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Well-Read Black Girl is Kickstarting a Writers’ Conference and Festival

Patricia Elzie-Tuttle

Contributing Editor

Patricia Elzie-Tuttle is a writer, podcaster, librarian, and information fanatic who appreciates potatoes in every single one of their beautiful iterations. Patricia earned a B.A. in Creative Writing and Musical Theatre from the University of Southern California and an MLIS from San Jose State University. Her weekly newsletter, Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice offers self-improvement and mental health advice, essays, and resources that pull from her experience as a queer, Black, & Filipina person existing in the world. She is also doing the same on the Enthusiastic Encouragement & Dubious Advice Podcast. More of her written work can also be found in Body Talk: 37 Voices Explore Our Radical Anatomy edited by Kelly Jensen, and, if you’re feeling spicy, in Best Women’s Erotica of the Year, Volume 4 edited by Rachel Kramer Bussel. Patricia has been a Book Riot contributor since 2016 and is currently co-host of the All the Books! podcast and one of the weekly writers of the Read This Book newsletter. She lives in Oakland, CA on unceded Ohlone land with her wife and a positively alarming amount of books. Find her on her Instagram, Bluesky, and LinkTree.

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It isn’t a secret that writers’ conferences and book festivals are not usually known for their commitments to diversity. Well-Read Black Girl (WRBG) is out to change that. WRBG is a Brooklyn-based book club and online community that celebrates the uniqueness of Black literature & sisterhood. Their mission is to increase the visibility of Black women writers and initiate meaningful conversation with readers and as they have over 22,000 Instagram followers, I’d say they’re well on their way.

Now WRBG is stepping up their game with a Writers’ Conference and Festival to be held on September 9, 2017 and through a Kickstarter campaign launched on June 3rd, has already met their goal of $15,000. The intent of the conference is to create a space to celebrate Black women writers and to give an opportunity for community that is typically lacking in larger events of such type.

WRBG’s event takes place shortly before the Brooklyn Book Festival, the largest free literary event in New York City. Hopefully, WRBG’s success will be an inspiration for diversity to writers’ conferences and book festivals alike. The Kickstarter campaign is open for support until July 3rd.