The third annual Cleveland Book Week runs this year from Sept. 21-29, and will celebrate present and past Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards winners, while offering a number of free literary and literacy themed events for the community. The series of events is anchored by the sold out 83rd annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards ceremony, scheduled for Thursday, Sept. 27 in the State Theatre at Playhouse Square. This year’s winners are:
- Shane McCrae, In the Language of My Captor, Poetry
- N. Scott Momaday, Lifetime Achievement
- Jesmyn Ward, Sing, Unburied, Sing, Fiction
- Kevin Young, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News, Nonfiction
The Cleveland Foundation and Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards are presenting Cleveland Book Week in partnership with Baker-Nord Center, Brews + Prose, The City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland Public Library, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Karamu House, Literary Cleveland and Twelve Literary Arts.
Download the full schedule of events here.
Creative Mornings – Margo Hudson
Friday, September 21
8:30 a.m.
East Cleveland Public Library
FREE EVENT: Tickets available here.
Local literacy advocate Margo Hudson will be the featured speaker for September’s Creative Mornings gathering. For its theme of “chaos,” Hudson will share about that phenomena in terms of literacy, and her work moving herself and others away from illiteracy.
Hudson earned her GED® in 2012 from Seeds of Literacy. She spent 11 years studying and took the test 6 times before passing. Margo now serves as a tutor at Seeds, helping other students achieve their literacy goals. In a city where two of every three Clevelanders read at the seventh-grade level or below, her work is immensely valuable.
In 2016, she was named National Adult Learner of the Year and received Governor Kasich’s Courage Award. That same year, she led the Pledge of Allegiance at a session of the Republican National Convention. In 2017, Cleveland Magazine named Margo one of Cleveland’s Most Interesting People, and she is a 2018 Cleveland Foundation Place Maker. She now speaks to community groups and nonprofits about how literacy changed her life.
Paul Beatty: Writers & Readers
Saturday, September 22
2 p.m.
Cleveland Public Library, Main Library – Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium
FREE EVENT: Registration not required
Paul Beatty visits Cleveland Public Library as part of its Writers & Readers Series, presented in partnership with Literary Cleveland. His 2015 novel The Sellout made him the first American to win the Man Booker Prize in Fiction and earned the 2015 National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction. The novelist, in his own words, set out to see if he could make himself flinch, writing a scathing satire about reinstating slavery on a present-day farm in southern California. He is also the author of The White Boy Shuffle, Tuff, Slumberland and two works of poetry.
Shane McCrae: In the Language of My Captor
(2018 AWBA Poetry Winner)
Tuesday, September 25
5:30 p.m.
Karamu House
FREE EVENT: Registration required
Shane McCrae interrogates history and perspective with his fifth book, In the Language of My Captor, including the connections between racism and love. He uses historical persona poems and prose memoir to address the illusory freedom of both black and white Americans. This evening of poetry, music, and art is presented by Twelve Literary Arts and Karamu House.
A. Van Jordan at Baker-Nord Center for the Humanities
(2005 AWBA Poetry Winner, M*A*C*N*O*L*I*A)
Wednesday, September 26
5 p.m.
Harkness Chapel, Case Western Reserve University
FREE EVENT: Registration recommended
Join poet A. Van Jordan, 2005 Anisfield-Wolf winner for M*A*C*N*O*L*I*A, and Ohio Poet Laureate Dave Lucas for conversation and recitation. Jordan uses multiple voices and approaches to portray MacNolia Cox, an Akron girl who became the first black finalist in the National Spelling Bee Competition. His poems draw on blues, jazz and prose stylings to depict the Depression and mid-century racism, two elements that framed life in 1936.
AW Salon: Steven Pinker and Henry Louis Gates Jr. on Enlightenment Now
Wednesday, September 26
5:30 p.m.
Cleveland Museum of Art
FREE EVENT – Registration required
Anisfield-Wolf jurist Steven Pinker set out, first in his acclaimed The Better Angels of Our Nature, and this year in the follow-up bestseller Enlightenment Now, to illustrate that there has never been a better time to be a human being. Join us for a unique, intimate, and intriguing conversation around this and other topics between Pinker and Anisfield-Wolf Jury Chair Henry Louis Gates Jr. – friends and Harvard University professors.
[SOLD OUT] Writers Center Stage – Judy Blume
Wednesday, September 26
7:30 p.m.
The Milton and Tamar Maltz Performing Arts Center
TICKETS: By subscription only – single event tickets are $30 and go on sale Monday, Aug. 20 at 9 a.m.
The William N. Skirball Writers Center Stage Series kicks off this year with Judy Blume, one of the world’s most beloved authors. Her books have sold more than 85 million copies in 32 languages, becoming a touchstone for generations of young readers. The program includes a Q&A and book signing.
83rd Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards – SOLD OUT
Thursday, September 27
6 p.m.
State Theatre, Playhouse Square
Watch the ceremony live via webstream here at www.anisfield-wolf.org.
The Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards recognize books that have made important contributions to our understanding of racism and human diversity. It remains the only American book prize focusing on works that address racism and equity. For more than 80 years, the distinguished books earning Anisfield-Wolf prizes have opened and challenged our minds.
The City Club of Cleveland Forum: N. Scott Momaday
(2018 AWBA Lifetime Achievement Winner)
Friday, September 28
Noon
The City Club of Cleveland
TICKETS: $22 members/$37 nonmembers
N. Scott Momaday remade American literature in 1966 with his first novel, the Pulitzer Prize-winning House Made of Dawn. Anisfield-Wolf Jury Chair Henry Louis Gates Jr. says Momaday “is at root a storyteller who both preserves and expands Native American culture in his critically praised, transformative writing.” He will discuss his life, his work, and take questions in the traditional City Club of Cleveland style.
Bunk and a Beer with Kevin Young
(2018 AWBA Nonfiction Winner, Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News)
Friday, September 28
6 p.m.
Worthington Yards
FREE EVENT: Registration recommended
Kevin Young is a public intellectual, the editor of eight books and the author of 13, including the 2018 Anisfield-Wolf winning Bunk: The Rise of Hoaxes, Humbug, Plagiarists, Phonies, Post-Facts, and Fake News. He spent six years researching and writing this cultural history of the covert American love of the con, and its entanglement with racial history. This event is co-sponsored by Brews + Prose.
Great Lakes Black Authors Expo & Writers Conference 
Saturday, September 29, 10 a.m. – 5 p.m.
East Cleveland Public Library
FREE EVENT: Registration required
Organized by Melanated Literary Heritage, Ltd., the Great Lakes Black Authors Expo and Writers Conference fosters literary education and publishing industry networking. Notable authors from all over the Great Lakes region, along with Keynote Speaker Tayari Jones, author of An American Marriage, will convene and work towards developing a platform to recognize up-and-coming writers.
AW Family: Derrick Barnes and Gordon James on CROWN: An Ode to the Fresh Cut
Saturday, September 29
2 p.m.
Cleveland Public Library, Main Library – Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium
FREE EVENT: Registration not required
Joy, imagination, swagger and style animate Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, as a young black boy prepares to take on the world with a fresh cut. The author and illustrator share the story of their picture book, which earned Newbery and Caldecott Honors, Coretta Scott King Author and Illustrator Honors, the Ezra Jack Keats New Illustrator Honor, and a Gold Medal from the Society of Illustrators.
Charles Ellenbogen
August 17, 2018
Wow. I kept scrolling and I kept saying wow. What a line-up!