Wordfest in Grahamstown

Wordfest is South Africa’s only national multilingual festival of languages and literatures with a developmental emphasis. The aim of Wordfest is to foster a culture of reading and writing in South Africa and to promote innovation and excellence in the word-arts.

We provide a platform during the National Arts Festival for South African writers and publishers and for new and established writers from different disciplines with special emphasis for marginal languages.

There are over a hundred activities each year, as follows:
twenty to thirty book-launches
lectures
performances
seminars
exhibitions
workshops
Open Mike
a restaurant
a retail book outlet (Exclusive Books)
media contracts with the print and broadcast media
WordStock a daily literary newspaper
Eastern Cape Wordfest
Junior and High School developmental projects

Wordfest is in its eighth year and growing. We have featured Nobel prizewinners, as well as providing a platform for community level writers and writers well-known in indigenous South African languages.

Our principal support comes from the NAC (National Arts Council), the NLDTF (National Lottery Development Fund), Rhodes University and the Institute for the Study of English in Africa which support Wordfest as an outreach project, the Eastern Cape Government, BASA (Business Arts South Africa) and Exclusive Books.