January 29-February 4, 2004

art

Fertile Ground

Book cooks: Lorene Cary and Larry Robin, current and former leaders of the festival, reunite where it all began. Photo By: Michael T. Regan

From Sunday-afternoon party to three-week festival: The Celebration of Black Writing turns 20.

by Ainé Ardron-Doley

Founded in 1984 under the guidance of Philadelphia independent bookstore owner Larry Robin, the Celebration of Black Writing has drawn audiences of thousands through lectures, workshops, readings and performances. Sitting down with Robin is like rifling through the pages of a history book, only with a lot more laughter and good old-fashioned honesty. Asked why he started the festival, he says, "

I’m a child of the ’60s. The civil rights movement was a pivotal experience and since I began carrying literature for the movement I began to attract an African-American audience. As we talked and became friends, a lot of the writers would come in because it was the only place in Philly you could get books on African Americans."

It was this gathering-place mentality that led to the very first installment of the festival, a simple and lively Sunday party on the second floor of Robin’s Bookstore on 108 S. 13th St. The next year, one attendee, Deputy City Representative for Arts and Culture Oliver Franklin, was so thrilled with the event that he gave Robin his first grant to expand the fest. "It went from being a Sunday-afternoon party to being a Saturday panel discussion, then a Sunday book fair to poetry readings on Friday," says Robin about the festival’s growth.

It was 2001, the year the festival hit the five-day mark, as an international panel of writers explored the relationship between African Americans and the French between wars in the 1920s, when Robin was forced to reevaluate. "It totally wore me out. We went broke, but it was a great event." Robin thought hard: "Who can keep this going with the same kind of spirit of egalitarianism and interest in the writer?" He thought of Lorene Cary, local author (her 1985 novel, The Price of a Child, inaugurated the city's One Book, One Philadelphia program) and founder of North Philadelphia's community arts organization, Art Sanctuary.

Cary explains, "He wanted it deeply rooted in the black community, housed with an organization so it was not quite so vulnerable. The reason he hadn't given it up before was that he couldn't find an organization that he really trusted to love the work and celebrate all kinds of black writing as the title says, instead of a celebration of popular black writing or avant-garde, etc."

Robin says, "Almost every conference you go to has an attitude. They're pushing something: 'This is what you ought to be doing.' Our concept was the incredible variety. It's a celebration of black writing and we meant black writing, not African-American writing. There's black people all over the world; they are not all African American."

By honoring the greats like Amiri Baraka with Lifetime Achievement Awards and inviting such luminaries as Sonia Sanchez and Charles Fuller to speak, this year's three-week literary feast will host more than one Pulitzer Prize-winning author. Cary will conduct a discussion with esteemed Harvard professor and author Henry Louis Gates Jr. called "The Constitution and the African American Experience." James McBride, author of The Color of Water (this year's One Book, One Philadelphia selection), will read and play with his band. Ursula Rucker, Elmer Smith, Yusef Komunyakaa, Kimmika Williams-Witherspoon and others will make appearances. From discussions on the African American experience in Vietnam to "Tales of Terror: An Evening with African American Masters of Suspense" to a poetry-teaching workshop with Eloise Greenfield and storyteller Linda Goss -- every genre is represented in more than 20 events. As executive producer of the festival, Cary and Art Sanctuary have built upon its strong traditions while expanding the outreach component. "It brings these great writers out and they ought to be available Ö in a curricular way to lots of students from little kids all the way up to scholars," explains Cary. Writers will visit over a dozen schools and conduct lectures and workshops at the People’s Emergency Center and Project H.O.M.E. Cary adds, "We think of the shelter component as being part of the Writers to Schools program. So many shelters have really worked hard to create adult education opportunities. So what we do is slip a writer into those kinds of programs."

A wonderful example of the success of the festival is local author Karen Quinones Miller. Robin chuckles, "She was an eighth-grade dropout, single mother. She was working at the Inquirer as a dispatcher, kind of interested in writing and she knew the festival was coming up. All of her friends said, 'Oh you can't go over there, they're all big-name writers.'" Fate stepped in: Miller had an argument with her boss, left work, strolled over to the festival at Community College and met a ton of people. She went on to get her GED and a degree at Temple, was hired as a reporter for the Inky and self-published Satin Doll, her first novel. She sold 20,000 copies in the first two months and now has a six-figure, two-book deal with a major publisher.

Cary expounds on the importance of the yearly gathering: "I think it's something much more useful and spiritual and nourishing than networking. … One really is just inspired and buoyed up. It's also great for aspiring writers. I went when I was writing my book and the idea that I could come here and talk to somebody who knew what it was that I was trying to do. … I can't tell you what it did for me."

What it could do for festival newcomers might be revealed in a coming-full-circle moment on Feb. 8, when Robin's Bookstore will host a Sunday-afternoon party called "Black Ink" -- just like 20 years ago, it'll be on the second floor at 108 S. 13th St.

The 20th Annual Celebration of Black Writing Festival, Feb. 2-20, various venues. For more information and a complete schedule of events, visit www.artsanctuary.org or call 215-232-4485.