CLEVELAND, Ohio — Until early in 2023, I didn’t realize the literary landscape here nurtured poets and writers the way it does.

From East Side to West Side, I can find a writers group (or a book club), and I don’t need to put much energy into searching for a writing workshop like the one held last Friday and Saturday at the Main Branch of the Cleveland Public Library.

But wait, there’s more.

As helpful as I found the latter, a similar one this weekend might, well … trump it. Because back in town for its 90th anniversary is the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, which features a full slate of workshops and lectures Saturday — all designed to highlight the “power of literature to open and challenge minds.”

I’d heard a lot about the award. A South Euclid librarian mentioned it to me a handful of times, so did poets Quartez Harris and Kourtney Morrow. All of them said the Anisfield-Wolf event was worth telling others about.

None of them asked me to write about the event. In general, I don’t take requests. What I do take is ideas, and if I like the idea, I’ll find a way to explore it.

Now, I didn’t like the idea of writing about the Anisfield-Wolf event; I loved the idea. All I needed to hear was that James Baldwin, Walter Mosley and Toni Morrison had won one of the awards, and I hurried to my desktop to type a commentary that might encourage readers and writers to attend the event.

Besides the workshops, the two-day affair opens with an awards ceremony tonight at 6:30 in the Maltz Performing Arts Center. When the spotlights shine and the mic comes on, attendees will see:

• Danzy Senna honored for her fictional work Colored Television

• In nonfiction, John Swanson Jacobs will stand under the lights and hear applaus for The United States Governed by Six Hundred Thousand Despots: A True Story of Slavery; A Rediscovered Narrative, with a Full Biography

• In the memoir category, Tessa Hulls will receive an award for Feeding Ghosts

• In poetry, Janice N. Harrington will get an Anisfield-Wolf award for Yard Show

• Also, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa will receive the grandest prize of all: The Lifetime Achievement Award

For those who follow the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards, they know Komunyakaa’s work and the works of the other honorees have served to stimulate “the writing of more and better books upon the general subject of race relations.”

In times when thoughtful conversations on race and gender are critical, poetry and prose that foster a kinder, more understanding America deserve the public’s attention. Such works need to be read, need to be discussed, need to be toasted.

They’ll be toasted tonight, of course. The reading of such works, however, must come later — or so I hope.

I’d like to think my column will send readers to local bookstores to find these works. Then again, I’d be overestimating the power of my prose — or massaging my ego — if I thought my writing might do what Anisfield-Wolf honorees have done.

While I’d love to be as elegant a writer as Senna and Hulls, I’ll settle for enjoying works like theirs. So, I’m sharing information about Anisfield-Wolf because I believe reading serious prose and poetry can teach us all so much about ourselves.

Justice B. Hill grew up and still lives in the Glenville neighborhood. He wrote and edited for several newspapers in his more than 25 years in daily journalism before settling into teaching at Ohio University. He quit May 15, 2019, to write and globetrot. He’s doing both.

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