Celebrating Cleveland Book Week 2024

Is Cleveland the most literary city in the country?

From September 14 to October 6, 2024, it will be.

The 2024 Cleveland Book Week (more like three weeks this year) is the biggest yet, featuring more than 100 hours of literary events with the best authors in the country. Oh, and nearly every event is free.

The 2024 Cleveland Book Week is a collaboration between the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards (AWBA), presented by the Cleveland Foundation, the Great Lakes African American Writers Conference (GLAAWC pronounced “glossy”), the Cleveland Public Library, and Literary Cleveland.

The goal is to elevate Cleveland as a national center of literary excellence, highlight brilliant writers that other places overlook, and sharpen our local literary conversations.

Literary Cleveland will kick off Book Week with the tenth annual Inkubator Writing Conference, the largest free writing conference in the nation. The 2024 conference theme is “Create Dangerously,” taken from the work of keynote speaker Edwidge Danticat. In times of national and global conflict when silence can sometimes seem like the safer choice, writers lead with courage by addressing difficult topics and speaking truth to power. The conference features virtual events September 16-18; 40+ workshops on writing and publishing at the downtown Cleveland Public Library on September 20-21; and community programs throughout the month, including a poetry bike ride and a free book giveaway at the West Side Market. See the full schedule and register for free at inkubator.litcleveland.org.

Next, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards will honor groundbreaking books that advance our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures. This year, Anisfield-Wolf events run September 27-28, with the free awards ceremony to be held Friday, September 27 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center and “When Artists Go to Work,” the 2024 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Author Symposium, taking place at The City Club of Cleveland on September 28. The 2024 AWBA winners coming to Cleveland are Ned Blackhawk for The Rediscovery of America (Nonfiction), Teju Cole for Tremor (Fiction), Monica Youn for From From (Poetry), and Lifetime Achievement winner Maxine Hong Kingston. Learn more at anisfield-wolf.org.

Then on Tuesday, October 1, Cleveland Public Library will present the free #CLEReads YA Book Festival celebrating stories encouraging young readers to find their voices and advocate for personal and community well-being. This year’s festival features authors of YA fiction and nonfiction focused on mental health, self-care, social justice, and more. The festival aims to inspire teens to pursue healthy, empowered lives and positively impact the world around them. Keynote Speaker is hip hop artist and actor Common, author of the new book And Then We Rise. Learn more and reserve your spot for this free event at cpl.org/cle-reads.

Book Week programs will culminate in the free Great Lakes African American Writers Conference (GLAAWC) on October 5 at the Cleveland Public Library Lakeshore Branch, 17133 Lakeshore Blvd. (in the Old Villa Angela Auditorium) with a focus on “Black Books, Black Business, Black Excellence.” This year’s conference features in-person appearances by New York Times bestselling author Kimberla Lawson Roby giving the Langston Hughes Literary Keynote (followed by a book signing) and leading literary agent Cherise Fisher presenting the Alice Dunbar Nelson Professional Keynote (and a small group workshop). The free sessions open to the public will run from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. GLAAWC concludes on Sunday, October 6 with a virtual screening and discussion of “Colored to Black,” a film on the African American experience presented in partnership with the DEMASKUS Theater Collective of Pittsburgh. Time to be determined. Learn more and register at glaawc.us.

To celebrate this year’s Cleveland Book Week, Scene is featuring poetry by local writers alongside Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winners. Read and enjoy!