Glory Edim is an American writer, entrepreneur, and founder of Well-Read Black Girl, a Brooklyn-based book club and digital literacy platform established in 2015 that celebrates the uniqueness of Black literature and sisterhood, growing from a group of about 10 people to over half a million followers online with partner book clubs nationwide and a mission to amplify the voices of Black writers and celebrate their achievements in the literary world. What began as a small book club has blossomed into a nonprofit organization, annual literary festival (first held in fall 2017), podcast produced by Pushkin Industries, and published books with President Barack Obama joining the online book club in 2021 to discuss “A Promised Land.” The platform serves as an affinity space for Black women readers and writers of all ages while welcoming gender-fluid, non-binary, and others inspired by the community.
Through her podcast “Well-Read with Glory Edim,” she conducts intimate conversations with impactful thinkers and authors of color, allowing listeners to peek behind the page and hear how writers found their voices, honed their crafts, and showed up in the world.
Edim edited the anthology “Well-Read Black Girl: Finding Our Stories, Discovering Ourselves” (2018), featuring original essays by acclaimed Black women writers including Jesmyn Ward, Lynn Nottage, Jacqueline Woodson, Gabourey Sidibe, Morgan Jerkins, Tayari Jones, and Rebecca Walker, which was nominated for an NAACP Image Award in 2019 and named a best book of the year by Library Journal, and edited “On Girlhood: 15 Stories from the Well-Read Black Girl Library,” a collection of groundbreaking short stories exploring the line between Black girlhood and womanhood.
In 2024, Edim published her memoir “Gather Me,” an inspiring testament to family, community, resilience, and the power of books to help us understand ourselves, recounting how discovering Black writers like Nikki Giovanni, Maya Angelou, Toni Morrison, and Audre Lorde helped her value herself and create bonds with other Black women while uplifting their stories.
Edim received the 2017 Innovator’s Award from the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes and the Madam C.J. Walker Award from the Hurston/Wright Foundation, having worked as a cultural practitioner and creative strategist for over ten years at startups and cultural institutions including The Webby Awards, New York Foundation for the Arts, and Kickstarter, while serving on the board of Baldwin for the Arts and residing in Washington D.C.
Why their voice matters: Edim has created vital community spaces where Black women’s writing, knowledge, and life experiences are lifted up and celebrated, demonstrating how finding ourselves in literature creates belonging and self-worth while showing that book clubs can evolve into transformative cultural movements that promote creativity, activism, and equitable change, proving that representation in literature matters profoundly for readers discovering who they are and who they might become.
