share that this year’s keynote speaker is: Imani Perry (2023 MacArthur Fellow). She will join us for festival opening weekend.

Festival Opening Weekend will be held on SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 14 - SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 15, in-person at New York Law School (NYLS) and Akwaaba Mansion in New York City. Seating is limited.

The weekend program will include Dawn Davis (Founding publisher of 37 INK, an imprint of Simon & Schuster), Isabella Hammad (a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree), Imani Perry (2023 MacArthur Fellow), Dinaw Mengestu (2012 MacArthur Fellow), along with other highly acclaimed writers, as well as groundbreaking debut authors. Take a peek below.

Dawn Davis, Founding publisher of 37 INK, an imprint of Simon & Schuster
Dawn Davis has edited many prizewinning and New York Times bestselling books, including one of the 2023 New York Times’s 10 Best Books of the Year, Master Slave Husband Wife by Ilyon Woo; How to Say Babylon by Safiya Sinclair; The School for Good Mothers by Jessamine Chan; Never Caught, a finalist for the National Book Award, by Erica Armstrong Dunbar; The Final Revival of Opal & Nev by Dawnie Walton; The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl, by Issa Rae and more. Prior to first joining Simon & Schuster, Davis was publisher of Amistad, an imprint of HarperCollins, where she edited The Known World by Edward P. Jones, which won the Pulitzer Prize.

Isabella Hammad, a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree
Isabella Hammad is the author of the critically acclaimed novels The Parisian (Grove Press, 2019), which won the 2019 Palestine Book Award, and Our Names which is forthcoming in 2027. She was a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree, and the debut was praised by the New York Times Book Review as a “dazzling…deeply-imagined historical novel.” A love story set amidst the political tumult of Palestine in the early 20th century, The Parisian was awarded the the Sue Kaufman Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and a Betty Trask Award from the Society of Authors in the UK, and the Plimpton Prize. She is also the author of the amazingly erudite essay, Recognizing the Stranger (Grove Atlantic, 2024), on the Palestinian struggle and the power of narrative, longlisted for the 2024 NBCC Award for Criticism.

Imani Perry (2023 MacArthur Fellow)
Professor Perry received the National Book Award for Nonfiction on November 16, 2022, for her critically acclaimed 2022 book, South to America: A Journey Below the Mason-Dixon to Understand the Soul of a Nation. Isabel Wilkerson, who won the National Book Critics Circle Award for The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration, called South to America, “An elegant meditation on the complexities of the American South – and thus of America – by an esteemed daughter of the South and one of the great intellectuals of our time.” An excerpt of the book is available on the Harvard Gazette’s website.

Professor Perry earned her Ph.D. in American Studies from Harvard University, a J.D. from Harvard Law School, an LLM from Georgetown University Law Center and a BA from Yale College in Literature and American Studies. Her writing and scholarship primarily focus on the history of Black thought, art, and imagination crafted in response to, and resistance against, the social, political and legal realities of domination in the West. She seeks to understand the processes of retrenchment after moments of social progress, and how freedom dreams are nevertheless sustained.

Dinaw Mengestu (2012 MacArthur Fellow)
Dinaw Mengestu is the author of three novels, all of which were named New York Times Notable Books: All Our Names (Knopf, 2014), How To Read the Air (Riverhead, 2010), and The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears (Riverhead, 2007). A native of Ethiopia who came with his family to the United States at the age of two, Mengestu is also a freelance journalist who has reported about life in Darfur, northern Uganda, and eastern Congo. His articles and fiction have appeared in the New York Times, New Yorker, Harper’s, Granta, Jane, and Rolling Stone. He is a 2012 MacArthur Fellow and recipient of a Lannan Literary Fellowship for Fiction, National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Award, Guardian First Book Award, and Los Angeles Times Book Prize, among other honors. He was also included in The New Yorker’s “20 under 40” list in 2010. In its cover page review of All Our Names, the New York Times Book Review said “You can’t turn the pages fast enough, and when you’re done, your first impulse is to go back to the beginning and start over . . . While questions of race, ethnicity, and point of origin do crop up repeatedly in Mengestu’s fiction, they are merely his raw materials, the fuel with which he so artfully—but never didactically—kindles disruptive, disturbing stories exploring the puzzles of identity, place, and human connection.”

Take a peek at our Weekend Schedule at a Glance.

Multi media readings and performances will take place at Akwaaba throughout the fall and will include Naima Coster (a 2020 National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 Honoree), Edwidge Danticat (a 2009 MacArthur Fellow), Valeria Luiselli (a 2019 MacArthur Fellow) and LaToya Watkins (a 2023 National Book Award winner in Fiction).

The festival continues virtually through December 10 with the Art of the Short Story, Art of the Novel and Art of the Essay Craft Talks and Master Classes curated for writers of color by teaching artists, Honorée Fanonne Jeffers (2022 National Book Critics Circle Award), Chika Unigwe (2025 O. Henry Prize for Short Fiction), and MORE.

Registration includes in-person Opening Weekend tickets with access to full-weekend programming featuring our keynote conversation and breakout sessions offered on Saturday, November 14 and Sunday, November 15, as well as access to the special multimedia readings, conversations, craft talks that are scheduled from November 6th through December 10th.

Have questions about registration, refund policy, etc.? Check our Frequently Asked Questions

Kweli International Festival Opening Weekend at New York Law School - Weekend Schedule

Kweli International Literary Festival Faculty

Kweli International Literary Festival Readings and Conversations

Kweli International Literary Festival Craft Talks and Workshops

Kweli International Literary Festival Short Films

Program Book PDF | Kweli International Literary Festival

New York Law School and Akwaaba are co-sponsoring our event.