[Watch in the player above: Amanda Knox appears in an Italian court in 2009]
CLEVELAND (WJW) — Amanda Knox, exonerated in the 2007 murder of her roommate in Italy and whose story made headlines and lit up TV screens for years, is slated to appear at a local library next month.
Cleveland Public Library’s #CLEReads YA Book Festival, set for Oct. 9 at the Main Library, 325 Superior Ave., features a “dynamic roster” of young-adult authors, according to a Thursday news release.
Knox, who wrote the New York Times bestselling memoir “Waiting to Be Heard”, and earlier this year published her second memoir “Free: My Search for Meaning”, is set to deliver the keynote address.
“Amanda Knox’s story encourages important conversations about resilience, critical thinking and the courage to speak up,” Erica Marks, the library’s senior director of outreach and programming is quoted in the release. “We look forward to the thought-provoking dialogue her visit will inspire among our young scholars and the community.”
Knox spent years arguing her innocence in the 2007 murder of Meredith Kercher, a British woman with whom she shared an apartment while studying in Italy as a 20-year-old exchange student.
She spent four years in an Italian prison, and was ultimately exonerated by Italy’s highest court in 2015, NewsNation reported last year. She was later convicted of slander for accusing an innocent man of the murder.
Knox told NewsNation earlier this year she was “highly sexualized in the media” while her case was pending. She said it led to her being sexually harassed and degraded while imprisoned in Italy — an environment she called “dehumanizing.”
Her story led to the Netflix documentary “Amanda Knox” in 2016 and a miniseries, “The Twisted Tale of Amanda Knox”, which debuted on Hulu in August.
Knox, now 38, is now an advocate for criminal justice reform and media ethics and hosts the podcast “Hard Knox” with her husband Christopher Robinson, according to the library’s release.
Other authors lined up for the festival include:
- Nick Brooks, author of “Up in Smoke”
- Quartez Harris, author of “Go Tell It: How James Baldwin Became a Writer”
- DeAndra Miller, author of “All the Noise at Once”
- Tony Weaver, Jr., author of “Weirdo”
- Maggie Tokuda-Hall, author of “Squad” and “The Worst Ronin”
- Ellen Oh, author of “The House Next Door”
- Justin A. Reynolds, author of the “Miles Morales” graphic novel series
- Abigail Hing Wen, author of “The Vale”
The library has also planned a fireside chat on with Wen, the New York Times bestselling author, on Oct. 8 before her festival appearance.
After the festival is the Cleveland Public Library Foundation’s annual fundraiser, the Black White & REaD Celebration, in which participants can hear from Knox in a “more intimate setting” while helping support literacy and learning, according to the release.
Tickets are available on the foundation’s website.
Justin Dennis
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