Out Of Africa: New York Black And African Literature Festival Returns For Second Edition

The New York Black and African Literature Festival returns to Harlem from 18–20 September 2026, bringing together writers, poets and artists from across the African diaspora.

NYBALF 2026 will gather writers, poets, public intellectuals, artists and readers from across the US, Africa, the Caribbean, Latin America and the wider diaspora for three days of dialogue, readings, performances and shared reflection.

This year’s festival turns to the local as a primary site of concern amid visible geopolitical instability. The post-war architecture of rights and norms, always compromised and always selectively applied, is currently being dismantled by its architects. As people across the world grapple with fracturing democracies, mass displacement and the disorienting remaking of human life by artificial intelligence, the 2026 festival programme has been designed to make these pressures intelligible and, therefore, contestable. Through facilitated dialogue and shared reflection, this year’s participants will examine what accountability to the near requires, what it makes possible, and what it forecloses.

The New York Black and African Literature Festival continues the work of bringing the collective consciousness of continental and diasporic communities into communication with one another through literature, art and culture. The overriding goal is to create a space for connection, shared vision and collective agency, one that embraces the full range of African and Black experiences, platforms its best ideas, challenges preconceptions, showcases talent and contribution, allows for rest, and inspires us to revisit and reimagine what progress looks like in the dialectical spirit of Sankofa.

Guest announcements and calls for community programming will be made later in July. Find out more on the festival’s website.