Cleveland Book Week to Graduate to Month-Long Cleveland Book Fest This September

Cleveland Book Week is having a growth spurt in September, when it officially becomes Cleveland’s month-long celebration of all things writerly. Credit: Cleveland Book Best

Cleveland Book Week is about to encounter a serious plot point.

This September, the usual week-long literary celebration becomes (officially) Cleveland Book Fest, with eight local organizations planning four weeks of events instead of the historically allotted one.

A wide span of talks, exhibits, readings, workshops and panels, spanning a myriad of genres and age groups, will be coming to Cleveland while simultaneously reaching a coming of age: showing the rest of the country that the city’s literary scene can hang with those of New York, Chicago and Miami.

While getting Clevelanders to crack a spine as well.

“What if during the month of September, every single resident in the Greater Cleveland area engaged with a book?” Kortney Morrow, a local poet and program director of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, said in a promo video released Thursday.

“What if each encounter created this quiet ripple effect, activating literacy and literature in the hearts and minds of Cleveland residents for generations to come?” she added in a press release. “We’ve come together to find out.”

So far, according to the Fest’s site, the Cleveland Public Library, the Cuyahoga County Public Library, the City Club, Lake Erie Ink, AWBA, Writers in Residence and the Great Lakes African-American Writers Conference are all involved in hosting programs across the city come September.

A schedule posted this week includes talks and readings from authors Dan Chaon, Jill Lepore and musicians Pat Benatar and Neil Giraldo.

The writer Celeste Ng, known for Little Fires Everywhere and Everything I Never Told You, will be the keynote speaker at Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator conference, which kicks off September 12 at CPL Main.

Matt Weinkam, the director of Literary Cleveland, said that although the graduation to Fest from Week doesn’t exactly guarantee more secure funding—especially during a tumultuous year for public arts dollars—it does portend good things about what it all means culturally.

“It is the first step towards closer collaboration among partners,” he said.

He added, “I’m thrilled we’re finally calling it Cleveland Book Fest.”