Friday, February 19, 2010
O’Shaughnessy Room, O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library (Room 108)

Reception: 3-3:30pm

Performance: Jump at the Sun – The Life and Times of Zora Neale Hurston: 3:30-4:30pm

Question and Answer Session: 4:30-5pm

Sigma Tau Delta, the English Honor Society, invites the UST community for an informal reception celebrating the dedication of a new stained glass medallion in honor of Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960), author of Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937).  Hurston was a ground-breaking essayist and fiction writer closely associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Her work was instrumental in breaking down barriers of race and gender during a turbulent period of American history.

This will be the first stained glass in the library that honors a woman author and the first to recognize a writer of color.  A home for this work of art has not yet been officially determined but it will most likely be suspended in one of the west-facing windows on the first floor of the library.

The library staff is thrilled and grateful for the work of the English Honor Society and department on suggesting and raising the funds for this new work of art.

In addition to the reception, there will also be a 55-minute performance of Buffy Sedlachek’s Jump at the Sun: The Life and Times of Zora Neale Hurston that begins at 3:30pm. This Jungle Theater production features Twin Cities actress and singer Regina Williams as Zora,  Stories of Hurston’s idyllic hometown of Eatonville, tall tales she collected during her travels in the rural South, and her struggle to maintain her unique voice as a writer despite criticism from the male literati of the Harlem Renaissance all emerge over the course of this performance. The show also includes original music by local composer Roberta Carlson. A short question and answer period will follow.