Thanks for a Great 2024 Season! We hope you'll join us again for next year's citywide read. 

2024 Art Contest Winners

A Message from Mayor O'Connell and Friends

We're continuing last year’s theme, celebrating freedom to read, this year through the lens of Jason Reynolds’ works. Our 2024 Nashville Reads author became a poet at the age of nine. His works have been both lauded and challenged.

Reynolds’ poetry and novels inspire all of us — across generations, borders, and cultures — to ask deep questions of ourselves, and of one another.

He draws us in with questions, ideas ... and with the pure joy of his work.

Here in Nashville, we’re celebrating Reynolds' work during Nashville Reads 2024. We’re digging into his writing. We’re paying attention to the questions he’s prompting. We’re taking joy in his talent as a poet and a writer. We hope you will, too.

Nashville Reads Art Contest

Calling all artists!

Knowing Jason’s love of graffiti and graphic art, as well as his incorporation of graphics in many of his novels, we are happy to commemorate Nashville Reads with a citywide art contest!

Submissions must be inspired by at least one of Jason Reynolds' books and can be presented in any tangible medium.

Submit your art piece to your local branch with your name, age, the title of your piece, and your contact information by February 13 at 5:00 PM. 

Winners will receive special prizes at the end of the 2024 Nashville Reads season. All submitted art pieces will be displayed during the Nashville Reads finale.

Celebrate Nashville Reads 2024 with these books that celebrate Black authors and poets, reading, and libraries! These books are appropriate to read aloud with your 0–5 year old child, before or after reading Jason Reynolds' "There Was a Party for Langston."