Inherit, write, transform.Three days celebrating what the women of Africa and its diasporas have written, and what they are writing still.
Writer, poet, painter and academic, French and Ivorian, she will open the 5th edition.
Photo Simone Liliane, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Véronique Tadjo is a French Ivorian writer. She is a painter and the author of poems, novels and children's books, which she illustrates herself.
She grew up and studied mainly in Abidjan before earning a doctorate in Black American literature and civilisation at the Sorbonne Paris IV. She was also a Fulbright researcher at Howard University in Washington.
A landmark figure in African literature, her work, translated into several languages, examines memory, transmission, women, history, the wounds of the continent and the hope of a shared future. For several years she chaired the jury of the Prix Orange du Livre en Afrique.
This theme is an invitation to break the historical silence that for too long reduced women's knowledge to mere tradition. Here, matrimony is claimed as a major political and artistic force.
This is no passive gesture but a search for our mothers of the pen, of thought and of action. It asserts that we come from somewhere. This pillar argues for the rehabilitation of voices, languages and practices as vehicles of philosophy, refusing their erasure.
To write is to refuse to be told by others. It means fixing the fleeting and taking up space. Every story becomes an essential brick in the new world literary canon.
We use inheritance not to repeat the past but to subvert the present. Creation goes beyond aesthetics to become a tool of social change that dismantles prejudice and redefines leadership, inventing new languages for a fairer world.
The detailed programme will be published before opening.
Encounters and public conversations around women's writing.
Working sessions led by professionals.
Signing sessions with the authors present at the Fair.
Films and documentaries, followed by discussion.
Readings, performances and staged work.
Displays and presentations across the three days.
Four editions already held in Dakar, each around a theme and a guest country.
Guest of honour Sokhna Benga, guest country the Republic of Guinea. Three days on Place de la Nation, with talks, workshops, signings and a stage open to the public.
Place de la Nation, DakarAn edition given over to exile, the search for identity and the writing of the diaspora.
DakarPhotographs from past editions of the Fair, in Dakar.
Chosen by the Fair's reading committee. Available at the pop up bookshop, Place de la Nation.
Authors, publishers, booksellers, creators and professionals of the book and cultural world: registrations are open. Come and share your worlds, your projects, your books and your passion with the Fair's audience.
Choose your space: stand or table.
Deadline: 10 October 2026
To receive the registration form, write to us or call us.
The Fair is supported by public, cultural and private institutions.
Place de la Nation
Dakar
22, 23 & 24 October 2026
Free entry for school groups
One letter a month: confirmed authors, workshop bookings opening, behind the scenes of the 5th edition.
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