The Jamaica Book Festival has been running for just over a year, but it is already thinking at a scale that belies its age. Founded by creative and cultural industries consultant Latoya West-Blackwood, immediate past chairperson of the Book Industry Association of Jamaica, whose work has long centred gender equity, social justice, literacy, and intellectual property rights as tools for transformation, the festival launched in Kingston in December 2024 with a clear ambition: to make Jamaica and the wider Caribbean a serious site of literary gathering, discovery, and exchange. Branded as a “festival of ideas,” it has moved quickly from its inaugural staging to what is arguably its most significant programming yet: the Africa Caribbean Literary Exchange, taking place in Kingston from 25 to 28 February 2026.

The Exchange, hosted at the University of the West Indies, Mona, is a new initiative of the Jamaica Book Festival presented in partnership with the PJ Patterson Institute for Africa-Caribbean Advocacy (INAFRICARA) and supported by the African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), marking the institution’s first major sponsorship of a literary exchange in the Caribbean. The programme brings together writers, publishing leaders, educators, and cultural voices for a week of panels, workshops, readings, and live dialogue, shaped by the shared histories and creative futures of both regions. The week begins with an official welcome hosted in partnership with INAFRICARA, includes a community outreach visit to western Jamaica, and culminates on Saturday 28 February with a public Africa Caribbean Lit Fest in Kingston, featuring book chats and live literature experiences with the visiting delegation.

Confirmed participants include New York Times bestselling author Namina Forna; International Booker Prize judge and Kenyan fiction writer Troy Onyango; Angela Wachuka, author and co-founder of Book Bunk; Ghanaian-German literary advocate Alexandra Antwi-Boasiako; chess master and literacy activist Tunde Onakoya (appearing virtually); acclaimed Caribbean scholar and novelist Dr Curdella Forbes; and author and scholar Professor Paulette A. Ramsay. The programme also features a special showcase of Lorna Goodison’s Dante’s Inferno: A New Translation — the Jamaican poet laureate’s astonishing reimagining of Dante through Jamaican vernacular and history, published in 2025.

West-Blackwood has described the Exchange as “a bridge we are building with intention,” and the framing matters. Too often, African and Caribbean literary communities operate in proximity without genuine infrastructure for dialogue — sharing ancestry, colonial histories, and creative preoccupations, but rarely the same stages. The Jamaica Book Festival is trying to change that. For anyone who cares about where African and diasporic literature is heading, this is a conversation worth tracking. Visit jamaicabookfest.com to get free tickets and full programme details.