About AALFIE
About AALFIE
Founded by Eritrean-Ethiopian-British author Sulaiman Addonia and launched in Brussels in 2019, the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival (In Exile) – AALFIE – emphasises its Pan-African roots and core feminist principles. Rooted locally yet globally represented in Brussels, it aims to champion ideas that traverse boundaries in bold, borderless landscapes. AALFIE’s vision reflects and celebrates societies not as censored but as they exist, with all their diversities, troubles, and beauty. The festival not only embraces multiple languages, featuring performances in diverse European tongues—including those of immigrant communities in Brussels and beyond – but also strives to present radical concepts and genre-bending acts. Since its first edition, the festival has grown exponentially, and in 2022, AALFIE hosted more than 60 national and international artists with performances in over 18 languages. In 2022, it was selected as one of the 40 best festivals in the world.
About The Founder
About The Founder
Sulaiman Addonia is a British-Eritrean-Ethiopian author based in Belgium. His novels, The Consequences of Love (2008) and Silence is My Mother Tongue (2019), have been translated into more than twenty languages. Silence is My Mother Tongue was a finalist for the 2021 Lambda Literary Awards, the Firecracker (CLMP) Awards, and the African Literary Award from the Museum of the African Diaspora (MoAD) in San Francisco. His third novel, The Seers, was published in the UK in June 2024, in the Netherlands and Belgium in September 2024, and is set to be released in the US, Canada, and Germany in 2025. He currently lives in Brussels, where he has launched a Creative Writing Academy for Refugees and Asylum Seekers, as well as the Asmara-Addis Literary Festival (In Exile). In 2021, he was awarded Belgium’s Golden Afro-Art Prize for Literature, and in 2022, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
