The Read The World Interview w/ Nanjala Nyabola at Cheltenham Literature Festival

As a prolific traveller and cultural commentator Nanjala Nyabola has a fascinating perspective on exploring the world and the stories we tell about it. Being a black, female, African travel writer in a space that has traditionally been dominated by white, European men, she has revealed in Travelling While Black how the business of travel is packed with assumptions and biases that stop us seeing much of what the globe has to offer. She will be sharing her thoughts in this keynote interview with Literary Explorer in Residence Ann Morgan.

About the book

What does it feel like to move through a world designed to limit and exclude you? What are the joys and pains of holidays for people of colour, when guidebooks are never written with them in mind? How are black lives today impacted by the othering legacy of colonial cultures and policies? What can travel tell us about our sense of self, of home, of belonging and identity? Why has the world order become hostile to human mobility, as old as humanity itself, when more people are on the move than ever?

Nanjala Nyabola is constantly exploring the world, working with migrants and confronting complex realities challenging common assumptions – both hers and others’. From Nepal to Botswana, Sicily to Haiti, New York to Nairobi, her sharp, humane essays ask tough questions and offer surprising, deeply shocking and sometimes funny answers. It is time we saw the world through her eyes.

About the author

Nanjala Nyabola is a writer and political analyst based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her work focuses on structural injustice, the intersection between technology and politics, and migration and human mobility. Her previous collection Travelling While Black, also published by Hurst, was shortlisted for the Stanford Dolman Travel Book of the Year.