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The Cleveland Inkubator is Northeast Ohio's largest free annual festival for writers and readers! Events begin Wednesday, July 24, and continue through the Inkubator conference on Saturday, July 27 from 8:30am to 4:30pm at the downtown Cleveland Public Library. Join us for writing workshops, craft talks, panels, readings, and a resource fair featuring all the greatest local bookstores, presses, lit journals, writing groups, and literary organizations. See the full schedule below and register today!
Cleveland Inkubator is made by possible by the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, as well as through support from Cleveland Public Library.
Your writing group is more than just a collection of folks gathered together in a bunch. They're your first readers. Your community. Your tribe. Your circle of writers who will encourage you from the first page through publication and beyond. Find your Writing Circle at the Writing Group Matchmaking Event at CLE Urban Winery on Wednesday, July 24 from 7-9pm. Literary Cleveland is partnering with Creative Coach Brandi Larsen who will host this fun networking event. Come enjoy a glass of wine and meet writers like you who are ready to create a Writing Circle. Brandi will share tips on how to give feedback and strategies for a successful writing group. Similar to speed networking, you’ll rotate around the room meeting potential writing group partners. Matches will be sent following the event. Bring one page of writing that represents your work.
Join Lit Cleveland for our 4th annual book swap party along with a reading featuring Inkubator instructors! For every book you bring, you'll receive a raffle ticket that will allow you to exchange it for another book. This is a great chance to re-gift some books you no longer want and pick up some new-to-you summer reads. Magazines in good condition welcome, too. Leftover reading material will be donated to Seeds of Literacy.
Please register in advance for this free event by clicking on the button below!
Join Literary Cleveland for an open mic night at The Happy Dog! From 6:30-7:30 pm, mix and mingle while enjoying food and drink. At 7:30 pm, perform your piece or simply sit back and enjoy an evening of entertainment as open mic participants take the stage. All are welcome to attend and participate.
Please register in advance for this free event by clicking on the button below!
The 2019 Inkubator conference is a free, day-long conference with workshops, panels, craft talks, and readings. This year the conference will be held in coordination with the Cleveland Public Library's 150th anniversary celebration.
Arrival and checking begins at 8:30am at the downtown Cleveland Public Library. The book and resource fair will be open from 9:00am-4:00pm at the conference and will feature local independent booksellers, literary journals, publishers and presses, writing groups, and literary organizations. Participants so far include: Appletree Books, Autumn House Press, BARNHOUSE Journal, Cleveland Drafts, the Cleveland Kids' Book Bank, the Cleveland Review of Books, Crisis Chronicles Press, Lake Erie Ink, Loganberry Books, Mac's Backs Books, the NEO MFA program, NEO Romance Writers of America, NightBallet Press, Purpled Palm Press, Reading Room CLE, Seeds of Literacy, Twelve Literary Arts, Visible Voice Books, and more to come! From 12:15-1:15pm enjoy a midday lunch break with readings by members of Sisterhood, a West Side Community House after-school and summer arts program for girls 10-18. The conference ends with a keynote by award winning poet and writer Hanif Abdurraqib. And you're invited to stick around after the conference to participate in the library's 150th anniversary celebration, which will continue outside the library on Superior Ave.
Please register in advance for this free conference by clicking on the button below!
Workshop and craft talk options include:
- Practical Principles for Writing Poems
- Say What?! The Do’s and Don’ts of Writing Memoir
- Writing on Your Feet: An Improv Approach to Your Craft
- Poetry Masterclass: The Sestina
- Inside a Publisher’s Mind: How the Book Publishing Process Really Works
Workshop and craft talk options include:
- Breaking Words
- Go Tell It On The Mountain: I’m a Nonfiction Writer
- Forever Young: Writing Fiction for Tweens and Teens
- Rhymes and Dimes: How Poets Make Money
- The Writing Life: Expectations and Reality
Workshop and craft talk options include:
- Beef! Writing Diss Poems
- The Heart of the Matter: Conducting Intensive Interviews to Build Compelling Nonfiction
- How to Write a Page Turner
- Using Music to Inspire Writing
- Keep Going with Austin Kleon
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Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of a New York Times best-selling biography on A Tribe Called Quest called Go Ahead in the Rain (University of Texas Press, February 2019), The Crown Ain't Worth Much (Button Poetry/Exploding Pinecone Press, 2016), nominated for a Hurston-Wright Legacy Award, and They Can't Kill Us Until They Kill Us (Two Dollar Radio, 2017), named a best book of 2017 by NPR, Pitchfork, Oprah Magazine, The Chicago Tribune, Slate, Esquire, GQ, and Publisher's Weekly, among others. He is a Callaloo Creative Writing Fellow, a poetry editor at Muzzle Magazine, and a member of the poetry collective Echo Hotel with poet/essayist Eve Ewing. Abdurraqib has two forthcoming books including a new collection of poems A Fortune For Your Disaster (Tin House, 2019) and a history of Black performance in the United States titled They Don't Dance No Mo' (Random House, 2020).
The Cleveland Inkubator is Northeast Ohio's largest free annual festival for writers and readers! Events begin Wednesday, July 24, and continue through the Inkubator conference on Saturday, July 27 from 8:30am to 4:30pm at the downtown Cleveland Public Library. Join us for writing workshops, craft talks, panels, readings, and a resource fair featuring all the greatest local bookstores, presses, lit journals, writing groups, and literary organizations. See the full schedule below and register today!
Cleveland Inkubator is made by possible by the residents of Cuyahoga County through a public grant from Cuyahoga Arts and Culture, as well as through support from Cleveland Public Library.
Austin Kleon is the New York Times bestselling author of Steal Like an Artist, Show Your Work!, and his latest book is Keep Going: 10 Ways to Stay Creative in Good Times and Bad. His work has been translated into over twenty languages and featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, PBS NewsHour, and in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. In previous lives, he worked as a librarian, a web designer, and an advertising copywriter.
Brandi Larsen is a writer and speaker, building a more inclusive publishing landscape. Her work at Penguin Random House helped create NYT bestsellers and her journalism pieces earned Emmy nominations. Brandi is the 2024 Writer in Residence at the William N. Skirball Writers’ Center, the co-writer of NYT-recommended UNCULTURED: A Memoir (St. Martin's Press), and the President Emeritus for Literary Cleveland. BrandiLarsen.com.
Charlotte Morgan holds a Masters in English (Creative Writing) from Cleveland State University where she has taught Composition and Intro to Fiction. Charlotte’s passion is helping people find their creative cultural voices. In 2018, she worked on Cleveland Stories, an anthology published by Literary Cleveland. Presently she is polishing "Glenville: My Side of Paradise”, a memoir on race and place.
D. M. Pulley's work as a structural engineer in Cleveland, Ohio inspired her debut novel, The Dead Key. Winning the 2014 Amazon Breakthrough Novel Award Grand Prize launched Pulley's career as a published author. Her other novels include The Buried Book (2016), The Unclaimed Victim (2017), and No One's Home (Sep. 2019). She lives in Northeast Ohio with her husband and two children.
Damien is a poet based in Cleveland. Recipient of the 2018 Cleveland Arts Prize On the Verge fellowship for literature, Damien's work speaks to the experience of being a Black father, artist and teacher in one of the country’s most poverty-stricken cities. Damien also holds the office of Poet Laureate for the city of Cleveland Heights and is co-director of The People Poetry Slam.
Jackie Cummins holds an MFA in creative writing from Bowling Green State University where she taught creative writing and general studies writing for several years. She is currently the Major Gifts Manager for The Victory Center, a cancer wellness center in Toledo and Perrysburg, Ohio. She is at work on a novel and a collection of essays about her pursuit of aerial arts and tightwire while undergoing cancer treatment.
Jen Jones Donatelli is a certified Co-Active coach, creative facilitator and founder of Creative Groove—a small business offering courses, coaching, and community around the art of creative living.
Karen Schubert is the founding director of Lit Youngstown, a literary arts nonprofit www.LitYoungstown.org. An accomplished author, she has published five poetry chapbooks, most recently Dear Youngstown (NightBallet Press). Awards include an Ohio Arts Council individual Excellence Award in poetry.
Kisha Nicole Foster is a mother,nationally performing poet, and teaching artist. The author of Poems: 1999-2014 and Blood Work, Foster is also three-time Ohio for the Center for the Book fellow, Regional Coordinator for Poetry OutLoud/ Ohio Arts Council, and a two-time Pink Door Fellow. Foster uses her locution as a conduit towards healing and fostering truth within language; allowing mistakes and humility to guide her craft.
Laura Maylene Walter is the author of the novel Body of Stars (Dutton, 2021) and the short story collection Living Arrangements (BkMk Press, 2011). Laura’s writing has appeared in Poets & Writers, Kenyon Review, Slate, The Sun, and many others. Laura is a founding editor of Literary Cleveland’s Gordon Square Review and is the Ohio Center for the Book Fellow at Cleveland Public Library, where she hosts Page Count, a literary podcast.
Lee Chilcote is a journalist, poet and author whose writing has been published by Vanity Fair, Next City, Belt and many literary journals as well as in The Cleveland Neighborhood Guidebook, The Cleveland Anthology and A Race Anthology. He is the author of the poetry chapbooks The Shape of Home and How to Live in Ruins and has taught creative writing to youth and adults. He is a founder and past executive director of Literary Cleveland.
Marc Moritz (AEA) is an actor, director, and instructor. He originated the role of Talk Show Host in the original Broadway production of the Sondheim/Prince musical Merrily We Roll Along and has worked in dozens of theaters across the U.S. Marc was also the Founder/Director of the Cleveland based Giant Portions Improv Troupe. Marc has taught Acting and Improv at AMDA, CAP 21, among many other professional acting programs.
Dr. Mary E. Weems is an accomplished author, poet, playwright, and social/cultural foundations scholar. Her work is inspired by the human condition and by what is happening to Black people in America around issues of race, gender and class. To date, Weems has authored thirteen books and her plays and/or excerpts have been published or produced for nearly two decades.
Mimi Plevin-Foust's poems and articles have been published by Carve Magazine, Forge Journal, Fourteen Hills, Two Cities Review and more. She writes poems to speak truth to power, explore the lovely wackiness of life, and tell individual stories of courage and grace. Over her career, she has been a poet, glass artist, screenwriter and filmmaker with an M.F.A. from NYU. Plevin-Foust shares her 106-year-old home with her husband, daughter, and cats.
Ray McNiece is the author of nine books of poems and monologues, most recently Love Song for Cleveland, a collaboration with photographer Tim Lachina and Breath Burns Away, New Haiku. He toured Russia with Yevgeny Yevtushenko, and he toured Italy twice with legendary beat poet Lawrence Ferlinghetti. He fronts the blues rock band, Tongue-in-Groove.
Vince Robinson is a multi-genre artist, having given time to evolving in music, the visual imagery of photography and the magic of words in poem and song. In addition to poetry, Vince has written for several publications beginning with The Spectrum at KSU to Eschelon Magazine and Crusader Arts and Entertainment. He is currently a writer for the East Side Daily News in Cleveland, Ohio and is a contributor to CAN Journal.
Christopher Johnston has published more than 4,000 articles in publications including American Theatre, Christian Science Monitor, Daily Beast, History Magazine, Reasons to be Cheerful and Scientific American. His book, Shattering Silences: Strategies to Prevent Sexual Assault, Heal Survivors, and Bring Assailants to Justice (Skyhorse) was published in May 2018.
