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The world’s first Ghana–Nigeria literary festival

A Literary Exchange
Literary Highlife — documenting a landmark moment of literary and cultural exchange.

Writers in this issue include:
- Caleb Femi
- Irenosen Okojie
- Ayobami Adebayo
- Ato Quayson
- …and many, many more
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Yinka Shonibare MBE

Born in London and raised in Nigeria, Shonibare employs a diverse range of media – from sculpture, painting and installation to photography and film – to probe matters of race, class, cultural identity and history.
Margaret Busby OBE

Busby OBE (also titled Nana Akua Ackon) is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster based in the UK. She was Britain’s youngest and first black woman book publisher when in the 1960s she co-founded with Clive Allison the London-based publishing house Allison and Busby.
Nana Ayebia Clarke MBE

Ayebia Clarke is a Ghanaian-born publisher. Submissions Editor of the highly acclaimed Heinemann African and Caribbean Writers series for 12 years, she published and promoted prominent writers and Nobel Prize winning authors. She founded Ayebia Clarke Publishing Ltd with her husband David in 2003 and received an Honorary MBE in 2011 for services to the British publishing industry.
Ekow Eshun

Eshun is a Ghanaian-British writer, journalist, and broadcaster. He was the artistic director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London and is now a contributor to BBC2's Friday night arts programme Newsnight Review and the editor-in-chief of the quarterly magazine Tank.
Caleb Femi

Caleb Femi is a poet, writer and director whose work sits at the intersection of literature, film and contemporary culture. He has been featured in the Dazed 100 as one of the next generation shaping youth culture. His writing has been commissioned by institutions including Tate Modern, the Royal Society of Literature, St Paul’s Cathedral, the BBC and The Guardian, and his short films have been produced for the BBC and Channel 4.
Irenosen Okojie

Okojie is a writer and Arts Project Manager. Her debut novel Butterfly Fish won a Betty Trask award and her work has been featured in publications such as The Observer, The Guardian, and the Huffington Post. Her short story collection, Speak Gigantular, was shortlisted for the Jhalak Prize and longlisted for the Edgehill Short Story Prize 2017.
Theresa Lola

Theresa Lola is a British Nigerian poet and writer. She was joint winner of the 2018 Brunel International African Poetry Prize and the 2025 Derek Walcott Prize for Poetry. In April 2019, she was announced as the 2019 Young People's Laureate for London.
Ayobami Adebayo

Adebayo holds BA and MA degrees in Literature from Obafemi Awolowo University. She also has an MA in creative writing from the University of East Anglia where she was awarded an international bursary for creative writing. Her debut novel, Stay with Me, has been shortlisted for the Baileys prize.
Patrice Lawrence

Lawrence was born in Brighton and raised in an Italian-Trinidadian household in Sussex. Her first novel, Orangeboy, has won the Waterstones Book Prize for Older Children, been shortlisted for the Costa Book Award and the YA Book Prize, nominated for the Carnegie Award and shortlisted for the Leeds and North East Book Awards.
Ato Quayson

Quayson is University Professor and Director of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies at the University of Toronto. He was educated at the University of Ghana and at Cambridge. His most recent book is Oxford Street, Accra: City Life and the Itineraries of Transnationalism.
Inua Ellams

Ellams is a poet, playwright and performer. His first poetry pamphlet, Thirteen Fairy Negro Tales, was followed by his first play, the award-winning ‘14th Tale’. He has created audio and stage plays for institutions such as the BBC, The Royal Court and Metta Theatre.
Nana Ocran

Ocran is a London-based writer and lecturer. Her work features topics including architectural design, African pop culture, green spaces and technology, all of which has been a vehicle for commissions and collaborations with national and international organisations including Time Out, Iniva, Pernod-Ricard Paris, Gestalten Books (Berlin) and the British Council.