Doek Literary Festival to champion storytelling

Adolf Kaure

The 2026 Doek Literary Festival hopes to promote analogue storytelling and revive traditional methods of writing, telling, and sharing stories.

The festival, set to take place in Windhoek from 30 September to 3 October, is themed ‘History is handmade’, bringing together talent, skill, and wisdom to fill the programme with conversation, poetry readings, vinyl selections, an art exhibition, writing workshops, and two exciting competitions.

According to festival director Rémy Ngamije, the four-day festival seeks to reinvigorate classic ways of writing, telling, and sharing stories.

“We are hard at work designing and manufacturing the artefacts that carry the festival theme,” he said.

The festival will feature conversations, poetry readings, creative writing, craft workshops, an art exhibition, musical performances, and vinyl selections exploring the rituals, processes, challenges, and joys of analogue storytelling.

“It will be about the anticipation of waiting for a new book and the joy of rediscovering an old one in a second-hand shop, cosying up in a comfortable nook to read it; sitting around a fire and listening to a song; whispering a secret to a friend; finding a long-lost record and tenderly placing it beneath a record player’s stylus to enjoy the opening crackles, and being immersed in words, sounds, and visions created by others in times and worlds far from this one,” Ngamije added.

Throughout the planning, organising, curating, and hosting of the festival, there will be a particular emphasis on human effort and the hands that keep the literary community and publishing industry alive.

He further maintained that by centring people and human-made artefacts, the importance of the individual in an increasingly digital and distant world will be highlighted, reaffirming the belief that meaningful change, whether cultural, social, political, or economic, can only be achieved through individual efforts working together towards a communal goal.

“The festival will direct its collective consciousness to ask what lies beyond dreaming and the imagination, what one does after reading and writing, and what meaningful actions can be taken when the last page has been turned and the final full stop has been inked,” he concluded.

Admission is free to all events of the 2026 Doek Literary Festival over the course of the three days.

– akaure@nepc.com.na

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