Read My World Preview festivaleditie 2025

For the 2025 edition of Read My World, taking place from September 11-13, we have invited two curators who will join us in shaping the festival.

We are thrilled to announce the participation of Lou Mensah and Maboula Soumahoro, both versatile thinkers, writers, and creators, through whom we have discovered inspiring guests for the 2025 edition.

Want to know who will be joining them at the festival and learn more about the curators, their work, and their vision? Join us on April 3 at the Tolhuistuin! Moderator Simone Zeefuik. 

About the curators

Maboula Soumahoro is an associate professor in the English Department of the University of Tours and president of the Black History Month Association, dedicated to celebrating Black history and cultures. A specialist in the field of Africana Studies, she has conducted research and taught in several universities and prisons in the United States and France.
She is the author of Le Triangle et l’Hexagone, réflexions sur une identité noire (La Découverte, 2021), translated in English by Dr. Kaiama L. Glover as Black Is the Journey, Africana the Name(Polity, 2021) and prefaced by Saidiya Hartman. This book was distinguished by the FetKann! Maryse Condé literary prize in 2020.
She was the inaugural Villa Albertine Resident in Atlanta (2021-2022) ; Mellon Arts Project International Visiting Professor of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Columbia University and Visiting Faculty at Bennington College (2022-2023) and served as a member of the National Committee for the Memory and History of Slavery (2013-2017).
She translated Saidiya Hartman classic work, Lose Your Mother : A Journey Along The Atlantic Slave Route (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007) from English as À perte de mère – Sur les routes atlantiques de l’esclavage released in September 2023 (Brook).

Lou Mensah is the founder of Shade Media, the space for Black artists and creative practitioners to talk about their work in their own way. Shade’s first venture, the critically acclaimed Shade Podcast launched in 2019 and has run for 12 seasons to date. Shade Art Review, which debuted in September 2023, is a biweekly arts and culture magazine.
Lou also creates audio works for clients including the British Council, Hauser and Wirth, Frieze, Tate, Bloomberg, Iniva, Freelands Foundation, The Runnymede Trust and South London Gallery and has collaborated with artists including Liz Johnson Artur and Ming Smith on installations and recordings.
Lou is a disability and accessibility consultant, an associate lecturer in Communications at Central St. Martins University and a home educator.

About our event partners

Read My World is platform voor het geschreven en gesproken woord uit de hele wereld.

Location