Literary Cleveland Launches Yearlong Celebration of Toni Morrison

Literary Cleveland thinks we need to celebrate Toni Morrison, argubly one of the most prolific writers to hail from Northeast Ohio, a little louder.

And for a little longer than just her birthday.

That’s why the arts organization is leading the charge to pay homage to the author for an entire year, kicking off on February 18, 94 years after Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio.

“Beloved: Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison” spans libraries and bookstores from Cleveland to Cincinnati, a reflection of the characters and settings from her 11 novels—from The Bluest Eye to Beloved. Books that garnered Morrison both the Nobel and Pulitzer prizes.

Though states like Washington and New York engage in months-long festivals or book clubs, it’s rare for one to dedicate a series of events to just one writer. Even England’s celebration of Emily Dickinson’s 195th birthday, with events across the country, barely spanned one month.

Literary Cleveland director Matt Weinkam said that’s precisely the point: generate 12 months of buzz in six Ohio cities to keep Morrison’s legacy thrumming seven years after her death from pneumonia at 88.

Weinkam told Scene that the idea came to him after Morrison’s passing, but took serious steps to make a yearlong celebration happen at the end of 2024.

“Our ambition is for every person in Ohio—young and old—to engage with Toni Morrison’s life, literature, and legacy,” he said in an email.

“This is our opportunity to celebrate the greatest artist in our state’s history,” Weinkam added. “Her writing challenges and inspires us as much today as when it was first published, and we can’t wait to bring it to life this year.”

When Morrison blew up the literary establishment in the 1960s and 1970s, her writing was received by critics as both cautiously raw and freshly honest. She put an unflinching voice to tough-to-discuss topics, like the Black inferiority complex, child molestation, infanticide and the dregs of American slavery in the South.

But despite the originality of her books, or Morrison becoming the first Black woman editor of Random House, she went two decades into her writing career without reaching any celebrity status. A 1988 letter compiled by a coalition of Black authors poked the majority-white heads of award committees for neglecting Morrison’s genius.

“Despite the international stature of Toni Morrison, she has yet to receive the national recognition that her five major works of fiction entirely deserve,” one writer put it. “She has yet to receive the keystone honors of the National Book Award or the Pulitzer Prize.”

“The legitimate need for our own critical voice in relation to our own literature,” they said, “can no longer be denied.”

Months later, Morrison was awarded the Pulitzer, for Beloved. And years after that, in 1993, she claimed the Nobel Prize in Literature for novels that “give life to an essential aspect of American reality.” Two decades later, President Obama awarded her the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Over 40 confirmed events, free and open to the public, will be held in Morrison’s honor throughout the next year.

Happenings in Cleveland include:

A reading of Morrison’s books at the Karamu House in February
A reading of Please, Louise, one her children’s books, at the Willoughby-Eastlake Public Library in February
A performance around Song of Solomon by the Cleveland Association of Black Storytellers in June
A talk with Andrea Davis Pinkey, a Morrison biographer, at the CPL in September
A FireFish Festival celebration in Lorain in September

See the full list of events here.

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