Writer, performer and cultural commentator Kelechi Okafor comes to Liverpool for Awakened, a BlackFest evening built around storytelling, literature, identity and the conversations that shape contemporary Black British life.
Okafor is a British-Nigerian multidisciplinary artist whose work moves across writing, acting, directing, presenting and public commentary. Across those different forms, she has developed a reputation for addressing subjects including race, gender, power, inequality and the ways Black women are represented within British society.
Awakened creates space for those ideas through an evening that places words and lived experience at the centre. Rather than treating literature as something distant from everyday life, the event connects storytelling with questions about who gets heard, whose experiences are believed and how Black writers can use fiction and performance to challenge familiar assumptions.
The event also arrives at a moment when Okafor’s creative work is reaching new audiences through her fiction. Her novel Awakened adds another strand to a career already shaped by theatre, broadcasting and cultural criticism, allowing speculative storytelling to sit alongside the real-world questions that have long informed her public work.
For Black History Month, that contemporary emphasis matters. The month creates opportunities to recover overlooked histories, but it also asks what Black cultural life looks like now and which writers are shaping the conversations that future generations will inherit.
BlackFest’s decision to programme the event at Sefton Park Palm House also creates a distinctive atmosphere. The Victorian glasshouse becomes a setting for an evening of discussion and creative exchange, bringing a nationally recognised Black British voice into one of Liverpool’s most familiar public spaces.
Awakened ft. Kelechi Okafor promises an evening for readers, writers and anyone interested in Black British culture, combining literature with frank discussion about identity, systemic inequality, creativity and the power of telling stories on your own terms.
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