7th Annual Cleveland Book Week Kicks Off September 9

Since 2016, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards have hosted Cleveland Book Week, to celebrate its past and present winners and showcase Greater Cleveland’s diverse literary and literacy community.

The Great Lakes African American Writers Conference (GLAAWC, pronounced “glossy”) joined Book Week in 2018.

This year, Literary Cleveland’s annual Inkubator Writing Conference has joined to make the 2022 festival the largest and most collaborative literary celebration yet.

Literary Cleveland will kick off the 2022 Book Week with the Inkubator Writing Conference, with online literary panels running September 6-8. The in-person component returns to the downtown Cleveland Public Library September 9-10. The organization will hold free writing workshops, panel discussions, craft talks, readings, and more to empower writers, advance artistic dialogue, celebrate literary excellence, and amplify local voices. 2022 speakers include Ross Gay and Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards events will take place September 14-16, with the ceremony to be held Thursday, September 15 at the Maltz Performing Arts Center.

The 2022 AWBA winners coming to Cleveland are:

• Percival Everett for “The Trees” (Fiction)
• Donika Kelly for “The Renunciations” (Poetry)
• George Makari for “Of Fear and Strangers: A History of Xenophobia” (Nonfiction)
• Tiya Miles for “All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley’s Sack, a Black Family Keepsake” (Nonfiction)
• Lifetime Achievement winner Ishmael Reed

The series of Book Week programs will be capped off by the Great Lakes African American Writers Conference on September 17, which will relocate this year to its new home at the Cleveland Public Library, Main Branch in downtown Cleveland. The conference will feature the prolific award-winning author Walter Mosley as the Langston Hughes Literary Keynote, along with free music, spoken word, lectures, panel discussions, and much more celebrating the African and African American literary arts. Additionally, a Sunday Brunch on September 18 features two-time James Beard Award-winning culinary author Toni Tipton-Martin and local celebrity chef Eric Wells.

Mark your calendar now for these engaging events and more as the calendar evolves with further details.