Page Count Ohio Center for the Book

It’s summertime, and writers, you know what that means: it’s conference season! To celebrate, we’re speaking with Leah Stewart, the director of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, one of the best and most prestigious writing workshops in the country. Stewart shares how the conference works, the changes she’s made since taking the reins as director, tips for applying, why summer conferences are valuable for writers, the importance of financial support, and how literary organizations can evolve their institutional culture for the benefit of attendees, staff, and faculty alike. She also discusses her own writing process, why researching her latest novel made her relieved to be a writer instead of an actor, the current publishing landscape for novelists, and more.
Leah Stewart is a professor at the University of Cincinnati, the director of the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the author of six novels: Body of a Girl, The Myth of You and Me, Husband and Wife, The History of Us, The New Neighbor, and What You Don’t Know About Charlie Outlaw. She lives in Cincinnati. Applications for the 2025 Sewanee Writers’ Conference will open in January 2025.
 
Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Straight from “the mothership of all libraries,” Guy Lamolinara, head of the Library of Congress Center for the Book, joins Laura and Don to discuss how his career evolved from aspiring dentist to journalist to thirty-four-year veteran of the Library of Congress, his formative years in Cleveland, the network of Center for the Book state affiliates, the upcoming the National Book Festival, and much more.
 

The Library of Congress recently released the full author lineup for the National Book Festival, which takes place Saturday, August 24, 2024, in Washington, DC. Visit the 2024 National Book Festival website to learn more about this free event, where Ohio Center for the Book representatives will be in attendance to celebrate Ohio's literary heritage and the 2024 Great Reads from Great Places selections.

Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Writer’s Digest Editor-in-Chief Amy Jones opens the magazine’s archives to take us back to a time when typewriters were king, paying markets for short stories abounded, and song sharks lurked in the literary waters. Tune in to learn what has changed in the last 100 years for writers—and what hasn’t. (Spoiler: Rejection is a constant. Typewriters and SASEs? Not so much.) In the process, explore the history of Writer’s Digest magazine, which has been headquartered in Cincinnati since 1921.
 
To see images from the February 1924 issue of Writer’s Digest discussed in this episode, visit “The Life of a Writer in 1924” on the Ohio Center for the Book website.      
 
Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Hemingway called her his favorite novelist. Gore Vidal directed attention back to her work after her death. Even Rory Gilmore was spotted reading her novels in Gilmore Girls. Who was Dawn Powell, and why isn't her work more widely known? Dr. Jennifer Swartz-Levine, Professor of English and Dean of the School of Arts, Education, Humanities, and Social Sciences at Lake Erie College, helps us rediscover this prolific midcentury American author who penned satirical novels that skewer New York society as well as heartfelt autobiographical fiction about her Ohio roots.
 
Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

In a special episode recorded before a live audience at the 2024 Ohioana Book Festival, Jacqueline Woodson and Hanif Abdurraqib discuss their latest books, their artistic influences, how they define “making it” as a writer, what it was like to win the MacArthur Fellowship, how they navigate their public roles as authors, how libraries impacted their lives, and more.
 
Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet, essayist, and cultural critic from Columbus, Ohio. He is the author of the poetry collections The Crown Ain’t Worth Much and A Fortune for Your Disaster. His nonfiction titles include Go Ahead in The Rain: Notes to a Tribe Called Quest, They Can’t Kill Us Until They Kill Us, and A Little Devil in America: In Praise of Black Performance, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the 2022 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence. His latest book is There’s Always This Year: On Basketball and Ascension.
 
Jacqueline Woodson is the author of more than thirty books for young people and adults, including Another Brooklyn, Red at The Bone, and The Day You Begin. She received a 2023 Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship and a 2023 E. B. White Award, among many other accolades, and was the 2018–2019 National Ambassador for Young People’s Literature. Her memoir Brown Girl Dreaming won the National Book Award, the Coretta Scott King Award, a Newbery Honor, and the NAACP Image Award. In 2018, she founded Baldwin For The Arts, a residency serving writers, composers, interdisciplinary, and visual artists of the Global Majority. Her most recent book, Remember Us, is a middle grade novel set in Bushwick.
 
The panel was sponsored by Ohio Humanities and hosted at the Ohioana Book Festival at the Columbus Metropolitan Library on April 20, 2024. Festival photos: Mary Rathke
 
Page Count is produced by Ohio Center for the Book at Cleveland Public Library. For full show notes and a transcript of this episode, visit the episode page. To get in touch, email ohiocenterforthebook@cpl.org (put “podcast” in the subject line) or follow us on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.

Page Count’s third season kicks off on May 21! Listen to snippets from just a few of our upcoming episodes featuring the following authors and experts:
 
Amy Jones, Editor-in-Chief of Writer’ Digest, dips into the magazine’s archives to consider what has changed in the literary world—and what hasn’t—in the last 100 years.
Jacqueline Woodson and Hanif Abdurraqib discuss their latest books, what it means to "make it" as a writer, and more during a conversation recorded at the 2024 Ohioana Book Festival.
Dr. Jennifer Swartz-Levine of Lake Erie College discusses the prolific midcentury author Dawn Powell, whose work was nearly lost to history before experiencing a resurgence.
Steven Andersson shares insights into humorist James Thurber’s life and work in a special episode featuring a tour of the Thurber House, which was led by Andersson and Leah Wharton, operations director.
Guy Lamolinara, the head of the Center for the Book at the Library of Congress in Washington, DC, discusses his Cleveland roots, the Center for the Book, the National Book Festival, and the enduring nature of books and reading.
 
Subscribe to Page Count wherever you get your podcasts to listen to these episodes and many more during our third season. The season debuts May 21 with Woodson and Abdurraqib’s episode; thereafter, a new episode drops every two weeks.
 
Photo Credits
Amy Jones: Jason Hale Photography
Jacqueline Woodson: Tiffany A. Bloomfield
Hanif Abdurraqib: Megan Leigh Barnard
James Thurber: Denyse B. Smith