Tarfa Benson
From 6 July to 3 August 2026

The Nigerian writer and visual artist Tarfa Benson was a fellow at the International Writing Program of the University of Iowa and was later awarded a 2025 research fellowship at the Folger Shakespeare Library in Washington, D.C. His writing and art touches on themes like the body and male intimacy, migration, utopia, and the unconscious. His debut novel, titled The Madhouse, published by Penguin Random House in 2021 was translated into Arabic in 2023 and published by Al Arabi Publishers). People Live Here was published in 2022 by Masobe Books. He is working on his third novel.