Breakthrough Writing Residency Reading & Celebration

Literary Cleveland’s Breakthrough Writing Residency provides free yearlong mentorship, support, and opportunities to help six emerging writers in Greater Cleveland develop a book-length project. Join us at Loganberry Books on Saturday, October 24 from 6-9pm as we celebrate our graduating class of 2025-2026 Breakthrough writers with a very special presentation of their work and recognition of their hard work.

We invite you to arrive at 6 to grab a snack and drink. Readings from all seven residents will run from 6:30-8:00 followed by a mixer with snacks and drinks until 9pm.

Eris Eady /they/she/ (Nonfiction) is a Black, Bisexual, Non-binary & Disabled minister, consultant, advocate, author, artist and writer from Cleveland, Ohio. They have organized, facilitated, performed, presented, and curated healing spaces all over the country. Eris has worked in the nonprofit and advocacy sector for 25 years. Known as the “Come Out Coach,” Eris equips individuals and organizations with the tools needed to foster identity and cultivate equitably inclusive practices while integrating their role as a Movement Chaplain to ensure emotionally and spiritually safe environments. They have a Master’s of Science in Positive Organizational Development & Change from Case Western Reserve University. Eris is currently a student at Memphis Theological Seminary obtaining a Doctorate of Ministry in Womanist Preaching. They are the proud parent of Yahsiin Zora Venia.

Stafford Hartman (Nonfiction) is a musician, educator, and emerging writer based in Cleveland, OH. A Kentucky native, she spent a decade singing professionally before transitioning to music education. In 2021, she began exploring micro-memoir through @americangirltherapy, an Instagram project chronicling childhood memories tied to her American Girl doll collection. These posts evolved into longer-form writing that explores her experiences as a millennial coming of age in the Bible Belt. She is currently developing a full-length memoir which uses music as a central framework for exploring her lived experiences with class, identity, and recovery. In addition to writing and teaching, Stafford is passionate about creating affirming, accessible spaces for young musicians and encouraging other suburban mothers to fly their freak flags without apology.

Taylor Patterson (Poetry) is a multidisciplinary artist and writer from Northeast Ohio. A graduate of Kent State University in journalism and creative writing, she has taught poetry in settings ranging from public schools to juvenile detention centers. Patterson’s work confronts girlhood, addiction, class, and the breaking and remaking of home. Her current project is a chapbook of poetry and lyrical prose that renders survival, femininity, and the complicated holiness of Midwestern women.

Jamie Stewart Crawford /she/they/ (Fiction) is a writer and nonprofit administrator. Her short stories have appeared in literary journals such as Suburban Witchcraft, Lit Nerds, The Blunt Space, and AC|DC Journal. Her work has also been featured in the anthologies Unapologetic Love: A Queer Charity Anthology of Radical Resilience and Driftwood and Dreams: Stories Set Along the Great Lakes. Jamie’s short screenplay War Torn, a queer drama, has been a finalist in competitions at the Cindependent Film Festival, the Boston Screenplay Awards, the Nashville Film Festival Screenwriting Competition, and the Caledonia Short Script Competition. Jamie enjoys community building, improv comedy, and 70s rock n’ roll.

Tristan Summers (Fiction) has lived in four different countries and worked as everything from an English teacher at a rural Chinese school, to a physical therapist assistant teaching stroke patients to walk, to wilderness search and rescue operations in the Blue Ridge mountains. He is a multiple-time finalist of the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction contest, as well as the Cuyahoga Community College Emerging Writer Scholarship. He writes in several different genres, but his work is consistently strange, sad, and beautiful.

‍Michelle Tackla Wallace (Poetry) is a writer from Cleveland, Ohio. A daughter of Lebanese immigrants, she often finds herself negotiating different cultures and values, a struggle that informs her poetry. Her work has been published in Rise Up Review, which nominated her poem “An Orphan Argues With the Dead” for a Pushcart Prize; Yellow as Turmeric, Fragrant as Cloves, an anthology of Asian-American poets; Babel, a journal of the International Cities of Refuge Network; and it is slated for inclusion in Poets for Peace: Sunflowers Rising Anthology. She and her mother, Yvette Tackla, co-translated a poem entitled “After One Year of This War” from Arabic into English to be published this fall in the Manhattan Review. Michelle has an MA in English from John Carroll University and works in the healthcare field.