Celebrating the many exciting forms of the written word at the Lakeland Literary Festival
Posted: April 11, 2017
Students and members of the community are invited to attend the first-ever Lakeland Literary Festival, being held Saturday, April 29, from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. at the college’s Holden University Center, located across from the main campus at 7700 Clocktower Drive, Kirtland, Ohio.
The daylong festival will highlight the many modes of creative expression offered through writing and will include a keynote speaker, a staged reading, workshops, a book fair, and the award ceremony for the winners of the 30th Annual Poetry Competition. The event is free, but registration is required. Those interested can register at http://www.lakelandcc.edu/web/about/english-departments.
About the keynote speaker
Cleveland-born Salvatore Scibona, an award-winning author, will offer the keynote address and also participate in one of the workshop sessions. Scibona, who has published a novel and many short stories, is a Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, a finalist for the National Book Award, a Fulbright Scholar, a winner of the Pushcart Prize and the Young Lions Fiction Award, and a member of “The New Yorker” magazine’s “Fiction Writers to Watch: 20 under 40.”
Presentations and events
The festival will include a staged reading of “Phenomenal Women: Twelve Youngstown Stories,” which was a collaborative project created by Lit Youngstown. The book focuses on the lives of 12 local African-American women, aged 64-100 years of age, as they work to improve the lives of black women and their families in their community.
Also in the schedule for the festival, are numerous workshops that are being held with accomplished writers. The workshops will be presented both morning and afternoon and will cover many forms of literature, including poetry, fiction, nonfiction, drama and translation. In addition, the winners of the poetry competition will receive their awards and have the opportunity to share their works with the audience.
The festival will host a book fair with about 20 presses, magazine and organizations. Included in the book fair, will be the launches of Lakeland’s student literary and visual arts magazine, “Clocktower,” and the 10th edition of the college’s international literary journal, “Chagrin River Review.”
For more information, contact associate professor James DeMonte at jdemonte1@lakelandcc.edu or call 440.525.7458.