Ronnie Lovler
If it’s late January, it’s time for the Sunshine State Book Festival (SSBF), an annual event that this year aims to bring writers and readers together to support Florida literacy and the “freedom to read.”
This year’s festival, a project of the Writers Alliance of Gainesville, is set for Saturday, Jan. 27, at the UF Hilton Conference Center at SW 34th Street. The main event, with the participation of 200 authors representing 15 genres of writing, takes place 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Jan. 27. An informal author’s reception is slated from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m. on Jan. 26.
Keynote speaker UF environmental history professor Jack E. Davis, who won the 2018 Pulitzer Prize for History for his book, The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea, will share pieces of his writing journey that reflect on that book as well as the one that followed: The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird.
How does it feel to get top writing kudos?
“I guess initially I felt it was like someone else’s life. It is obviously thrilling and a confirmation that I really am a writer, not just an academic who is writing books,” Davis said. “When I reflect on my life, I wonder how I got here. I didn’t like to read when I was a kid. I didn’t like to write. If someone had said to me even in high school that one day you will write a book I would have laughed. And if they said to me, you would win the Pulitzer Prize, I would have said what is that?”
For Davis, his writing is about “making connections between people and nature but also throughout history.” That’s how it was for the Gulf book, and his tome about the bald eagle, which he defines as truly an “all-American bird.”
“It is a cultural and natural history about the species,” Davis said. “But in telling the bald eagle story, I end up telling America’s story. The bald eagle’s habitat is our habitat.”
Davis continues to make connections in the book he is working on now about the American coasts, east and west, their histories and “using history to help us better understand how we ended up with the significant environmental problems we are facing today on our very overcrowded coasts.”
That book is due to come out in 2026.
But while Davis’ talk will be a highlight of the book festival, there are other draws to bring people in, including the Literary Heritage program’s play “A Conversation with Frederick Douglass and Captain John Brown.”
The production, followed by an audience discussion, centers on the friendship between two American abolitionists and their contrasting approach to freeing the enslaved during the 1800s.
The 40-minute presentation features actor and Alachua County Poet Laureate E. Stanley Richardson, award-winning actor, director and playwright Timothy “Shamrock” McShane, and television host and author Pamela Marshall-Koons.
Children’s book authors will hold storytelling sessions from noon to 4 p.m. The event will also include an award ceremony for the seven scholarship winners of an essay contest for middle and high school students on the topic of “freedom to read.”
A panel discussion on the same issue will follow to be moderated by retired UF professor Jon Reiskind with the participation of Mary Bahr, Joe Courter, Carolyn Edwards and Judith Weaver.
“We were hesitant to go there,” said festival chairman Pat Caren, who writes under the name of Marie Q. Rogers. “We didn’t know what kind of backlash we might get putting ourselves out there politically. But we did it. And we think it is a very important aspect of present day culture. So, freedom to read is an important topic. And we are glad we are getting the youth involved. “
But beyond the events, don’t forget the raison d’être of the festival, the coming together of 200 local and regional authors and the opportunity to browse their books and purchase them.
Admission is free and there will be hourly drawings where attendees can win an autographed book.
“Someone could come and spend all day going to the different events and browsing the writers,” Caren said. “They could spend the whole day there and not run out of things to do.”