Fifth Annual Sunshine State Book Festival

Gainesville, Florida

January 26-27, 2024

Bringing Readers and Writers Together

FREE ADMISSION

Come and enjoy a day of browsing—and meet 200 local and regional authors

An opportunity to meet outstanding authors who write in many genres

Authors from around Florida and the nation will gather at the Hilton Conference Center on January 27th, from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. to sell books and talk about their work

Festivities include guest speakers, giveaways, storytelling, and more

Find festival information here

Be sure to bring the kids for story time—from 12 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday 

Friday

7:00 – 9:00 p.m Author’s Reception

Meet and mingle with fellow authors and interested members of the public.

Saturday

10:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m. Sunshine State Book Festival Main Event

Opportunity to meet and engage with authors, purchase books, and have them signed.

10:00 a.m. Student Essay Contest Scholarship Awards

11:00 a.m. Panel Discussion “Freedom to Read”

12:00 – 4:00 p.m. Storytelling by Children’s Book Authors

1:00 p.m. Keynote Speaker Jack Davis

Pulitzer Prize-winning author Jack E. Davis is a professor of history at the University of Florida. He holds the Rothman Family Endowed Chair in the Humanities and teaches environmental history and sustainability studies at the University of Florida. He is the author or editor of ten books, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Gulf: The Making of an American Sea. His latest book, The Bald Eagle: The Improbable Journey of America’s Bird was a New York Times Book Review Editor’s Choice.

Other award-winning books include his Race Against Time: Culture and Separation in Natchez Since 1930 which won the Charles S. Sydnor Prize for the best book in southern history, and An Everglades Providence: Marjory Stoneman Douglas and the American Environmental Century, which received a gold medal from the Florida Book Awards.

Before joining the UF faculty, he taught at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and Eckerd College, and was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Jordan in Amman. The Sunshine State Book Festival is honored to have him as our 2024 Keynote speaker.

3:00 p.m. Literary Heritage Program “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.  It is right before Captain John Brown’s infamous raid on Harper’s Ferry, which Frederick Douglass tries to convince Captain Brown through a series of captivating speeches to reconsider his plan.

This production has touched audiences across the Southeast and is an excellent program for communities everywhere.  It tells the powerful story of two people who were different, yet held a beautiful bond of friendship.

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.