Sunshine State Book Festival

About the Event

Schedule:

10:00 a.m-4:00 p.m. - Author Showcase and Expo. Come and enjoy a day of browsing—and meet 200 local and regional authors who will talk about their writing, sell, and sign books.

10:00-11:00 a.m. - Sunshine State Teen Lit Awards ceremony. Area middle school and high school student winners of the Sunshine State Teen Lit Short Story Contest will be awarded scholarships. Sponsored by Steve Spurrier’s HBC Foundation.

12:00-3:00 p.m. - Children’s Story Time
Six children’s book authors will read and entertain the little ones in half-hour intervals. Free activity worksheets to take home

1:00-2:00 p.m. - Keynote Speaker Cynthia Barnett
Cynthia Barnett is an award-winning environmental journalist and the author of four books including her latest, The Sound of the Sea: Seashells and the Fate of the Oceans, named one of the best science books of the year by NPR’s Science Friday. Her previous books include Rain: A Natural and Cultural History, longlisted for the National Book Award, and Blue Revolution: Unmaking America’s Water Crisis, which calls for a water ethic. Her journalism appears in National Geographic, the Atlantic, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Tampa Bay Times and other publications. Cynthia is a fifth-generation Floridian and the director of Climate and Environment Reporting Initiatives at the University of Florida’s College of Journalism and Communications in Gainesville.

3:00-4:00 p.m. - Panel discussion
Perspectives of Climate Change in Literature
Four award-winning novelists will discuss the use of fiction to examine issues of climate change.

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