January 14 – February 24, 2016
The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture and to encourage citizens to read for pleasure and enlightenment.
“She didn’t read books so she didn’t know that she was the world and the heavens boiled down to a drop.”
– Zora Neale Hurston, Their Eyes Were Watching God
The Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.
It is designed to revitalize the role of literature in American culture and to encourage citizens to read for pleasure and enlightenment.
In celebration of the 125th anniversary of Zora Neale Hurston’s birth, the University of Central Florida, in conjunction with Seminole County Public Library and the Public History Center, will host a series of events during January and February 2016 centered around Hurston’s seminal text Their Eyes Were Watching God. Read more…
For more information on Hurston, visit UCF’s Zora Neale Hurston Digital Archive.
Events
- Artist Talk: Dinorah de Jesús Rodríguez
- Zora Neale Hurston and Her Narrative Magic
- Performance and Talk: Be Boyd’s “Spunk and the Harlem Literati”
- Artist Talk: Reggie Wilson
- Artist Talk: Lynn Marshall-Linnemeier
- Artist Talk: Chakaia Booker
- Artist Performance: Wanda Raimundi-Ortiz
- Public Lecture: The Life of Zora in Sanford
- Performance: “Division: The Trayvon/Jordan Project”
- Public Art Project: New Windows Looking Back
- Artist Talk: Rachel Simmons
- Game Jam & Showcase: Their Eyes, Our Voices
- Film Screening: Their Eyes Were Watching God
SCPL Youth Reading Program
Free and open to the public.
Youth Services Librarians will create and present a school age program that will share a few of Zora Neale Hurston’s collected folklore tales or Poirquoi Stories / Origin Stories. Storytelling of selected folk tales will be presented with puppets, followed by a related science experiment, and an opportunity to make art that relates to one of the tales presented.
Hurston collected folktales as she traveled the back roads of Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisana so that the spirit and richness of the oral storytelling tradition could be shared and preserved. The programs will feature stories from What’s the Hurry, Fox? , Lies and other Tall Tales, and Go Gator and Muddy the Water.