ORLANDO – Orange County Library System will host Newbery Honor recipient and Coretta Scott King Award-winning children’s author Alicia D. Williams. The community is invited to join Williams on Friday, January 26, 2024, at 10:30 a.m., at Eatonville Branch for a reading and discussion of her picture book, Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston. This event is funded thanks to a matching grant from South Arts, in partnership with the National Endowment for the Arts and the Florida Department of State Division of Arts and Culture.
Williams’ discussion is offered as one of the library’s programs for the ZORA! Festival’s Education Day, part of the annual ZORA! Outdoor Festival of the Arts. The festival, which takes place in historic Eatonville every January, celebrates the life, work and impact of celebrated author Zora Neale Hurston. It is free to attend for children and adults.
Alicia D. Williams is the award-winning author of Genesis Begins Again, which received the Newbery and Kirkus Prize honors, was a William C. Morris finalist, and won the Coretta Scott King-John Steptoe Award for New Talent. Williams also debuted a picture book biography, Jump at the Sun: The True Life Tale of Unstoppable Storycatcher Zora Neale Hurston and followed up with Shirley Chisholm Dared: The Story of the First Black Woman in Congress. The Talk, her latest picture book, won both Coretta Scott King and Golden Kite Honors. Williams shares a passion for writing which stems from conducting artist residencies in schools as a Master Teaching Artist of arts-integration. She infuses her love for drama, movement, comedy and storytelling to inspire students to write their own narratives.
Library programming for the ZORA! Festival’s Education Day on January 26 also includes artist Jonathan Tyson, who will be creating an original piece to honor Eatonville’s historic essence in an artistic performance with musical accompaniment. The day will conclude with a library-hosted viewing of the film adaptation of the Zora Neale Hurston novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. OCLS brings acclaimed storytellers like Williams to the Orange County community as part of its annual partnership with the ZORA! Festival and the Association to Preserve the Eatonville Community.
For more information about Orange County Library System, visit ocls.info.
