About Us

Ibom International Arts and Book Festival

We perceive the world through the lens of individual and collective experiences and we connect with our differences through storytelling and arts. Stories are reflective of multiple coexisting identities and cultural values, but more often than not, minority stories and arts remain invisible, unexplored, and unappreciated. Books and arts by traditionally and historically marginalized authors and visual artists are still missing in mainstream publishing, galleries, and museums. Ibom International Arts and Book Festival was designed to respond to the dire need of identifying, celebrating, and highlighting the literary and artistic creative works of minority writers and visual artists. Subsequently navigating North America and Africa, Ibom International Arts and Book Festival empower and sustain platforms for underrepresented marginalized writers and visual artists, through an intensive weekend of book panel sessions, book chats, and readings, arts and writing workshops, open mic evenings, curated visual arts exhibitions, performing arts and cultural shows, artists talk, documentary screening and public engagements with new productions.

Festival Director

Inyene Adiaha Nsa is a Nigerian-born creative writer, curator, residency producer, gallerist, and festival director. She is the founder of Nsa Arts Foundation (NAF), Nsa Kollectif, (an artists and writers management company), and the curator of Nsa Artist and Writer Residency. Nsa Arts foundation empowers marginalized early to mid-career visual artists and writers from minority backgrounds with access to the market and professional development, targeting people with disabilities, women, BIPOC, QTIBIPOC, artists, and writers of minority ethnic groups.

Formerly known as Kate Ekanem, Inyene was born in Etinan, a remote village in Akwa Ibom, a state in the Niger Delta minority region of South-South Nigeria. She grew up in Lagos Nigeria and then in Pennsylvania where she graduated with a BA in Media and Communication, with double minors in Women and Gender Studies, and Creative Writing from Muhlenberg College, Allentown Pennsylvania, a Masters of Art in Creative Writing (MA), and a Masters of Fine Art in Publishing (MFA) from Wilkes University, Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, United States.

In 2015, Inyene was competitively chosen, to represent the African Union at the global G(irl)20summit where she collaboratively developed a communique for the G2O leaders in Istanbul Turkey. Inyene is a Ship the start-up Ambassador, Finland, a Grubstreet Muse Literary Citizen Writer Award recipient, the US, a Deutsche Welle Global Media Award recipient, Germany, a Dalai Lama fellow, the US, and the 2018 overall winner of the African Women Innovation and Entrepreneurship Forum (AWIEF) Empowerment Category, South Africa. Inyene is a Sojourner Truth Award winner, a Muhlenberg Goodwill Award winner, a Jim Schneider Award winner for Social Justice, an Edwin W. Miller Writing Award for Non-fiction, and a 2022 TIAW World of Difference Award recipient. In 2017, Inyene was awarded an Internet Society 25 Under 25 gold medal.