2026 KWELI INTERNATIONAL LITERARY FESTIVAL
PROGRAM SCHEDULE
Opening Weekend

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Saturday, November 14, 2026

9:00am - 10:00am

A. MIDWIFE
Three Lawyers Walk into a Writing Workshop

In the acknowledgements section of Hala Ayan’s award winning book, I’ll Tell You When I’m Home, she tells her long time editor “Thank you for midwifing this book from fragments and dream scraps.” In this breakout session, we will discuss midwifing (i.e., the process of editing a scene) with three different Kweli mentees. The audience will see an early version of a scene and then the “final” version and hear how they got there.
Featuring: Gloria Browne, Nivea Castro and Kanwalroop Singh; moderated by Laura Pegram (Kweli Journal Founding Editor and Publisher)

B. DOULA
Faith and Fiction

Anne Carson once said that a work of writing should contain an empty space for god to rush in. What does that space look like for us as writers of fiction? In this class, we will look at writers who wrestle with faith (sacred and secular alike) in their work, and consider how to capture the ineffable on the page.
Featuring: Yasmin Adele Majeed (author of Side Streams)

10:15am - 11:15am

A. MIDWIFE
From Image to Text: Photography and the Writer’s Imagination

Join literary agent Elianna Kan of Massie McQuilkin & Altman and author JP Infante for a conversation about how photography can serve as source material and a catalyst for writers’ imaginations as they approach the blank page.

Using Infante’s Aquí y Allá: Winston Vargas Photographs the Dominican Community in Washington Heights as a point of departure, Kan and Infante will explore the process of creating narratives out of photographs. Drawing on Kan’s translation work for Aperture’s bilingual monograph on Chicano photographer Louis Carlos Bernal and Infante’s work with photographer Winston Vargas, they will consider how their respective experiences have informed their current collaboration on JP Infante’s novel.

The conversation will examine photography and history as sources of fiction, the relationship between agent and writer, and the power of images in an era that is increasingly experienced through screens.
Featuring: JP Infante and Elianna Kan (Literary Agent, Massie McQuilkin & Altman Literary Agents)

B. DOULA
Collaboration: the Author-Agent Relationship

What should you expect when you start working with an agent? In this breakout session, an agent and three of her clients will discuss how they began working together, the editorial work they undertook before submission, and what comes after the book sale.
Featuring: Ebonya Lia (author of I Can Feel It All Over), Hasan Dudar (author of Carryout) + Erica Frederick (author of Fight in the Night); moderated by Iwalani Kim (Associate Literary Agent, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates).

EVENT CENTER
11:30am - 12:30pm
Secondary Characters in a Novel

In a recent Poets & Writers Magazine article, Dawn Davis advised new and emerging writers to ”invest emotionally in the secondary characters. They don’t have to spend as much time on the stage as your main players but they have to be compelling; their relationships to the primary characters have to be complex and intriguing enough for the reader to care about them.” Join us as Dawn Davis expands on that thought.
Featuring: Dawn Davis (Senior Vice President and Publisher, 37 Ink)

EVENT CENTER
12:30pm - 1:15pm
LUNCH
Short Film

1:15pm - 2:15pm

A. MIDWIFE
Writing Historical Fiction

In this class, we’ll cover a range of methods for researching fiction and thinking through the process of writing about the past. We’ll discuss sources you can utilize in your work and ways to organize your research.
Featuring: Tracey Rose Peyton (author of Night Wherever You Go)

B. DOULA
Fieldwork, Folklore, and the Future: Writing the Living World

What does it mean to be writing in conversation with land, water, and the spirits that dwell in them? How do we write about the environment while carrying ancestral memory and the realities of environmental injustice? Jori Lewis, author of A Natural History of the Spirits, and Emily Raboteau, author of Lessons for Survival, join Abhigna Mooraka to talk about ecowriting as craft, inheritance, and an exercise in archiving.
Featuring: Jori Lewis (author of A Natural History of the Spirits) and Emily Raboteau (author of Lessons for Survival: Mothering Against “The Apocalypse”); moderated by Abhigna Mooraka (2023 Kweli Emerging Writing Fellow)


EVENT CENTER
2:30pm - 3:30pm

Fireside Chat with Isabella Hammad
Isabella Hammad will read a brief excerpt from forthcoming novel, Our Names, and be in conversation with Ata Hindi about her work.

From one of the most “assured and formidable” (Wall Street Journal) literary voices today, Our Names spans a decade to tell a story of international politics and intrigue through the magnetic friendship between two women.

1955 Bandung, Indonesia. 22-year-old Marie Nahhas has been granted the opportunity to travel with the Lebanese delegation to the first Asian-African Conference—the largest gathering of leaders from recently decolonized countries to date—as one of two secretaries, the spare. Stricken by her brother’s death two years prior and uncertain about her impending marriage, the conference is a fleeting chance for adventure, to witness history in a way that would have made her brother proud.

There, she meets Shirin, an Indian Parsi photojournalist, self-assured and daring, who knows how to use being underestimated as a woman to her advantage. Skeptical of Marie’s engagement and unafraid to stray from the beaten path, it seems Shirin has a lot to teach Marie. Eleven years later, Shirin is the one with questions. She embarks on a search for Marie that carries her on a winding journey across Lebanon. Navigating rich political terrain through an intimate lens, Our Names is an expansive and masterfully written book about imagining a world after empire.

Featuring: Isabella Hammad (author of Our Names) in conversation with Ata Hindi

3:45pm - 4:45pm

Fireside Chat with Dinaw Mengestu +

Featuring: Dinaw Mengestu (author of Someone Like Us)

5:00pm

Exit

Sunday, November 15, 2026

5:00pm - 7:00pm
KEYNOTE CONVERSATION
Imani Perry (author, Black in Blues) in conversation with Jaha Nailah Avery
Akwaaba Mansion (ballroom)


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SPONSORS

New York Law School (NYLS)
Akwaaba Mansion
Victoria Sanders & Associates
John Blackman Sr. Foundation

Support the Kweli International Literary Festival with your tax deductible donation.