With New Pop-Up Events, Literary Cleveland's Inkubator Lit Fest Returns Bigger and Better This September

Inkubator will open up to three different neighborhoods, along with its usual weekend events at the CPL, in its ninth festival come this September. Credit: Literary Cleveland

In what may be its first true post-pandemic event, Lit Cleveland’s annual Inkubator literary fest returns this fall, tagging onto Cleveland Book Week, with its in-person events being hosted at the Cleveland Public Library on September 22 and 23.

Along with 47 workshops, panels, a book fair, afterparties and free Mitchell’s ice cream, Literary Cleveland, Inkubator’s host since 2015, has some new tricks up its sleeve all throughout September, including three new pop-up events set in Cleveland’s neighborhoods.

Last year, after moving the event to run parallel to Cleveland Book Week, Literary Cleveland Director Matt Weinkam decided to open up Inkubator’s event range into different spots in the literary community.

With registration—1,200 people—at a record high last year, Weinkam fashioned 2023’s Inkubator like South Florida’s O, Miami Poetry Festival, a yearly festival that adopts a more around town kind of vibe. And, with headliners Lydia Davis, Peter Ho Davies and Hanif Abdurraqib, he hopes to attract an increasing number of attendees from outside of Northeast Ohio, not just those outside the city proper.

“We wanted to bring the conference out of the library,” Weinkam said, “and into different areas of the community, into neighborhoods that wouldn’t necessarily be able to get downtown.”

Starting September 10, Balance Point Studios, run by artist couple Ali and Donald Black, will be spearheading bike tours of murals in Cleveland’s Mt. Pleasant and Kinsman neighborhoods. The”Poetry Rideout,” as the Blacks are calling it, will prompt riders to write reflection pieces.

On Sunday, September 24th, the Rust Belt Humanities Lab, a regional storytelling initiative led by Urseline professor Valentino Zullo, will be setting up a comics-making pop-up at the West Side Market. Zullo will also, Weinkam said, be handing out free books donated by Cleveland Reads. “You’ll be stumbling on books displayed like fruit.”

And, across from Literary Cleveland’s new headquarters space on Larchmere Blvd., Loganberry Books will be orchestrating a “Coaster Series” project, where the bookshop will be dispersing 10,000 drink coasters with poetry printed on them to area bars and restaurants.

“It’s an unconventional way to reach people, I know,” Weinkam said. “But that’s just it.”

Cleveland poets Kevin Latimer and Brendan Joyce sell books published by their own GRIEVELAND press at 2022’s Inkubator. Credit: Literary Cleveland

With a keynote address by Domincan-American poet Elizabeth Acevedo, 2023’s Inkubator will host a wide range of writerly workshops and panels, from those exploring “Cleveland Noir” to the tenets of microfiction, the origin of the sestina, along with a look at “New Cleveland Journalism.” Lydia Davis, the award-winning short story writer, will be exploring the ongoing tension between Amazon and indie booksellers. (Her newest work, Our Strangers, isn’t being sold on the former).

While it’s nice to have a post-pandemic affair, Lit Cleveland is also taking lessons learned from the era and adopting them to how Inkubator runs now. It’s half the reason why Abdurraqib’s and Davis’ panels are entirely virtual: to allow fans who can’t be there in person the chance to participate.

The same goes, Weinkam said, for how Inkubator draws its stars. Writer Sean Thomas resides in Erie, Penns. Peter Ho Davis lives in Ann Arbor. Elissa Washuta teaches in Columbus. Manuel Iris is driving up from Cincinnati.

“The more we could draw some names from some of those places,” Weinkam added, “people in Pittsburgh, Detroit, Columbus could say, ‘Oh, this isn’t just a Cleveland conference.’ This is more of regional thing.”

Admission, as always, is free for both in-person and virtual events. Registration opens online August 1st at 8 a.m.

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