Save the date: Anisfield-Wolf weekend returns Sept. 18 & 19, 2026!

Close

Events

Cuyahoga County Public Library: Author Marlon James in Conversation with Joseph Earl Thomas

About the author: 

Marlon James is the Booker Prize–winning and New York Times bestselling author of A Brief History of Seven Killings; the bestselling and National Book Award finalist Black Leopard, Red Wolf; as well as the bestselling Moon Witch, Spider King; The Book of Night Women; and John Crow’s Devil. In addition to the Booker Prize, James’s novels have won the American Book Award, the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, the OCM Bocas Prize for Caribbean Literature, and the Los Angeles Times Ray Bradbury Prize for Science Fiction, and have been finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the NAACP Image Award. In 2019, Time magazine named him one of the one hundred most influential people in the world. Born in Jamaica, James lives in New York City. 

In The Disappearers, eight men in Kingston, Jamaica, begin rehearsals for a play in 1988. The men are strangers to one another and each has a different reason for being involved. But they all share one inescapable truth: All of them are gay―a “battyman” in Jamaican argot―and all of them must contend with the dangers that such a truth lays bare. 

One night a mob savagely attacks them, killing one of the men. For the survivors, their recovery is as much emotional as it is physical. As their bodies heal, each man grapples with the violence, the hatred, and the rage that the attack made plain. Some try to ignore what the attack has unearthed, while others double down on retribution. 

TICKETED EVENT

VIP Ticket: $30 + fees  (Each VIP ticket includes event admission, a copy of The Disappearers, VIP seating, signing line priority and a donation to the Cuyahoga County Public Library Foundation. )

Free tickets are also available for this event!