This year marks the 26th anniversary of the Harlem Book Fair (HBF), once the largest Black book festival in the country. It’s also the 100th anniversary of the Harlem Renaissance, which brought us some of the most notable Black writers in America’s literary canon. Taking place at the Adam Clayton Powell State Office Building on September 7 from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., with additional panels at the Renaissance New York Harlem Hotel, this year’s iteration will symbolize a rebirth of Harlem’s literary culture. Sponsors and supporters include Councilman Yusef Salaam, NYU Press, Harper Collins, Victoria Sanders and Associates, and 4Clay Productions.
Yona Deshommes, president and CEO of Riverchild Media and this year’s co-producer of the event, explained to Amsterdam News that she has deep roots with the Harlem Book Fair. “As a publicist, I used to always pitch my authors there so I have a personal connection to the Harlem Book Fair.” She promised that “this year’s festival will be very special.”
This year’s theme is “literary revolution.” “A lot of our panels this year will speak to what makes reading and literature revolutionary,” explained Deshommes. For the first time, the Harlem Book Fair will collaborate with the Caribbean Cultural Center Diaspora Institute (CCDI) and its WE LIT! author series. In a nod to the theme, HBF will feature Haitian authors such as Edwidge Danticat, and attendees will get a tour of CCDI’s new Haitian exhibit, Lakay Se Lakay, which means “Home is Home.” Of course, Haiti, whose revolution ended in 1804, was seen as the most successful rebellion by the enslaved. It was also the first Black Republic, and second independent country in the Western Hemisphere. There will also be a number of panels throughout the day and a designated children’s corner with author readings, activities, and face painting for children.
Like many services, products, organizations and events geared toward Black Americans, the Harlem Book Fair was created when someone saw a gap in how the broader population was served compared to Black Americans.“I’ve always been an avid book reader. I would read The New York Times Book Review, the Paris Review, the New York Review of Books, and the first thing I would do would be to turn to the table of contents to see what books looked like me. More times than not, there wouldn’t be any,” Harlem Book Fair creator Max Rodriguez told Amsterdam News
To address that discrepancy, Rodriguez first founded the Quarterly Black Book Review (QBR). When Rodriguez, the Brooklyn born and raised son of a welder and a housekeeper, moved his operations to Harlem, he noticed another glaring gap. “I said, so where’s the festival that celebrates our stories, that celebrates our writers, that celebrates the Hall of Renaissance, and the writers of the Hall of Renaissance?” He founded the Harlem Book Fair in July 1998.
Part of the function of the Harlem Book Fair, says Rodriguez, is to partner with traditional publishers and bring an audience to them. “It’s very important that we serve our stories through our authors, to ensure that there’s an audience for those authors to tell those stories to.” Rodriguez also sees the Harlem Book Fair as a vehicle for highlighting the diasporic literary culture. “We have authors coming in from Canada, from France, from Nigeria, from the Caribbean. So part of our work is also to discover new voices globally. One of our taglines is Global I Am. “I aim to broaden our own perceptions of us as people of color. Part of the work of the book fair is to discover and bring those voices.”
Deshommes, who is also a writer and self-described lifelong book lover, added, “I feel like Harlem and the community deserves to have this type of event given its history. The Harlem Renaissance, when you think about that time period, that in itself, was revolutionary. You have Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Zora Neale Hurston, so why not continue that legacy of bringing literature and culture to the Harlem community?” One of her favorite all-time classic books is “The Alchemist,” because it teaches people to “lean into their life’s work.” One of her top contemporary books is the Michelle Obama memoir, “Becoming.” “It gave me a blueprint for my own life, work and being, and being able to say yes to the universe,” she said.
Rodriguez confesses his literary choices include a love of “off-the-beaten track books.” One of them is celebrated novelist Percival Everett’s hard-to-categorize novel “Cutting Lisa.” (His later book, “Erasure,” was adapted into the critically acclaimed 2023 film “American Fiction” starring Jeffrey Wright and Erika Alexander). Rodriguez also recommended “Two Thousand Seasons” by Ghanaian novelist Ayi Kwei Armah. “It talks about us as a community over 2000 years,” said Rodriguez. “It’s quite amazing, very moving.”
For more information on the Harlem Book Fair, please visit www.harlembookfair.com.