On September 17th, I attended the Great Lakes African American Writers conference, GLAAWC for short (or Glossy, if you ask anyone there). This was the 5th annual conference, but my first time in attendance. Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I wasn’t able to attend every session, but I’ll discuss the ones I did attend.

I had never visited the Louis Stokes wing of the Cleveland Public Library, which was where the conference took place. It is vibrant, vast, and a beautiful setting for an event such as GLAAWC. On the lower level, a collection of local authors, publishers, and celebrities (Wayne Dawson, anyone?) were arranged outside the auditorium, where the main events took place. I paroused the tables and bought a few books, notably Stick With Your Own Kind: How to Use Highly Effective People to Achieve More and Life Better by Deante Young, and Just Like Old Times, by Chichima Cherry. The former is a self-improvement book, a gift I purchased for a friend. The latter is a book I bought for pleasure and pure indulgence (I love a good romance novel). There were several other authors present whose novels varied from hot, steamy romance, to urban fantasy to nonfiction/self-help.

The first session I attended was Grief and Writing as a Healing Modality, a panel discussion with Joy Reid, Teresa Winston, and Shavonne J Moore-Lobban. The women onstage discussed their trysts with grief (their own and others), and how they managed to transform these experiences through writing. The overall message was that the weight of grieving, a...Read More