Richard Mabala, Nahida Esmail and Lubacha Deus successive winners of CODE’s Burt Award for African Literature were invited to meet and converse with their audiences about their writing journeys, experience of writing and promote their books and receive feedback from readers. During the session participants raised issues of our education system; that it doesn’t prepare student to be critical readers and by extension good writers. They highlighted several factors including the examination-oriented teaching and learning practice which attracts the kind of writing and reading that make passing examination easy without extensive reading; citing for example examination question books including summarized works of literature. Frequent syllabus changes and text procurement modes were also cited as constraints to publishers’ capacities; and limitations of self-published products–most of which are not edited, badly produced; while some authors who are ignorant of the publishing process fall prey to unscrupulous dealers operating a poor equivalent of ‘Onitsha’ Market Books in Kariakoo.