Wed 1/21 @ 7-8:30PM

One of the many programs offered by Cleveland writers nonprofit Literary Cleveland is its Plum City Readings, which take place across the street from its office on Larchmere Boulevard — at Loganberry Books, appropriately, so you can buy the readers’ books and probably many more if you’re like most of us.

 This month’s readers are all from northeast Ohio. Cherise Benton, Tara Pringle Jefferson and Mary Weems will read from and discuss their work.

Benton, who is from Youngstown, is a writer of poems and short stories, inspired by everything from nature to Greek mythology. Her work has been published in a variety of small literary magazines.

Wellness coach Jefferson, a Cleveland native, will share from Bloom How You Must: A Black Woman’s Guide to Self-Care and Generational Healing, whose title is self-explanatory. It features interviews with wellness experts and Black women who share their own experiences and offer practical guidelines for others.

Mary E. Weems is a noted Cleveland poet/playwright/educator and former Cleveland Heights Poet Laureate. Her new book of poems Fall and Response explores Black life, including love, marriage, motherhood, suicide, poverty, police violence and more: “the daily effect of being Black, a woman and a descendant of slaves in a continually racist America which falsely promotes the idea of diversity and inclusion publicly, when what it wants is to conserve a status quo where the majority of Blacks remain on the bottom of the bottom one hundred and fifty-nine years after the official end of slavery.”

Following the reading, attendees are invited to an afterpart at Lit Cleveland’s headquarters across the street. Go here to register for the event.

plum-city-reading-ft-cherise-benton-tara-pringle-jefferson-and-mary-weems