BookNest in Lagos

Ake Arts and Book Festival was founded in 2013 by the novelist and poet Lola Shoneyin, and it did something few literary events on the continent had done at that scale: it put African novelists, poets and publishers on a stage in front of an African audience, in conversation rather than on exhibition. It later moved to Lagos, and its panels, book chats and stage performances remain the anchor of the city's literary calendar.

The publishing spine around it is local too. Cassava Republic Press publishes African writing for readers on the continent and in the diaspora, and Roving Heights has become the bookshop where those titles get launched and signed. Lagos is our busiest desk outside New York, and this is the ecosystem those listeners are reading inside.