Meet the innovative literary leader Glory Edim of Well-Read Black Girl

At an Authors Guild gala honoring Toni Morrison last May in New York, two women started chatting — about their hair, about their dresses and, ultimately, about books. Glory Edim and novelist Tayari Jones shared a cab ride home to Brooklyn afterward, and on the way, Edim told Jones her idea for expanding her Well-Read Black Girl book club. “I told her I was thinking of doing a literary festival, but I didn’t know what it would look like,” Edim says. “She helped me figure it out.”

Says Jones, “The conference she was describing was a full-on extravaganza of writers, readers, artisans and other talented folks. She had her heart set on September. I told her I loved the idea, but there was no way she could pull it together in just a few months. She said, ‘I think I can.'”

Soon after that, Edim launched a Kickstarter campaign. She hoped to raise $15,000, but far surpassed that, reaching close to $40,000. (It probably helped that her day job at the time was at Kickstarter, as a publishing outreach specialist; she has since quit.) The literary …