A three day international celebration of stories, ideas, writing and contemporary culture through books, storytelling, skits, music, live discussion forums, demonstrations, workshops, open-mike sessions, debates, exhibitions, live performances and competitions.

The festival is modelled on The Hay Festival held in the UK every May in which up to 100,000 people attend – ranging from presidents to authors to fans. The Hay Festival organises several festivals in Europe and South America.  The Storymoja Hay Festival will be an international festival held in Nairobi, organised as a partnership between Storymoja and The Hay Festival.

The event will be held in a temporary ‘tented city’ at the Impala grounds and will include a main stage for live performances and competitions, and twelve themed tents in which multiple one and a half hour-hour events will be held concurrently. The range of 100 or so events are intended to generate public debate around critical issues facing East Africa including Climate Change,  Diversity,  Microfinance, Literature, Entrepreneurship, Gender, IT,  Self-Development, Music, Film and Education. They will be headlined by star guests in each particular field.  Music (our headline act is Seckou Keita) and various competitions will ensure a mixed crowd in celebratory ambiance, and attract extensive, positive local and international media coverage.

Simply put, the Storymoja Hay Festival is a celebration of ideas expressed in many forms. It is part of a longer term campaign to get East Africa reading, writing and discussing ideas.

What are the highlights?
An array of forty plus African and international writers, thinkers, filmmakers will participate in various events at the festival including – Wole Soyinka,  Hanif Kureishi, Vikram Seth, Wangari Mathai, Kate Adie, Petina Gappah, Mukoma wa Ngugi, Monica Arac, Nick Broomfield, Jan Blake, Daniel Morden.

Who is invited (audience)?
Day-long fun for the whole family with multiple events targeting men, women and children. Programmes will be distributed with tickets.

Where and when?
Venue:   Impala Club, Ngong Road, Nairobi
Dates:  Friday 31st July, Saturday 1st and Sunday 2nd August, 2009.

Event Schedule
The session on Mentoring is scheduled for Saturday 1st August 4pm-5:30pm in the Enterprise Arena. Feel free to involve Vital Voices and or any partners you think might add value to the event.

What is the purpose of the Storymoja Hay Festival?
The festival hopes to encourage Africans to ‘own’ their problems by exploring our situations/stories, and search for solutions by generating platforms for discussion and debate. To achieve our 2030 vision, we need to read widely, discuss ideas, and exploit our diversity of stories/backgrounds for nation building.

Who are Storymoja?
Storymoja is a publishing company formed by five writers committed to spreading the gospel of reading, writing and thinking has held two previous annual festivals to promote books – dubbed Storymoja Nyamachoma Fiesta. The 2008 event attracted 2200 people. The 2009 Storymoja Hay Festival will utilise and build on that experience, and is the next step in achieving our Storymoja mission of getting ‘A book in every hand.’