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Doek! Literary Festival – A Venue of Hope

“Oh, my God! She’s sitting right there!”

The woman seated to my right lets out an excited squeal, grabs my hand and asks me to feel her chest. Acclaimed Zimbabwean author Tsitsi Dangarembga is two seats over and it’s her presence – legendary, silent and serene – that has the woman’s heart practically thumping out of her chest.

Dramatic? Certainly.

But the inaugural Doek! Literary Festival (21 to 23 April), with its focus on fiction, is a haven for those with a taste for a little drama – the writers and literature lovers who chase winding plots and errant prose through the labyrinths of imagination and emerge as authors or as ardent aficionados of the written word.

On Thursday evening after a full house settles into Goethe-Institut Namibia’s auditorium in Windhoek, Doek! founder Rémy Ngamije opens the three-day festival to applause. He introduces a roster of incredible local and international literary talent, including Dangarembga, Zukiswa Wanner, Jean McNeil and Femi Kayode and nobody quite knows how it will go.

The festival, founded by Ngamije and hosted in partnership with the University of East Anglia’s international chair of creative writing (Dangarembga), is the country’s first of its kind and it sounds serious, necessitating, perhaps, a certain stuffiness and sophistication.

How else would one discuss master’s degrees in fine arts (MFAs) and the African writer, the trials and triumphs of older debutantes, the nervous conditions of storytellers or attend Kayode’s workshop on how to write the perfect crime novel?

Plot twist.

Despite scores of awards, books and accolades between them, the headlining writers are refreshingly down to earth, the atmosphere is casual, and there is no such thing as a stupid question.

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