Feature

from Scene September 7, 2022

Digging Into Cleveland Book Week, Bigger and Better an Ever in 2022

Edited and compiled by Lit Cleveland

CLEVELAND IS QUIETLY

ONE of the most literary cities in the country.

Our region has vibrant independent bookstores, two of the top-rated library systems in the country, and a legacy of world-class authors that stretches from Toni Morrison to Langston Hughes, Mary Oliver to Rita Dove, Harvey Pekar to Dan Chaon.

This year, the literary community is coming together to make some noise. More than 50 free events for book lovers crowd the calendar from September 6-18, the work of three major partner organizations that crafted the 2022 Cleveland Book Week.

Since March 2021, staff of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards (AWBA), presented by the Cleveland Foundation, the Great Lakes African American Writers Conference (GLAAWC pronounced “glossy”), and Literary Cleveland have worked to build the city’s most collaborative literary celebration yet.

The goal is to elevate Cleveland as a national center of literary excellence, lift brilliant writers that other places overlook and sharpen our local literary conversations. Staff at the National Endowment for the Arts liked the idea enough to grant money toward this year’s celebration.

Literary Cleveland will kick off Book Week with the eighth annual Inkubator Writing Conference, the largest free workshop in the nation. It features virtual events September 6-8 and free in-person programs at the downtown Cleveland Public Library on September 9-10 with keynote speaker Jami Attenberg.

For 87 years, the AnisfieldWolf Book Awards have honored groundbreaking books that advance our understanding of racism and our appreciation of the rich diversity of human cultures. This year, Anisfield-Wolf events run September 14-16, with the awards 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), and Lifetime Achievement winner Ishmael Reed.

Book Week programs will culminate in the Great Lakes African American Writers Conference on September 17 at the downtown Cleveland Public

Library featuring the prolific award-winning author Walter

Mosley as the Langston Hughes

Literary Keynote. Additionally, a Sunday Brunch fundraiser on September 18 will feature two-time James Beard Awardwinning culinary author Toni

Tipton-Martin, who once edited the Plain Dealer food section, and local celebrity chef Eric

Wells. Partners at all three organizations hope these combined efforts enhance and amplify the literary appetite of Cleveland. Some of the best authors in English will connect with local emerging talent to develop the next great voices, and collaborative events will inspire new projects and partnerships. To celebrate Cleveland Book

Week, Scene is featuring poetry by local writers alongside

Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winners as well as an interview with Electric Literature Editor in Chief Denne Michele Norris, who is a 2022 GLAAWC speaker, Cleveland native, and the highest-ranking Black trans woman in publishing.

See the full schedule of book week events at www.anisfield-wolf.org.

e Legacy of Edith Anis eld Wolf

EDITH ANISFIELD WOLF

was a published poet and civic activist from Cleveland who lived 1889-1963. From the time she was a young girl, she was passionately committed to social justice, and she used literature as a means to explore racial prejudice and celebrate human diversity.

A woman ahead of her time, she established the AnisfieldWolf Book Awards in 1935, some 20 years before the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision.

Upon her death, she left her home to the Cleveland Welfare Association, her books to the Cleveland Public Library and her funds to the Cleveland Foundation for a community service award, aid for the needy and the Anisfield-Wolf book prize.

ALI BLACK

Ali Black is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. Her work has appeared in The Atticus Review, jubilat, Literary Hub, The Offing and elsewhere. Her first book of poetry, If It Heals At All, was selected by Jaki Shelton Green for the New Voices series at Jacar Press and it was named a finalist for the 2021 Ohioana Book Award. She will be presenting at Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator Writing Conference at the downtown Cleveland Public Library on September 9-10.

I WORE AN “I LOVE SHARON REED” T-SHIRT ON MY 30TH BIRTHDAY AND GOT BEAT UP & ARRESTED BY THE CLEVELAND POLICE

whenever I tell this story my wife says she could’ve never been the girl who was with us that the cop body-slammed on the hood of his car because she was trying to record a part of our history that now rattles us anytime we try to celebrate. I know my wife pictures herself hurting the cop’s body before he could ever try and lay a hand on hers, but that type of dreaming only exists when you can no longer celebrate. I tell her how my words meant nothing to the cop who twisted my nose after I told him my uncle wore blue too as if colors ever united any of us. I let her know one of the smartest niggas with us took off his “I Love Sharon Reed” shirt and bounced as if he remembered his mother telling him to never ride four deep in a car or otherwise become a target by kicking it with a group of thirty niggas on W. 6th Street in downtown Cleveland after LeBron James makes his decision to leave a city that calls you and your friends a gang because you are all dressed in the same T-shirt.

VICTORIA CHANG

Victoria Chang’s collection OBIT (Copper Canyon Press, 2020) received a 2021 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award in Poetry. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, and lives in Los Angeles and is Acting Program Chair and Faculty member within Antioch’s low-residency MFA Program. Her new book of poetry, The Trees Witness Everything, was published by Copper Canyon Press in 2022. She will be reading from OBIT at Lake View Cemetery’s Community Mausoleum on Friday, September 16 at 5 p.m. as part of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards events.

The Head–died on August 3, 2015. When the two men finally came, they rolled a gurney into the other room, hushed talking on noises, then the tip of the gurney came out like a cruise ship. They were worried about dinging the walls. My mother’s whole body covered with a blanked. Her head gone. Her face gone. Rilke was wrong. The body is nothing without the head. My mother, now covered, was no longer my mother. A covered apple is no longer an apple. A sketch of a person isn’t the person. Somewhere, in the morning, my mother had become the sketch. And I would spend the rest of my life trying to shade her back in.

Six Poems from Local Arti s and Anis eld-Wolf Winners

DONIKA KELLY

Donika Kelly is the author of The Renunciations (Graywolf, 2021), winner of the Anisfield-Wolf book award in poetry, and Bestiary (Graywolf, 2016), the winner of the 2015 Cave Canem Poetry Prize. Donika lives in Iowa City and is an assistant professor in the English Department at the University of Iowa. She will be reading from The Renunciations at the LGBT Center of Greater Cleveland on Wednesday, September 14 at 4 p.m. as part of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards events.

Love Poem

Let us be ocean and coast, a taking into and over one another: shifting sediment, a breaking down of rock: dredge and deposit. A series of prepositions meaning proximity, although the most of us extends away from one another. Once, in winter, I ventured far inland, forgot the crash of gravity pulling you over me and away—forgot there is a place where we meet and retreat but never let go. Let this be a moment of remembering, my love, as I stand at the edge of myself, cliff and sea grass and the screaming gull above, sighting your breadth to the horizon.

STEPHANIE GINESE

Stephanie Ginese is a writer from South Lorain, Ohio. She is the daughter of a Puerto Rican mother & an Italian immigrant father. She currently lives in Cleveland, by the lake, with her two children. Unto Dogs (Grieveland, 2022) is her debut book of poetry. She will be presenting at Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator Writing Conference at the downtown Cleveland Public Library on September 9-10.

prayer to alleviate shame

Body, first capital & I have bartered it oh God, oh trined mother, I have spent it story awash in the stench of what feeds me I am not what I have done to get here Body, trusted compass somehow, we have always made it out alive & isn’t that what this miraculous shroud was fashioned for this dazzling machine allow me to test the limits of what the senses can take I am starting to unravel my obsession with what carries us upright & tangled a bullet sails past the third moon & I claw rivers into my Body, unholiest of muses each breath that escapes is its own penance.

Ishmael Reed is the 2022 Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards Lifetime Achievement recipient. He has published over 30 books of poetry, prose, essays, and plays, including the groundbreaking novel Mumbo Jumbo. He will be featured on The City Club on Friday, September 16 at 11:30 a.m. as part of the AnisfieldWolf Book Awards events.

Going For Seventy-Five for Yuqing Lin

Alex Honnold climbs with no rope nor gear He breaks between the meadow and stars His youthful zest plays chicken with fear He chalks his hands to grip the rock And reaches El Capitan’s top block by block We’ve scaled the cliffs and are climbing down We nod as the Honnold’s pass us by They dazzle the crowd that made the trip While we dangle by our fingertips We made some missteps In our day Ducked the boulders of our time Came through the mists and fog Okay Survived to climb another day Our ups and downs are quite a few But few of them have had our vista The silverfish have swarmed us too And we, too, have sometimes Forgotten our glue And often we’re cut And other times, we bleed The older we get, the less rope we need Our destination is among the weeds

Ismael Reed with translator Yuqing Lin. Reed says, “She was responsible for hismynovel, Japanese by Spring, becoming a national project in China, which meant that the gov. paid for its research. She visited us for a year under a U.C. Berkeley fellowship. We all visited Yosemite where this photo was taken by my daughter, Tennessee. She died recently of breast cancer, she was 40 and leaves behind 2 small kids.”

Pluto and Luca Walk into a Bar

Pluto overhears Luca say Why aren’t I given credit for All life that exists? Is it because I’m a single-cell, bacterium-like organism? I, who am the ancestor of trees, birds, fish And just about everything that you Can think of Instead of looking to the sky for God, they should look to the bottom Of the ocean where I live

O, you think that you don’t get Respect, Pluto said First, they gave me that Dreadful name after the Greek Hades and then They dismiss me as Just a big snowball in space

And now that they find I’m more Complicated That underneath my surface Lie oceans and possibly life I’m booted from the news cycle by the discovery of a 9th planet

Turning to the bartender A pigeon, Pluto said At least we’re not a pigeon

The pigeon Was unruffled, he said Calmly, wiping some glasses “Well, Pluto, it must be Scary to be on a Collision course with Neptune Who do you think will prevail From such an encounter?

And Luca, you have to have One of Jacques Cousteau, Jr’s Submersibles to even Notice you Down there, cold, dark and Lonely

You will never see a rainbow While my neck is one

Denne Michele Nor s on W ting, Cleveland, and Elevating Black Trans Voices

Interview by Rev. Dr. Leah C.K. Lewis

AFRICAN AMERICAN

literature is not only a living archive of history and heritage, it is a futurist technology that forges new frontiers of identity, liberty, community, and creativity. The Great Lakes African American Writers Conference (GLAAWC) is a yearly celebration of the awesome depth and breadth of Black literature — its past, present, and future — infinite modalities, utilities, and possibilities.

This year, in recognition of African American writers’ ability to celebrate, educate, and innovate, GLAAWC has named Denne Michele Norris the 2022 Alice Dunbar Nelson Professional Keynote Speaker. As editor-inchief of Electric Literature, Denne Michele is the first Black, openly trans woman to helm a major literary publication.

Denne Michele’s fiction, which appears in the anthologies Everyday People: The Color of Life (Atria Books) and Forward: 21st Century Flash Fiction, has been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize, and her story “Where Every Boy Is Known and Loved” was a finalist for the 2018 Best Small Fictions Prize. She is a 2021 Out100 Honoree, 2019 Peter Taylor Fellow at The Kenyon Review Fiction Workshop, and co-host of the critically acclaimed podcast Food 4 Thot.

In a recent exchange with GLAAWC Founder and Executive Producer Rev. Dr. Leah C.K. Lewis, Denne Michele spoke candidly about her hometown connection to Cleveland, reasons for writing, and achievements and aspirations as an editor. GLAAWC attendees can enjoy Denne Michele’s keynote virtually or in person at the Louis Stokes Wing Main Auditorium of the CPL Main Branch on Saturday, September 17.

When did you know you wanted to become a writer? An editor?

I’ve been writing creatively since I was in middle school. I wrote my first novel in one of those now vintage Mead college ruled notebooks when I was 12. I’ve been writing ever since, but it was when I handed in my undergraduate thesis that I realized I was more proud of my writing than anything else I’d ever done. I decided that summer to give it a go and gave myself a deadline to have something — anything — published within 5 years — or I was going to law school. I published my first short story at 4 years and 8 months!

I realized I was a strong editor in graduate school, and a few years later, a friend from grad school approached me about taking over the role of Fiction Editor at a wonderful literary journal, Apogee Journal, and I jumped at the opportunity. And I haven’t stopped since.

How did life in Cleveland inspire your art? How did it inform your craft?

Much of my fiction is set vaguely in the Midwest, but a lot of the novel I’m working on is actually set in Chagrin Falls. Place really informs both setting and character, so I find that life in Cleveland helps me think through all things character: motivation, tension, opinions and behaviors and choices — as well as the visuals I hope a reader conjures when they read my work. It also deeply impacts the sound of my characters, the sound of a setting — in as much as dialogue is crafted to reflect setting. Largely speaking, Cleveland has influenced my writing in the details — the characteristics that make fiction real to a reader.

What role has being trans played in your compulsion — if I may call it that — to write?

I think the biggest role that being trans has played in my compulsion to write is in helping to shape the subject matter I write about. From centering queer and trans characters of color to writing critically about the systemic challenges we face, it’s at the core why I’m driven to write, as well as how I approach the publishing industry from an editor’s perspective.

There are so many large cultural conversations about trans people and identity writ large. But so often, the loudest voices talking about trans people aren’t trans

people — and that’s a problem. I’m blessed enough to be in a position to do something about it, and that’s a huge part of my motivation, both as a writer, and as an editor.

Your identity exists in the intersection of so many different groups, all of which are considered “oppressed.” Has publishing and gaining recognition as a writer been harder for you as a Black trans woman? How have you overcome obstacles put in your path, and how would you encourage other writers, be they Black, LGBTQI+, women, what have you, to keep pushing?

It’s difficult for me to speak on whether or not it’s been more challenging for me to gain recognition because I’m a Black trans woman. I’m not in charge of what recognition I do or don’t receive. I don’t make those decisions. My honest feeling is that I started receiving recognition when my work was strong enough to earn it. I’ve always been almost single-mindedly focused on the work, the craft of what I’m doing. Not for some selfsatisfied, high-minded reason, but for pragmatic reasons. I’m not in control of how my work will be received — that has very little to do with the writer beyond what they do on the page. A writer can promote their work until the cows come home, but it doesn’t mean readers will like it or even read it. What I can control is the effort I put forth. I can control whether or not I’ve earned the time and energy it takes to read my writing. I focus my energy on the things I can, at least, influence, if not entirely control.

Systematically speaking, it’s incredibly difficult for QPOC, especially Black trans people, to gain a sturdy foothold in this industry, and that is largely because the majority of decision makers are cishet white people. That’s just a fact. I encourage writers to focus on the primacy of craft. When you really know the craft of your artform, no one can take that away from your work. It’s undeniable. There are many aspiring writers out there—there are not always many exceptional ones. I also encourage writers, once they feel they have a steady handle on craft, to adopt a Shonda Rhimes “Year of Yes” mentality. But not for one year — do it for five. Do everything you can to meet people, talented, hard working people with integrity. Support them in their literary efforts. Invest in their success. They will likely do the same for you, and then you’ll have community — and that’s crucial.

Denne Michele Norris.

Your first novel features a protagonist whose father dies, plunging him into a deep identity crisis. On the podcast Ideas on Fire, you say the book deals with “...shame, homophobia, race, interracial relationships…, questions of masculinity and femininity…, religion and faith.” What are some of the important things you seek to say about these things through your writing? What do you want readers to understand or realize through the experience of your work?

I certainly hope that readers will fall in love with these characters, but probably my biggest hope is that readers will come away from this book understanding that we can free ourselves from these shackles. We have constructed our society along certain lines, by human design. That is such a gift. It means that we can reimagine a better version at any time, and we can set out to make that better version a reality. And by the way, that’s the (much simplified) story of America. Let’s reimagine gender, let’s reimagine faith, let’s reimagine our rules on what everyone should or shouldn’t be.

How can the African American writing community elevate trans voices? Who are some of the trans writers out there right now that you want to shine a light on and help bring to a wider audience?

I think we can start by not caping for Black folks who spout transphobic rhetoric. People’s identities are not discussion points, and we have a habit of engaging with some serious both-sidesism when discussing transness, which inherently degrades the integrity of trans lives. I think this tendency comes from our own very gendered trauma in the context of the cishet white patriarchy that is America, but we must not allow that framework to justify us oppressing our own people, or delegitimizing the many and varied identities of Black people. There are many Courtesy of Hilary Leichter Black trans activists that the community should be reading and elevating right now, like Raquel

Willis and Janet Mock. There are also the poets Danez Smith and

Rickey Laurentiis who’ve been consistently doing beautiful work for several years. Akwaeke Emezi is a wonderful writer, too.

If someone were to begin reading your work today, what should they pick up to get a meaningful sense of who you are as a writer and the project of your writing? What is your favorite published thing you’ve ever written? What are you working on now?

My story “Daddy’s Boy” is an early project of mine, published in 2016, that, while short, exemplifies so much of what occupies my literary imagination. There’s also an anthology celebrating short stories by writers of color, Everyday People: The

Color of Life, that includes an excerpt of my novel, entitled “Last Rites.” I’m still working on that novel, and I’m starting the next novel and working on a number of short stories.

Tell us about Electric Lit.

What does it contribute to the literary world that is unique and important?

Electric Lit is an independent digital publisher of short work with a mission to make literature more exciting, relevant, and inclusive since 2009. We publish two acclaimed literary magazines: Recommended

Reading, for longer-form short fiction, and The Commuter, for poetry, graphic narrative, and flash prose. Outside of those, we also publish essays, book lists, and author interviews. As EL’s third editor-in-chief, I oversee the editorial operations of everything other than Recommended Reading and The Commuter. All of our work is available online for free, and every year we serve over 5 million readers. We’re often the first to publish or very early champions of new and emerging voices who become crucial to the American publishing landscape.

Was it important for you to become an editor? What do you consider your job as an editor?

I love connecting with authors and working together to affirm their vision — and sometimes grow it — of their work. The thing that becoming a full-time editor has done is that it’s given me a whole new level of regard for my work as an editor. Until I started working at EL — although I genuinely loved editing — I saw it primarily as something that would serve my ambitions as a writer. It’s so much more important to me now — my ambitions as an editor and my ambitions for my writing are, of course, intertwined, but they’re also very separate. Editing — and what I hope to accomplish as an editor — is just as important to me, if not more important, than whatever happens to my own writing. And I never knew I could feel that way about something.

What are some things you can tell writers about getting published as an experienced editor?

Listen closely to editors — take their advice when it’s right, but don’t be afraid to go a different way when it’s wrong. The editor doesn’t always have the answers, and that is not the editor’s job. Lastly, getting published is a wonderful thing for many reasons. It is not the be-all-end-all of a life in letters. Whether you are published or not, the task becomes more and more simple, I think, as you move forward. The task is to continue writing, continue reading. Keep traversing this road we’ve chosen, even if you can’t see very far in front of you. As my mother would say, that’s the time to step out on faith. Living life as a writer, ultimately, is about stepping out on faith.

It has been said that “It’s lonely at the top.” Is that the case for you as the highest-ranking Black trans woman in publishing today?

Yes. But I’m working hard to change it.