A project of the New York Writer’s Coalition, the Fort Greene Park Summer Literary Festival is on August 23rd at 3 p.m. It’s an event you won’t want to miss. Just ask author Richard Grayson, who covered this event last year for OTBKB.

Fort Greene has been home to giants of American literature like
Marianne Moore (on Cumberland Street) and Richard Wright (on Carlton
Avenue).  An earlier resident of the neighborhood, Walt Whitman wrote a
Brooklyn Eagle editorial calling for the construction of a local park,
"[as] the inhabitants there are not so wealthy nor so well situated as
those on the heights…we have a desire that these, and the generations
after them, should have such a place of recreation…"

Late Saturday afternoon, several hundred New Yorkers flocked to that
place, Fort Greene Park, for the third annual Fort Greene Summer
Literary Festival, presented by Akashic Books, the Fort Greene Park
Conservancy, the New York Writers Coalition (NYWC) and others.

Gathered on a hill overlooking the lush foliage of the park,
audience members sat on folding chairs or on picnic blankets or just
stood listening to five established writers of poetry and fiction and
about a dozen young Brooklyn residents, aged 8 to 16, who read work
composed in Saturday creative writing workshops taught by NYWC members.

This year’s festival with Amira Baraka, Quincey Troupe, Louis Reyes Rivera and Hal Sirowitz should be just as great. Here’s the blurb

Drawing upon the rich and diverse literary history of Fort Greene Park
and its surrounding neighborhoods, The Fort Greene Park Summer Literary
Festival provides a means for self-expression and creativity for area
young people, and builds community through arts and literature.  The
Lit Fest consists of a six-week series of free Saturday creative
writing workshops for young people and an end-of-summer reading
featuring literary icons reading alongside our young writers.  The Lit
Fest honors the power of the written word to build inclusiveness and
give voice to the thoughts and experiences of everyone, not just the
privileged and powerful.  Past readers include literary icons Sonia
Sanchez, Sapphire, Gloria Naylor, and Jhumpa Lahiri.