Award-winning local journalist and author Dani McClain will serve as the 2020 Writer-in-Residence for the Library Foundation of Cincinnati and Hamilton County.
A reporter on race, reproductive health and activism, McClain has published work in Time, Slate and EBONY, in addition to her work as a freelance reporter for The Nation magazine and as a fellow at the Type Media Center in New York. (McClain is also a former CityBeat contributor, where she wrote about Cincinnati after the 2001 riots following the police shooting of Timothy Thomas, among other topics.)
Other writing credits include her 2019 book We Live for the We: The Political Power of Black Motherhood and contributions to Killing Trayvons: An Anthology of American Violence and Octavia’s Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements. McClain is a recipient of the James Aronson Award for Social Justice Journalism as well as awards from the National Association of Black Journalists and the National Lesbian & Gay Journalists Association.
As the Cincinnati Library’s Writer-in-Residence, McClain will write regular blog posts, host a monthly podcast, lead writing workshops and hold office hours at the library.
“The goal of the Writer-in-Residence program is to foster engagement between the Library and the community’s writers and readers by providing instruction on the craft of writing, both online and in-person,” the Library notes in a release.
McClain is the sixth Library Foundation Writer-in-Residence, following fellow Cincinnatians Kathy Y. Wilson (2014), Jeffrey Hillard (2015-16), Kurt Dinan (2017), Emma Carlson Berne (2018) and, most recently, Jessica Strawser (2019).
McClain will make her first appearance on the Inside the Writer’s Head podcast with current Writer-in-Residence Strawser on Tuesday, Nov. 26. Information about her 2020 appearances will be posted at cincinnatilibrary.org/writerinresidence and she will post blogs on blog.cincinnatilibrary.org.
