Charlayne Hunter-Gault to speak at Cleveland library

The Cleveland Public Library -- one of the few well-functioning public entities left in town — hosts some stellar, but rarely publicized, speaker series for bookworms. In the past year, they’ve featured big-name authors such as Michael Chabon, Dave Eggers, and Sherman Alexie, all speaking for free in the library’s main downtown branch. For literary geeks, it’s like our own private World Series. This Sunday brings another worthy star to town. Charlayne Hunter-Gault spent more than a decade as the chief national correspondent for the Newshour with Jim Lehrer on PBS, winning two Emmys and a Peabody award for a series on South Africa called Apartheid’s People. She went on to become a bureau chief for CNN in Johannesburg, and is now back at work for NPR. Her personal story is nothing to sniff at, either. She made history as the first black woman to graduate from the University of Georgia in 1962, and two years ago wrote a book about some of the positive — and, thus, rarely reported -- news coming out of Africa. Check her out at 2 p.m. Sunday in the main library on Superior Avenue. For more info, click here. -- Lisa Rab