The PEN World Voices Festival, which is set to take place from May 4-10 in New York, has announced its particular focus on the contemporary literary culture of Africa.

Irish author Colm Tóibín, who will serve as chairman of the festival for the first time (a position Salman Rushie formerly held), said in an email interview with the New York Times that “there is a great deal happening culturally in Africa that we don’t know about. Africa is also a big place, and there are large differences between Kenya and Nigeria, Somalia and South Africa.”

“Part of the task of the festival is to recognize that not experiencing the full range of the world’s culture, living in a narrow culture, is a form of censorship,” Tóibín continued. “Thus, the task is to bring in writers who deserve to be better known, to move eloquent voices to the very center.”

The festival will include readings, prayer and meditation, and panels, and participants such as Teju Cole, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Flanagan, Michael Ondaatje, Tracy K. Smith, and Tom Stoppard. Nigerian-born writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, whose novel Americanah received the 2013 National Book Critics Circle Award, is working with festival director Laszlo Jakab to organize the African program.

Read the PEN World Voices Festival’s growing schedule of events .