Starting on Feb. 18, 2026, Ohio will spend a year commemorating novelist, editor and professor Toni Morrison (1931-2019) through “Beloved: Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison.” The Lorain native became the state’s first author and the first Black woman to win the Nobel Laureate in Literature when she received the prestigious accolade in 1993.  

The Swedish Academy honored the author of “The Bluest  Eye” (1970), “Song of Solomon” (1977), “Tar Baby” (1981), and the Pulitzer Prize-winning “Beloved” (1987) by stating that Morrison “gave the African-American people their history back.”

On May 29, 2012, President Barack Obama bestowed the Presidential Medal of Honor, the nation’s highest civilian honor, upon Morrison. She was also the first Black woman to become a fiction editor at Random House, helping to bring Black literature into the mainstream.

Advertisement

In 2021, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine declared Feb. 18 Toni Morrison Day.

Thus, throughout the year from Feb. 18, 2026 to Feb. 18, 2027 libraries, universities, bookstores and other organizations and individuals statewide will hold special events celebrating Morrison’s significant achievements as a writer who focused on the realities of race and gender and on the Black female experience. 

“We had been dreaming of a project like this for a while, and since Morrison passed in 2019, we’ve been holding annual celebrations of her life and work that have been meaningful, but they’ve been modest events with 60, 70 people,” said Matt Weinkam, executive director of Literary Cleveland, which serves as manager of the yearlong celebration. “But just knowing she was a Nobel Prize winner and arguably the greatest writer of the last century, we felt she deserved something larger.”

The entire project started in October 2024 during a meeting between Weinkam and Rebecca Asmo, executive director of Ohio Humanities, the state humanities council and the state-based partner for the National Endowment for the Humanities. Ohio Humanities has partnered with Literary Cleveland on several projects, including supporting its annual Inkubator Writing Conference.

Looking ahead to potentially celebrating Morrison’s centennial in 2031, the two discussed starting with a celebration of the author to coincide with the America250 sesquicentennial in 2026. 

“I couldn’t think of a better project to do than a statewide celebration of Toni Morrison because she’s arguably Ohio’s greatest writer and one of the great American writers,” Asmo recalled. “Matt pointed out that, when you arrange her novels in the order they take place, they go from the 1680s with “A Mercy” to the 2000s with “God Help the Child, so she covers the breadth of American history. With that, the idea for this celebration was conceived.”

Weinkam added that, though not an easy mission for a small nonprofit, Literary Cleveland was definitely up for the opportunity to grow.

“The project was aligned with what we do, which is thinking about writing and literature more broadly, celebrating literary excellence and someone from our corner of the state,” he said. “This opportunity to expand our network and build connections across Ohio and bring the whole state together, and it helps teach us how to do a project on that scale.”

The literary-focused organization received a $60,000 grant from the Gund Foundation, the most they’ve ever gotten for an individual project from any funder.

Last year, Literary Cleveland used some of that funding to hire Britt Lovett to manage the substantial endeavor. Based in Oberlin, Lovett had worked at the Community Foundation of Lorain County for the previous five years. The foundation hosted the Toni Morrison essay contest, so Weinkam thought she would be the perfect person to lead the effort.

“To have a big project like this where we’re saying to all 88 counties in Ohio, we want to make sure that every Ohio resident gets to celebrate Toni Morrison over the next year as we build up to her Centennial in 2031,” said Lovett, who considers her job of immersing herself in Morrison’s works “the dopest gig ever.” “Our hopes are to build something that can be replicated and increased, so the pressure is on, but it’s been amazing.” 

Some of the first events planned

Designed and led by Literary Cleveland with Ohio Humanities, Ohioana Library association and the Toni Morrison Society, the team will hold the statewide kickoff event in Columbus for “Beloved: Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison” on Wednesday, Feb. 18. 

The presentation will feature a conversation between acclaimed writers Hanif Abdurraqib andNamwali Serpell that will explore Morrison’s writings, her enduring literary influence and the relevance and importance of reading her works at this time. Seating is by invitation only with limited capacity, but people can watch via a livestream broadcast.

On that day, Cleveland will hold its own kickoff event with a Watch Party and Open-Mic Birthday Reading at historic Karamu House, and on Friday, Feb. 20, the Cleveland City Club will host a conversation about Morrison with Serpell.

On Sunday, Feb. 22, Literary Cleveland will launch “A Source of Self-Regard: A Historical Exploration of Toni Morrison’s Literature” to provide a series of deep dives into Morrison’s 11 novels as led by Michelle Smith, Lit Cle’s programming director. The organization will also initiate a statewide virtual Morrison book club that day.

Morrison’s family, many of whom still reside in Lorain, will be involved with or will host events as part of the year’s celebrations, including “Toni Morrison, Through her Family’s Eyes: An intimate conversation about the woman behind the words” on Feb. 18. The event will be held at the Steel City Lounge at 1784 E. 28 Street in Lorain.

There is a list of events throughout the state, divided by region, at Ohio Celebrates Toni Morrison.

Literary Cleveland plans to maximize the connection to the celebration and its other major annual events, such as its poetry festival in April. This year’s festival will be themed after a phrase  from a book of Morrison’s  lectures entitled “Language as Liberation: Reflections on the American Canon.”

This year, Morrison’s work will be prominently featured as part of Literary Cleveland’s Inkubator Writing Conference in September.

Also in September, as part of Book Week, Cleveland Public Library’s Martin Luther King branch will host children’s book author Andrea Davis Pinkney for whom Morrison was a “mentor, guide and a sister friend.” She will read from her children’s book “And She Was Loved: Toni Morrison’s Life in Stories.”

Weinkam, Asmo and the rest of the organizers set a few goals for the project, starting with one central, lofty objective. 

“We want every Ohioan to somehow engage with Toni Morrison over the course of the year, and that could be reading something that she wrote or seeing a display of her books at the library, and it could even just mean learning who Toni Morrison is,” Asmo said. “But we also want people to think about the concepts of American history from its founding until now, and think about them through the lens of Morrison’s literature and our struggle as a country to achieve a more perfect union.” 

Toni Morrison Society

Dr. Marian Mobley and Toni Morrison pictured above. [Photos courtesy of Marian Mobley]

Marian Mobley, Ph.D., professor emeritus of English and African American studies at Case Western Reserve University, believes the yearlong celebration provides an opportunity for Ohioans to get to know a fellow Ohioan who, through her love of reading, writing, music and culture and her profound knowledge of history, elevated the Buckeye State to the world stage. 

“This is an opportunity for Ohioans to look with pride on this girl who began in a very meager way in Lorain, and one of her first jobs was working at the library in Lorain,” Mobley said. “She took those humble beginnings and put us on the map in ways we weren’t on the map.”

In May 1993, Mobley and a group of Morrison scholars founded the Toni Morrison Society six months before the author received her Nobel Prize in November. The society holds biennial meetings and has met in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Lorain and Washington, D.C. 

In November 2010. Morrison and her son Harold joined them for the Sixth Biennial Conference, “Toni Morrison and the Circuits of the Imagination,” in Paris and Saint-Denis, France. The event drew Morrison scholars from around the world, and the youth of Paris held a special poetry reading in her honor that Morrison attended.

“It was beautiful, and they told us on that occasion that she’s a rock star there,” Mobley recalled. “We want her to be Ohio’s rock star, and that’s what this yearlong set of celebrations will do.”

Mobley became close friends with Morrison, visited  her home on the Hudson River, and would call her on her birthday every year. In 2001, she and the Toni Morrison Society organized a 70th birthday party at the New York Public Library. Numerous celebrity guests attended the black-tie party for the famed author, including Henry Louis Gates, Ruby Dee and Ozzie Davis.

For the celebration of her late friend this year, Mobley and the Toni Morrison Society are finalizing plans to host a scholarly symposium in conjunction with CWRU.

Citing one of Morrison’s essays entitled “Home,” Mobley hopes the celebration will give participants of any of the events a new appreciation of their home in Ohio.

“I’m hoping that people will look at Toni Morrison with a greater sense of pride, with a greater sense of someone who came from our home and who took her gifts around the world,” she said.

Expectations of far-reaching results

For Lovett, referring to the divisive situation in the U.S., the Toni Morrison project offers hope: “History has told us that in challenging times, if we come together, we can make things happen, and we can survive,” she said. “No matter where you are, you can go to your library and get a Toni Morrison book, and hopefully there’s a community discussion that you can join.”

Early on, as their scheme starts to take shape, Asmo said they’ve already learned a great deal from the significant planning and implementation that went into the sizable project. The event organizing team is already contemplating preparing for the Morrison centennial at the end of the literary marathon in 2027. 

“It’s been a great community building experience, and we’ve heard from many organizations that they want to continue to do projects that allow them to connect with other people and organizations across the state,” Asmo said. “In a moment when we need to develop our advocacy muscles, we’re building a much stronger and statewide network of arts and cultural and humanities organizations.”

Weinkam added that the Morrison project is exactly the type of ambitious program they want to happen in Ohio right now.

“If we can learn how to run something of this scale and build these connections across the state, it’s going to help Ohio, but it’s going to bring more things back to Northeast Ohio, too,” he concluded. “Audacious ideas like this prove that if you work hard and smart and build a coalition of people, you can make those big things happen.”