Please join us to celebrate the opening of “Street Talk”: Pamphlet Literature of the Nigerian Marketplace on view in the Hanke Gallery of Sterling Memorial Library.

Onitsha Market Literature—named after a city east of the Niger River—emerged in the early 1950s. The popular pamphlet style soon spread to other centers throughout the then British colony of Nigeria. These ephemeral publications circulated widely throughout the busy marketplace, and writers intended them to be both educating and entertaining for the common people.

Keynote Reading and Reception
5:00–6:30 P.M., HQ L02/L90
Fiction’s mysteries
Novelists Jonathan Lethem and Catherine Lacey read from their work and discuss the role of fiction in an age of information—and misinformation—with Meghan O’Rourke, editor of The Yale Review.
Reception to Follow

Franke Visiting Fellows

Jennifer Makumbi introduces her forthcoming pan-African novel, Alkebulon: The Lions Return, followed by a reading and discussion.

Civilizations are living things: they are born, they grow and die. Nations too, rise and fall. Europe and its spawned nations are declining. Africa cannot afford to stumble into global power as if drunk.

The Yale College Poets Reading is an annual reading by outstanding undergraduate poets. This year’s readers are: Lukas Bacho, Olivia Bell, Maisie Bilston, Arthur Delon-Vilain, Ethan Estrada, Kavya Jain, Audrey Kim, Jessica Liu, Sam Oguntoyinbo, Madeline Poole, Netanel Schwartz & Lucy TonThat. Co-sponsored by the Yale Collection of American Literature at the Beinecke Library and the Creative Writing Program of the Yale Department of English.

Mohammed Sadegh Ansari will present his new book The Science of Music: Knowledge Production in Medieval Baghdad and Beyond (2025). Introduction by Kevin van Bladel. Response by Giulia Accornero.