New York Black and African Literature Festival

New York Black and African Literature Festival A literary festival in the heart of New York connecting the global black diaspora.

Calling all booksellers, publishers, makers, artists, food vendors, and independent brands.The NYBALF 2026 Marketplace i...
08/29/2026

Calling all booksellers, publishers, makers, artists, food vendors, and independent brands.

The NYBALF 2026 Marketplace is opening its doors to vendors who want to be part of a weekend of books, ideas, performance, food, community, and exchange in Harlem.

This year’s festival, The Village in the Book: Literature and the Near, brings together writers, readers, artists, thinkers, and cultural communities from across New York and around the world. We’re looking for vendors whose work add texture, generosity, and life to that gathering.

If you sell books, art, clothing, stationery, food, objects, or other work rooted in culture and creativity, we’d love to hear from you.

Vendor applications are now open.

Spaces are limited.

Apply via the link in bio.

New York Black & African Literature Festival
September 18–20, 2026 · Harlem, New York
BlackLiterature AfricanLiterature BlackOwnedBusiness AfricanCreatives

Calling all booksellers, publishers, makers, artists, food vendors, and independent brands.The NYBALF 2026 Marketplace i...
08/29/2026

Calling all booksellers, publishers, makers, artists, food vendors, and independent brands.

The NYBALF 2026 Marketplace is opening its doors to vendors who want to be part of a weekend of books, ideas, performance, food, community, and exchange in Harlem.

This year’s festival, The Village in the Book: Literature and the Near, brings together writers, readers, artists, thinkers, and cultural communities from across New York and around the world. We’re looking for vendors whose work add texture, generosity, and life to that gathering.

If you sell books, art, clothing, stationery, food, objects, or other work rooted in culture and creativity, we’d love to hear from you.

Vendor applications are now open.

Spaces are limited.

Apply via the link in bio.

New York Black & African Literature Festival
September 18–20, 2026 · Harlem, New York
BlackLiterature AfricanLiterature BlackOwnedBusiness AfricanCreatives

Join Patricia Smith at NYBALF 2026.A poet, performer and teacher, Smith has spent decades stretching what the poem can c...
08/27/2026

Join Patricia Smith at NYBALF 2026.

A poet, performer and teacher, Smith has spent decades stretching what the poem can carry: history, violence, witness, music, memory.

Her latest collection, The Intentions of Thunder, gathers new and selected poems from across that extraordinary body of work.

At NYBALF 2026, Patricia joins our opening-night performance at Harlem Stage, an evening of poetry, music, invocation and public imagination.

September 18–20, 2026.

General Passes now available at blackandafricanlitfestny.com/register.

Namwali Serpell joins us as keynote speaker for NYBALF 2026.A novelist, essayist and critic of rare range, Serpell’s wor...
08/26/2026

Namwali Serpell joins us as keynote speaker for NYBALF 2026.

A novelist, essayist and critic of rare range, Serpell’s work moves across fiction, criticism, race, technology, memory and form with a deep interest in how we read, and what reading asks of us.

At NYBALF, she opens the festival with Toni Morrison and the Black World, a keynote that returns to Morrison through the neighborhoods, ancestors, communities, formal experiments and difficult questions that continue to animate her work.

September 18–20, 2026 · Harlem, New York

Get your General Pass at blackandafricanlitfestny.com/register. Pay what you can, including $0.

Namwali Serpell joins us as keynote speaker for NYBALF 2026.A novelist, essayist and critic of rare range, Serpell’s wor...
08/26/2026

Namwali Serpell joins us as keynote speaker for NYBALF 2026.

A novelist, essayist and critic of rare range, Serpell’s work moves across fiction, criticism, race, technology, memory and form with a deep interest in how we read, and what reading asks of us.

At NYBALF, she opens the festival with Toni Morrison and the Black World, a keynote that returns to Morrison through the neighborhoods, ancestors, communities, formal experiments and difficult questions that continue to animate her work.

September 18–20, 2026 · Harlem, New York

Get your General Pass at blackandafricanlitfestny.com/register. Pay what you can, including $0.

We are still accepting volunteers for NYBALF2026 (September 18-20 in Harlem). Roles are open for registration, guest and...
07/28/2026

We are still accepting volunteers for NYBALF2026 (September 18-20 in Harlem). Roles are open for registration, guest and artist support, venue setup and coordination, program and production assistance, social media and communications, bookfair and vendor support, general festival operations.

No previous festival experience required. Volunteer shifts will be designed so team members can still experience parts of the festival when off duty.

Sign up through www.blackandafricanlitfestny.com/volunteer.

The Village in the Book: Literature and the Near For the second edition of the New York Black and African Literature Fes...
07/22/2026

The Village in the Book: Literature and the Near

For the second edition of the New York Black and African Literature Festival, we are asking what literature owes the places nearest to it. Who can read the work. Who can access it. Who is addressed by it. What it returns to the world from which it came.

Three days in Harlem: September 18 to 20, 2026.

Program and guests announced soon.

Last September, readers, writers, poets, artists and thinkers gathered in Harlem for the inaugural New York Black and Af...
07/18/2026

Last September, readers, writers, poets, artists and thinkers gathered in Harlem for the inaugural New York Black and African Literature Festival.

The room held conversation, performance, books, argument, laughter and the beginnings of a community we are continuing to build.

NYBALF returns September 18–20, 2026, with the theme: The Village in the Book: Literature and the Near.

Over the coming weeks, we will share this year’s guests, program, venues, books and ways to take part.

Save the date. See you in September!

Address

9707 63rd Road Rego Park
New York, NY
11374

Telephone

+19286078518

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