CLEVELAND, Aug. 23, 2023: The Cleveland Foundation announced the schedule for the eighth annual Cleveland Book Week, September 18 – 23, 2023. This year’s showcase will celebrate present and past Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards (AWBA) winners over the distinguished 88-year history of the prize. The far-ranging programs are nearly all free to the community.
Anchoring the events is the 88th Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards ceremony, which will be held for the second consecutive year at the Maltz Performing Arts Center at Case Western Reserve University on Thursday, Sept. 28. In addition, the accompanying documentary highlighting the 2023 recipients – hosted by AWBA Jury Chair Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr. – will debut early in 2024, airing on WVIZ/PBS and throughout Ohio’s public television network. This marks the fourth year of the collaboration, with the 2022 version accessible to more than 91% of the total United States population, airing more than 1,000 times on PBS stations nationwide.
The book awards remain the only national juried prize for literature that confronts racism and explores human diversity. The 2023 honorees are:
- Geraldine Brooks, “Horse,” Fiction (Viking)
- Lan Samantha Chang, “The Family Chao,” Fiction (W.W. Norton)
- Matthew F. Delmont, “Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad,” Nonfiction (Viking)
- Charlayne Hunter-Gault, Lifetime Achievement
- Saeed Jones, “Alive at the End of the World,” Poetry (Coffee House Press)
“We are delighted to once again partner with organizations both familiar and new to present one of the most exciting book weeks since the idea began in 2016,” said Karen R. Long, manager of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards for the Cleveland Foundation. “Honestly, Book ‘Week’ is a misnomer because the activities burst into a full fortnight. We welcome all readers to this party.”
The Cleveland Foundation and Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards are presenting Cleveland Book Week in partnership with Case Western Reserve University, The City Club of Cleveland, Cleveland Mounted Police, Cleveland Public Library, East Technical High School, Great Lakes African American Writers Conference, Karamu House Theatre, Li Wah Restaurant and Literary Cleveland.
For more information on Cleveland Book Week (#CBW2023) and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards (#AWBA2023), including ongoing updates, visit anisfield-wolf.org.
Events scheduled for Cleveland Book Week 2023 include:
Sept. 18-23
Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator Conference
Inkubator Writing Conference will officially kick off the 2023 Cleveland Book Week, with online literary panels running Sept. 18-20 and the in-person component at the downtown Cleveland Public Library Sept. 22-23. 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. 2023 speakers include 2017 AWBA fiction winner Peter Ho Davies and a keynote reading with Elizabeth Acevedo.
Registration: https://inkubator.litcleveland.org/
Tuesday, Sept. 26
Saeed Jones and “Alive at the End of the World” (2023 AWBA Poetry Winner)
7 p.m., Karamu House Theatre (2355 East 89th St., Cleveland, OH 44106)
“Alive at the End of the World,” Jones’ second collection, contains 46 poems that sweep from strict verse to prose paragraphs. Anisfield-Wolf juror Rita Dove calls the book “an aching reminder that a queer Black man leads a meta existence; he cannot live without thinking about living, constantly negotiating the everyday with an eye to the peril that can intrude at any time, from police violence to the minutest reactions from highbrow bigots.” Joseph Earl Thomas, the Anisfield-Wolf Fellow at the Cleveland State University Poetry Center, will introduce the event.
Registration: https://CBW2023SaeedJones.eventbrite.com
Wednesday, Sept. 27
Geraldine Brooks and “Horse” (2023 AWBA Fiction Winner)
4 p.m.; Police-Mounted Unit (1150 East 38th St., Cleveland, OH 44114)
Anisfield-Wolf Juror Joyce Carol Oates said “Horse” was “a truly poignant tale and very richly developed.” Juror Rita Dove called it beautifully written: “I have nothing but praise for her evocative descriptions of Black jockeys and trainers.” Geraldine Brooks has written three nonfiction books and likes to celebrate the implausibility of history, a spark in all six of her novels. They include “People of the Book” and “A Year of Wonders,” which has been translated into 25 languages. “March,” which imagines the Civil War experiences of the idealistic, absent father of “Little Women” won the 2006 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.
Registration: https://CBW2023GeraldineBrooks.eventbrite.com
Thursday, Sept. 28
88th Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards
6 p.m., Maltz Performing Arts Center at Case Western Reserve University (1855 Ansel Rd., Cleveland, OH 44106)
Registration (opens Sept. 7): https://case.edu/maltzcenter/node/1561
Watch the ceremony live via webstream 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 nearly 90 years, the distinguished books earning Anisfield-Wolf prizes have opened and challenged our minds.
Friday, Sept. 29
“My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives,” Charlayne Hunter-Gault (2023 AWBA Lifetime Achievement)
11:30 a.m., The City Club of Cleveland (1317 Euclid Ave., Cleveland, OH 44115)
Charlayne Hunter-Gault first made history in 1961 when she desegregated the University of Georgia after she mounted a successful legal challenge that granted her admission. In 1963, the Georgia governor declared her marriage to University of Georgia classmate Walter L. Stovall, who was white, “a shame and disgrace.” The state’s Attorney General even threatened prosecution. Charlayne has worked for The New Yorker, The New York Times, PBS, NPR, and CNN. She has received multiple awards, including an Emmy and Peabody for her distinguished work covering the Apartheid at PBS NewsHour. In her latest book, “My People: Five Decades of Writing About Black Lives,” Charlayne chronicles her lifelong commitment to reporting on Black people in their totality, from the Civil Rights Movement to the election of Barack Obama, and beyond.
In-Person Registration (you may also watch online for free beginning at noon): https://www.cityclub.org/forums/2023/09/29/my-people-five-decades-of-writing-about-black-lives
Lan Samantha Chang and “The Family Chao” (2023 AWBA Fiction Winner)
6:30 p.m.; Li Wah (2999 Payne Ave. #102, Cleveland, OH 44114)
It took Lan Samantha Chang a dozen years to compose “The Family Chao” amid her responsibilities directing the Iowa Writers Workshop, mentoring and teaching, creating a home with landscape painter Robert Caputo and raising their daughter. Joyce Carol Oates called the novel “an outstanding work of fiction,” saying she had read nothing else of late as ambitious or accomplished. Rita Dove enjoyed the book’s multi-faceted nature and the way it “digs deep, with a capacious reach.”
Registration: https://CBW2023LanSamanthaChang.eventbrite.com
Saturday, Sept. 30
Great Lakes African American Writers Conference: Black Books, Black Business, Black Excellence
10 a.m. – 5 p.m.; Main Library, Cleveland Public Library, Louis Stokes Wing Auditorium (325 Superior Ave., Cleveland, OH 44114)
The series of Book Week programs will be capped off by the 6th Annual Great Lakes African American Writers Conference on Sept. 30, which will return to the Cleveland Public Library Main Branch in downtown Cleveland. Poet, composer and playwright, Professor Janice Lowe will be the Alice Dunbar Nelson Professional Keynote Speaker followed by engaging panels featuring African American playwrights, entrepreneurs, and comic book entrepreneurs.
Registration: 6th Annual GLAAWC Registration
Matthew F. Delmont and “Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad” (2023 AWBA Nonfiction Winner)
Noon; East Technical High School (2439 East 55th St., Cleveland, OH 44104)
Historian and scholar Matthew F. Delmont begins “Half American” in Spain because, as he puts it, “the war really started for most Black Americans before Pearl Harbor. Fascism in Europe is something that Blacks understood as white supremacism.” More than one-million Black American men and women served in World War II, and those experiences galvanized the demand to defeat white supremacy at home. Anisfield-Wolf Juror Steven Pinker praised “Half American” as a “book heroically researched, rich in historical detail, well organized and written. This will probably stand as the landmark treatment for years to come.”
Registration: https://CBW2023MatthewFDelmont.eventbrite.com
Tuesday, Oct. 3
Author Thrity Umrigar in conversation with Karan Mahajan
7 p.m., Parma Snow Branch, Cuyahoga County Public Library, Sari Feldman Auditorium (2121 Snow Rd., Parma, OH 44134)
Umrigar will be in conversation with Anisfield-Wolf Book Award winner Karan Mahajan, Associate Professor of Literary Arts at Brown University. His second novel, “The Association of Small Bombs,” was a finalist for the 2016 National Book Awards and was named one of the “10 Best Books of 2016” by The New York Times. In 2017, he was named one of Granta’s “Best Young American Novelists” and in 2019, he received the Jeannette Haien Ballard Writer’s Prize given annually to “a young writer of proven excellence in poetry or prose.” Karan’s writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New York Review of Books, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker Online, The New Republic and other venues.
Registration: https://attend.cuyahogalibrary.org/event/7640067
Early 2024
Ideastream Public Media PBS documentary: “The 88th Annual Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards”
Airing early in 2024 on WVIZ/PBS, concurrent with website streaming and other PBS broadcasts
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 nearly 90 years, the distinguished books earning Anisfield-Wolf prizes have opened and challenged our minds.
For more information: https://www.ideastream.org/