Just Buffalo Literary Center Featured in Poets & Writers

A Poets & Writers feature on the Just Buffalo Literary Center! "Just Buffalo began as a small reading series at the city’s Allentown Community Center," writes Maya C. Popa. "Today, Just Buffalo has grown into a vibrant nonprofit organization that offers invaluable programming to the region, including workshops, readings, an arts festival, and other literary events." More on this vibrant place for writers:

This past year, Claudia Rankine, Dinaw Mengestu, Louise Erdrich, Karl Ove Knausgaard, and Ocean Vuong were among the writers to give readings and lectures at the center, which remains the only organization in western New York dedicated to the literary arts. “We advocate, fight for visibility and funding for writers, and work to make our art form fully visible to the larger community,” says Laurie Dean Torrell, who has served as the center’s executive director since 2002. “We do everything we can to make writing a viable career for devoted practitioners, and invite the community to experience its transformative power.”

As Just Buffalo celebrates its fortieth anniversary, the organization’s leadership looks toward the future. “We engaged in a deep investigation of how we could make the most meaningful contribution possible to our community now and in the years ahead,” says Torrell. This strategic planning included conversations with more than eighty community members, out of which came JB40, a three-year, $1 million campaign to fully develop the youth writing center, which opened in April 2014. The organization also produced “40 Stories,” a series of video interviews with members of the Just Buffalo community. “Each story offers a different lens for viewing the countless ways that Just Buffalo has impacted lives through the power of the written word,” explains Barbara Cole, the center’s artistic director.

This year also marks the tenth anniversary season of the center’s international authors series, BABEL, which has brought Chinua Achebe, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Isabel Allende, and Zadie Smith to the center to give readings and lectures and meet with high school students and college undergraduates. “BABEL audiences hover between eight hundred and fifteen hundred people per event, and we regularly draw audience members from out of state and Canada. These participation levels are among the highest anywhere in the country for a speaker series of this kind,” Cole says.

Read on here!