Sunshine State Book Festival
January 23 – 24, 2026
Author Registration Opens July 1
Event Schedule
Friday, January 23, 2026
Best Western Gateway Grand Ballroom
4200 NW 97th Blvd. Gainesville, Florida
8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Workshop Intensive
(registration required)
7:00 to 9:00 p.m.
Opening-night reception
Readers, sponsors, and interested members of the public—come mingle with the authors. Free!
Saturday, January 24, 2026
Santa Fe College Fine Arts Hall
3000 NW 83rd St., Gainesville, Florida
10:00 a.m to 4:00 p.m.
Meet Authors Showcase and Expo
Come and enjoy a day of browsing. Meet 100 local and regional authors, talk with them about their writing, and purchase signed books.
10:00 to 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 to 2:00 p.m.
Santa Fe Lyceum Theater (Building E).
Keynote Speaker Dr. James Clark
“Writers in Paradise: Hemingway, Capote, Hurston, and Others Who Found their Inspiration in Florida”
Dr. Clark’s presentation features the stories of over two dozen well-known authors of the past and present who found inspiration and a haven under Florida’s sun, including Ernest Hemingway, Zora Neale Hurston, Tennessee Williams, Judy Blume, and more.
Dr. James Clark is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Central Florida where he has taught history since 1987. He earned a doctorate in Florida history from the University of Florida. He is the author of nine books on Florida history and the editor of a three-volume anthology of Florida literature. His articles have appeared in The Miami Herald, The Orlando Sentinel, The Washington Post, and The Florida Historical Quarterly.
2:30 to 3:30 p.m.
Santa Fe Lyceum Theater (Building E).
Pamela D. Marshall presents Zora Neale Hurston
Author and actor Pamela D. Marshall will perform her original one-woman play about famous Florida author, Zora Neale Hurston.
Although Zora Neale Hurston was born in Alabama, she moved with her family to Florida at the age of three and is counted as one of Florida’s great literary figures. She attended Howard University, then Barnard College, where she earned a BA in Anthropology, followed by two years of graduate studies at Columbia University. She became a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, publishing four novels, numerous nonfiction anthropology studies, poetry, and several plays. Her literary papers reside in the University of Florida Smathers Libraries.
While she continued to write and to conduct ethnographic research in the Caribbean, her fiction fell out of the literary limelight until Pulitzer-prize-winning author Alice Walker revived interest in her work posthumously.
Pamela D. Marshall is an author, actress, Peace Ambassador, and Executive Director of At The WELLness Network/Publishing. A passionate advocate for justice and healing through storytelling, she has written and performed original one-woman shows, including a stirring portrayal of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, and The Lullaby Rebellion – A Mother’s Day Gift to America, a searing tribute to the enslaved Black women, “wet nurses”, forced to nurse a nation. Pamela has embodied historic figures such as Ida B. Wells in If These Dolls Could Talk and Anna Murray-Douglass in A Conversation with Frederick Douglass and Captain John Brown. She is the author of four books and uses her pen and platform to make forgotten voices unforgettable.
Accommodations
Best Western Gateway Grand
4200 NW 97th Blvd. Gainesville, Florida
Best Western Gateway Grand, nearest hotel to Santa Fe College, is offering out-of-town authors and attendees rooms at a discounted rate. To receive the discount you must use this link and reserve your room before December 31, 2025.
Thank You to Our Community Partners
