Ainsfieldwolf who had this prize way back in 1985in she understood that literature could serve as the potent elixir in this fight. In the 84 years since the prize was established, our country has made Great Strides forward with regard to respecting and embracing our diversity. But recently we have taken disheartening steps backward. Reported hate crimes have risen sharply in the past several years, including, of course, the mass murders at the Mother Emanuel Ame Church in South Carolina and the tree of pennsylvania. This is a national trend, but it also hits close to home. According to the southern poverty law center, there are more organized hate groups in the state of ohio than in kentucky and West Virginia combined. A great source of re was one, ba clarion call for action. We must rewrite our Current National narrative to vigorously oppose bigotry in all of its forms. [applaus [applause] and tonights ceremony provides an opportunity to energize that sense of purpose. This is the 16th year in which ive had the distinct privilege of opening the ainsfieldwolf book awards. This ceremony always brings me so much joy and hope and i know all of you feel the same way. But tonight my joy is intertwined with deep sorrow because its my first ainsfieldwolf book awards ceremony in which the seat next to me wont be occupied by my beloved friend, predecessor and mentor, steven mentor. [applaus [applause]. With the exception of edith ainsfieldwolf herself no one is more associated with this awards ceremony than steve minter. Steve made this event nationally important and steve who enlisted dr. Gates to chair the wolf jury, his passion for this event and all that it stands for was unmatched. Steve was one of clevelands great champions for social justice and he personified dignity which he steadfastly maintained despite the many racial afronts and barriers that he had to overcome in his youth. Two years ago, while receiving her award for Lifetime Achievement, isabela stated, quote, when in doubt, ask yourself what is the most generous thing to do. Steve minter was never in doubt. His moral compass always pointed true north, but he was unwaveringly generous in every way. Tonight our Award Winners will touch our hearts as they always do. But their words and sentiments will shine even brighter from the glow of steves enduring legacy. A legacy which i would like to honor now, not by a moment of silence, but by rising in a standing ovation, all of us, for our dear friend, who was and always will be a moral conscience and role model for our city and the nation. [applaus [applause]. [applause] thank you so much. And now, as steve would want me to say, the show will joyfully go on. In keeping with recent traditions i would now like to welcome a young poet to the stage, logan grier. Logan is a fifth grader at Campus International school, part of the Cleveland Metropolitan School district. Please join me in welcoming logan as she reads her poem, city of growing up. [applause] city of growing up. City of pleasant party people. City with gangs. City with learning. City before being anxious. City that believes in gods. City like a flower growing in the ground. City trotting around lake erie. City paralyzed from moving. City with depression. City examining the streets. City of the long road that i walk down. City with my family. City of angry people fighting to live. City of my grandmas macaroni. A city of my life. [applaus [applause] thank you, logan. That was beautiful. Finally, i would like to welcome some special guests who are here with us tonight. It would not be ainsfieldwolf without poet, former poet laureate of the United States and an akron native and National Treasure with her wonderful husband, welcome, rita and fred. [applaus [applause]. And last, but certainly not least, our esteemed and treasured long time emcee for the evening, dr. Henry lewis gates, jr. As you all know, skip gates is the founding direction of the hutchens center for africanamerican research at Harvard University and chair of the ainsfieldwolf awards jury and a hundred of things i could say about skip and all that he does, but you know him. Were blessed to have skip as our host once again this evening and were grateful to him for his many decades to the ainsfieldwolf book awards. So please join me in welcoming our emcee and my dear friend, skip davis. [applaus [applause]. Give it up for ron, ladies and gentlemen. [applaus [applause] my name is henry lewis gates, jr. Look, lets give it up for logan greer. [applause] can you imagine doing that at 10 years old . That child is in the fifth grade, but shes going to harvard. Im going to predict that right now. But i love that poem, city of growing up. Give it up one more time for logan. [applaus [applause] my great joy to join you in cleveland once again this year, though i come from my own sports mad city, i do admire your cleveland teams. How could i not like a quarterback with the stately name of Baker Mayfield . When i heard that i said thats got to be a brother, but turns out. [laughter] hes a brother, just a brother of another mother. [laughter] may Baker Mayfield work out better than tyree irving did for the celtics. Whoa. I like tyree, but i didnt work out. Mayfield is one of the most confident quarterbacks i think playing today and when it call starts to click, he and Odell Beckham are going to be unstoppable. I predict that. That is until they play the patriots on october 27th. As i hope you know by now, i do love this city which had more than 100 events this spring to commemorate your river catching on fire 50 years ago. Thats got to be a record. Now your river has more boats on it than bostons own rivers, the charles. So i love a good comeback story. [applause] you can give it up for the river. Were gathered here tonight, really for one reason. Thats because we love literature, we love stories, we love poems. We love words, whether theyre delivered through poetry, through prose, fiction or nonfiction. We recognize four writers tonight who in their different styles and different genres render visible the invisible. They give life to those people and histories that have been erased and these writers come to us because the remarkable leadership of ron richard and the Cleveland Foundation. Lady and gentlemen, give it up for rons leadership and the great work for the Cleveland Foundation, which has made tonight possible. [applause] also want to give a special shout out to my main man edward moss, jr. And edwina moss. Both are with us in the audience tonight. Im doing a new series for pbs called otis, this is our story, this is our song, the history of the black church. You cant beat that as a title. And i go i have been interviewing people all over the country and i ask name the top five black ministers of all time and name the top five black churches. Otis moss, jr. Is on every list. Ladies and gentlemen, give it up for reverend otis moss, jr. To make them a Major National prize. Always a big thinker, he also saw the spirit of inclusion and diversity, as the spirit that is beloved cleveland could embody. He introduced me to an associate whose cooperation and collaboration he told me would be indispensable to achieving the vision that he had for this revitalized series of book prizes. As soon as i met her i realized he was absolutely right i had met my soulmate and her name is mary louise. Give it up for mary louise. [applause] so steve, mary louise and i set out together some 27 years ago to reinvent and reinvigorate the prosthetic idea that it was steve who thought possible and decided that it could be done, important to be done, and he was going to make sure that it was done and done in the right way. So its really steves vision that weve been realizing these past incredible 27 years. And tonight we celebrate that vision, his leadership come his imagination, his commitment to the arts, and his love of this great city, cleveland, ohio. One of his daughters, robin, is here with us tonight. Please give robin the warmest of embraces and welcomes as we remember the joy and openness that her father expressed in all of his wifes work. Please. Life work. [applause] phyla, we lost someone very dear to us this year, a daughter of lorain, ohio, just 30 miles west of here. Chloe Anthony Morrison also known as tony. Enriched us all in measurably and my dear friend, rita dove come herself of course a right of no small talbot will now say a few words in remembrance of our beloved Toni Morrison. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome rita dove. [applause] good evening. Good evening. When i was a graduate student in iowa city, i watered the universities Library Stacks one afternoon. And there behind my left shoulder, a book was looking for me. Right at eye level was the bluest eye. I pulled it from the shelf, read the first pages, and do that i was home. Since that discovery over four decades ago, no words can fully express what Toni Morrison has meant to me as a writer, a woman, a black woman, and yes, a fellow ohio when from lorraine just 50 miles from my home town of akron, and less than 30 miles from here, as you all know, where we have gathered here tonight. At a time when i come the only africanamerican student in the iowa writers workshop couldve easily been consumed by bitterness, she taught me to step back as a poet, and to Pay Attention to everything. But with eight days that took in everything a gaze that took in everything without prejudice. With an extraordinary poetic economy of edm and her signature elliptical elegance, Toni Morrison bert a host of complex characters that we as readers recognize as familiar, conflicted beings and no matter if we like or despised their behavior, except in the way of family. When i introduced toni in 2015 for the National Book critics circle top honor for Lifetime Achievement, i confessed that it was a little like introducing the goddess athena. [laughing] while she looked on with her gray eyes. Toni chuckled, and with her Pitch Perfect comic timing said, we do, that was beautiful, and true. [laughing] please listen as some of our past anisfieldwolf winning authors remember Toni Morrison. [applause] there are many great things about Toni Morrison, herkimer, her humanness, her helping hand to so many writers, also of course her genius. But all her would move me most was how she almost singlehandedly raised black america to an International Platform without us losing our identity. Praise for toni a larson, praise now, praise bride and her blue black beauty. Praise sweetness, praise rain, praise call the. Forgive. May malcolm and dad find his wings. Praise medallion, praise shalimar, praise mercy, praise the blessed earth, lorraine. Praise the dateless date of eternity. Praise the great mothers a legacy praise wholly, holy, chloe who shall finally reclaim her name. Toni morrisons death may come as a shock because her words seem so evergreen. Even eternal as they explore our american dilemmas and the light. Morrison set your blackness in ways and peril although she was not alone in doing so. She let us know she was untraditional. A black and unknown enslaved person she dared give a name. Who else besides her beloved James Baldwin who guided her through the hard times and harder truths. She helped us see ourselves and freed ourselves, and invites us that as she put it, the function of freedom is to free someone else. Brandnew assistant editor at the New York Times for review in the spring of 19 85, the head editor gate read the review those scheduled to run saying, please edit this. My first panic thought when i encountered my Toni Morrison first page was that this had been a mistake. How could i, a novice editor, smitten your earlier i the solomon, lay hands on the pros of a literary hero . She disagreed with a few of the changes i suggested. After we discussed it at some length over the phone, she said with banality, in the rich voice, you have proved to them that you can edit me down. Now let me up. Toni morrison wrote to us again and again exhorting our beauty, making us grapple with our pain, reaffirming our humanity. Her afterward a caress come her every sentence and embrace come her every paragraph a copy of her hands about our faces that said, i know you. I see you. We are together. She loved us when we prayed in saying and made love and danced. She loved us when we lied and his own our children. She loved us at her best at our broker if she called us forth in a pages and made us experience and understand ourselves with kindness, with deeper knowing of all we had survived, and all we had not come all we had made, all we had been made, all we had become, all we could be. How she knew us, how she sings to the world. And now that she is gone, how we weep for our beloved. [applause] theres one more person and you did mention, the Guiding Force of the evening, the person who makes sure that every detail is in place. The person who does so much to bring us all together, my friend karen long. Mary luis sister. [applause] karen is her brilliantly creative and devoted successor it was edith anisfieldwolf that enables us to come together each year to celebrate literature and explores Come Celebrate and complicates race relations. But its karen long who brings this to life. Give it up for karen long. [applause] and now lets talk about tracy k. Smith. You can give it up for tracy. [applause] when Pulitzer Prize winner tracy k. Smith published wade in the water during her tenure as poet laureate of United States, critics were amazed at the ambitious and sweeping scope of her topics. Upon reading the collection for the first time, i was struck by its echoes of walt whitman song of myself and its range of concerns. And im not alone in this thought. The atlantics review asserts smiths work contains multitudes. It is first among her experiences of mother and daughter are poems that speak truth to power in the american context including a breathtaking a heartbreaking section confronting slaveholding and the civil war. Throughout the collection, nature permeates the imagery, not surprisingly. Smith has reported in the New York Times interview, i was an aspiring transcendentalist from a young age. Explaining her fascination with the transcendentalists, smith cites the excitement that she felt on reading emily dickinson. Enter College Admission essays to harvard, was on walden. The same thing the joan poet was equally enamored of gwendolyn brooks. The author notes she has been quote moved, changed, deepened, and inspired by Toni Morrison this lyrical intertwining of new england sensibility and africanAmerican Literature tradition informs this evocative poet reckoning with American History. For its brilliance in wideranging confrontations with the currents of injustice in america, wade in the water is this years recipient of the anisfieldwolf book prize for poetry. It references the africanamerican spiritual that instructs runaway slaves to wade in the water to irrigate bloodhounds and capture. As smith explained to the Washington Square review, shattering experience of attending the performance of wade in the water inspired her to write of the experience with it, at the call, sense of love and deliverance, a faith and compassion of justice, she writes, and survival. That only does the poem achieve these goals, the reader is simultaneously immersed in the record water imagery, which blends throughout the book. Water. Water works as escape and salvation, as exodus and baptism. In her poem the everlasting self, the soul is fluid, come in from a downpour, shaking water in every direction. Gathered, shed, spread, then forgotten, we absorbed. One of the most personal of smiths poem describes traveling during the early months of a pregnancy. Queasy and hungry. The mother orders bottle after bottle of water, denying her own desire for the red wine that shimmered like nectar. At the water that is Life Sustaining in one setting can become poisonous in another. And in watershed, one of smiths most experimental poems in the collection, she adds poetry to news accounts and survivor narratives to expose the dire consequences of duponts dumping of chemicals. Death and destruction follow when a large pipe discharging green water result in a dead black calf and snow. Its eye, a brilliant chemical blue. Poetry can capture solution as well as beauty in smiths hands. Wade in the water is divided into four sections. Those in the second section are especially powerful both in subject and four. These poems are what are known as a ratio, blackout, or found homes in which parts of the previous existing text are excised, enabling the remaining phrases to take on new immediacy or new meaning. Ironically, as the guardian pointed out, what smith is doing is the opposite of erasure. She is making the review continues, shes making visible the words of slaves, the slaves and their owners of africanamerican enlisted in the civil war. These are found poems about people who are lost, unquote. One of these phones concerns a letter opposing the emancipation of slaves. The slaveholder rights, and i quote, neither do i think it would all promote the slaves interest to liberate him, in his present degraded state welcome play, quote, the loss of the services of the servant is great. From the perspective of the slave, freedom is not just a matter of c