2022 ZORA! Festival Season

We have moved to a year-round calendar. The 2022 ZORA! Festival Season will now consist of three (3) key events, each one appealing to both a specific, as well as to, an inter-generational audience. Our theme is “Celebrations for the Generations.”

• • Season Kick-off: 33rd ZORA! Festival a month-long celebration, beginning on the birthdate of the event’s namesake, Friday, January 7, and continuing with programs, including:
    • A“Sunday Series” an opening exhibition at the Zora Neale Hurston National Museum of Fine Arts
    • “Experiencing Eatonville” cultural heritage tourism tours
    • The Africa – America Women’s Economic Forum & Trade Expo
    • A 2-day Afrofuturism Conference
    • A 3-day Outdoor Festival of the Arts, January 28 – 30

• • “Traditions” Weekend: Middle School and High School Students Celebrate Black Music Month, an arts education program, June 17 – 18 ; and

• “HATitude Cultural Flair,” an African and African- American “Design” event, serving as a fundraiser on behalf of our organization’s after school and summer academic support for K-12 students, Saturday, October 29.

Probably the most significant collector and interpreter of Southern, African American culture, Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) is the dominant female voice of the Harlem Renaissance era. In her works, she celebrates her hometown, Eatonville, as representative of the dignity and beauty of rural Southern, African-American life and culture. A consummate storyteller, she brings to her readers an authenticity based on her primary research.

Zora has enjoyed a revival of interest since the 1970’s due in large part to the work of Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker; Robert Hemenway, her literary biographer; and most recently, Valerie Boyd’s biography Wrapped in Rainbows.

Her legacy is a phenomenon which has undergone remarkable development and expansion in recent decades, embracing among others, topics in ethnic identity, social interaction, feminist theory and cultural continuity. Her unique insights into folklore, performance and creative expression have invited new interpretation and inspired emulation, while the corpus of her own works has grown as a result of research and discovery.