MORRISON

to keep writing, right? The world will not be as great a place as it could be if you don’t keep writing,’ ” Boyer said.

Boyer was one of about 20 people who gathered at Streetlight Guild in Olde Towne East on Tuesday night for a “reading wake,” organized by Columbus poet Scott Woods. There, Woods and fellow writer Izetta Thomas alternated reading from some of Morrison’s books and speeches, then opened up the floor for anyone to share thoughts on the writer’s work.

For Boyer, the written words from Morrison that impacted her the most didn’t come from any of her novels. They came in a letter from her, received after Boyer graduated — a year later than planned. It arrived as she was drifting, disappointed, living in a funk.

“It said, ‘You didn’t graduate late. You graduated when the Creator designed for you to graduate — just on time for your destiny,’ ” Boyer said.

Buoyed by that, Boyer enrolled in the Methodist Theological School in Ohio, located in Delaware, and is pursuing a master’s degree in divinity. She has continued Toni Morrison, who died Monday. her pursuit of writing both short stories and poetry.

Woods, an East Side resident, said Morrison’s writings have inspired him and his own work.

“Her writing is informed 100 percent by who she is as a person,” he said. “She’s a woman, she’s black, she’s Midwestern (a native of Lorain), she’s a teacher, she’s an editor, and all of those things informed her writing.

“So the point is, from her I learned to lean into myself and then write, to use writing as a means to manifest the self. And she did that perfectly.”

Morrison’s death prompted many central Ohioans to reflect on her impact and to seek out her works.

Ben Zenitsky, a spokesman for the Columbus Metropolitan Library system, said a majority of the library’s 23 locations set up special displays of Morrison’s books on Tuesday.

At Kenyon College in Gambier, Jene Schoenfeld, associate professor and chair of the English department, has taught a class specifically on Morrison every other year for the past eight years. She also incorporates Morrison’s work into many other classes.

She said that since Morrison’s death, she has heard from many former students “to speak about the power of her work in their lives.”

“She did an amazing job of capturing both the particularity of the black experience and addressing concerns that matter to us all,” Schoenfeld said. “She invites us to grapple with the deepest questions of the human experience in beautiful language and with an attention to voices that are often dismissed.”