"Blackeyed" featured in Cleveland Scene's 40 books Every Clevelander Should Read

"Cuyahoga County Public Library's 2019-2020 Writer in Residence, Mary Weems brings a prolific career with her when she reads. Known for her plays and poems, Weems' work ranges across socioeconomic strata and recontextualizes the stories we've told ourselves about how the world is changing (and how we can change it). She draws the heartbreak and the emotional rebuilding process out of front-page headlines and national narratives — namely, the foreclosure crisis and its ongoing-ness, which has been both a local and national backdrop to much of her writing. We'll point you to her 2014 book of plays and monologues, Blackeyed, in which she examines the textures of the black American experience in its abundant contemporary shapes. Weems' work is highly ekphrastic, and she invites the reader to sit awhile with her words and her invocations of different forms, different sounds."

—Eric Sandy, Cleveland Scene