Pa Gya!’ Literary Festival Continues to Ignite Passion in Ghana’s Creative Arts Scene— Goethe Institut Cultural Officer Highlights Growth and Future Prospects
Accra, October 9, 2025 — Ghana’s most anticipated literary celebration, Pa Gya! A Literary Festival in Accra, continues to stand as a beacon of creativity and artistic collaboration, fueling renewed passion in the country’s literary and creative arts scene.
Speaking during an interview at the Ghana-India Kofi Annan Centre of Excellence in ICT, the Goethe Institut Cultural Officer, Miss Elizabeth Johnson, underscored the festival’s impact since its inception. She described Pa Gya! as a vibrant three-day event that brings together writers, artists, and thinkers to celebrate storytelling, innovation, and artistic exchange.
“This festival, organized by the Writers Project of Ghana in partnership with the Goethe Institut and the Foundation for Contemporary Art, has been running since 2017. This is our ninth edition,” she said. “It’s a space that gives a platform to literary arts in Ghana while fostering international engagement through book launches, readings, performances, film screenings, theatre, and exhibitions.”
The 2025 edition, themed “Igniting Passion in the Literary Arts,” will take place from October 17 to 19 across three venues — Goethe-Institut Accra, the Foundation for Contemporary Art-Ghana (FCA-Ghana) in East Cantonments, and Dot.Ateliers in South La.
Supported by the European Union Delegation to Ghana, the Embassy of the Netherlands, the Irish Embassy, and Culture Ireland, the festival will feature over 100 participants from Ghana and abroad, including writers, publishers, academics, and artists from Nigeria, South Africa, the Netherlands, Ireland, the UK, the US, Cameroon, and Togo, among others.
Festival activities will include over 70 sessions, ranging from book readings, launches, and panel discussions to performances, workshops, and special sessions for children. Headline guests include Babs Gons (Netherlands), Stephen James Smith (Ireland), Raoul de Jong (Netherlands), Phillippa Yaa de Villiers (South Africa), Michael Donkor (UK/Ghana), and Tessa Leuwsha (Netherlands/Suriname).
Highlighting the festival’s achievements, Miss Johnson noted that Pa Gya! has played a pivotal role in strengthening Ghana’s literary ecosystem. “Over the past nine years, we’ve witnessed more publishing houses showing interest in fiction, more bookshops emerging, and a growing number of Ghanaian writers gaining confidence to publish their own works,” she said.
She added that the next phase of the festival’s journey will focus on decentralizing literary engagement. “In the next five years, we expect to see more literary festivals across the country, a stronger publishing industry, and Ghanaian writers gaining wider global recognition,” she stated.
Key events this year include a headline discussion on “Past Forward: Archives, Photos and Storytelling” featuring Prof. Esi Sutherland-Addy and Judith Opoku-Boateng, as well as the launch of Wandering Imaginations, a fantasy anthology emerging from the Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture initiative, funded by the British Council.
The festival will close with its signature poetry showcase, “Live Across Africa,” on Sunday, October 19.
Since its launch in 2017, Pa Gya! has become a cornerstone of Ghana’s creative calendar — a platform that not only celebrates literature but also nurtures the voices shaping the nation’s cultural identity.
Story by Eugene Nyarko Jnr.
