The Association of Nigerian Authors’ OAU Subchapter is bringing back its Books and Art Festival for a third edition, and this time the conversation is about the future, specifically, Africa’s. The festival, founded and curated by writers Isaiah Adepoju and Joel Oyeleke, holds on Saturday, June 6, 2026, at Ace Hall, OAU Campus, Ile-Ife, Osun State. Doors open at 12PM.

The theme this year is Africanfuturism and the Nigerian Creative, a deliberate effort to formally introduce a genre that has been reshaping global speculative fiction to young campus creatives, and to examine it alongside them.

Anchoring the programme is a headline essay, Reading Africanfuturism, written by Tomi Ojo-Fakuade, current Editor-in-Chief of ANA-OAU and curator of this edition. The essay maps Africafuturism as a genre, its strengths, its open questions, its possibilities for young Nigerian writers finding their footing.

The guest speaker is Wole Talabi, arguably the most decorated Nigerian speculative fiction writer working today. Engineer, writer, and editor, Talabi is the author of The Fist of Memory (2026) and Shigidi and the Brass Head of Obalufon (2023), and has edited five anthologies including the landmark Africanfuturism collection. He has been a finalist for the Hugo, Nebula, Locus, and Caine Prize, and has won the Sidewise Award for Alternate History and the Nommo Award for African speculative fiction.

The panel session, The Image and the Text: The Radical Work of the Africanfuture, brings together film critic Seyi Lasisi and journalist and cartoonist Abdulkareem Baba Aminu for a conversation spanning literature and film. Screenings of two films anchor the discussion: Neptune Frost (2021), the musical sci-fi co-directed by Saul Williams and Anisia Uzeyman, and Oba, directed by Femi Oladigbolu. The works of Nnedi Okorafor, Wole Talabi, Mazi Nwonwu, and Abdulkareem Baba Aminu are also on the reading list.

Beyond the intellectual programme, the festival includes an open mic, spoken word performances, an art exhibition, and the Gbemisola Adeoti Poetry Prize, sponsored by the association’s patron, Professor Gbemisola Remi Adeoti.

The first edition drew 80 student artists; the second pulled over 200 campus creatives from four Nigerian universities. The third is shaping up to be the most ambitious yet.

Tickets are ₦2,000 for students and ₦5,000 for non-students, available at tix.africa/discover/anaoaufest. For partnership and sponsorship enquiries, reach the team at [email protected].