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2025 Africana Arts & Humanities Festival

“Renaissance"

The second annual Africana Arts + Humanities Festival “Renaissance,” in tribute to the centennial period for the Harlem Renaissance.

As an extension of AARLCC’s mission to collect, preserve, and provide access to resources focusing on the history and culture of people of African, African American, and Caribbean descent, each year the AARLCC’s signature event (formerly known as the South Florida Book Festival) creates opportunities for residents in the Greater Fort Lauderdale area to be exposed to literature and authors focused on Black history and culture representing various facets of the African diaspora. Through engagement with written text in conversation with authors, the Africana Arts + Humanities Festival will continue to create an environment that fosters and promotes understanding of a shared human experience. 

(See the Eventbrite link for the full festival schedule.)

Featured Authors and Speakers:

Jonathan Escoffery, a native of South Florida, is the author of If I Survive You, a New York Times and Booklist Editor’s Choice, an IndieNext Pick, and an International Bestseller. If I Survive You was nominated for more than a dozen prizes and awards internationally, including the National Book Award, the PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, the PEN/ Robert W. Bingham Prize, the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, the Aspen Words Literary Prize, and the Story Prize, and was a finalist for the Booker Prize, the Dublin Literary Award, the PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction, the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize, the Gordon Burn Prize, and the Southern Book Prize.

Dr. Jeffreen Hayes	Augusta Savage

Jeffreen Hayes, author of Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman. Hayes is an art historian and curator, merges administrative, curatorial and academic practices into her cultural practice of supporting artists and community development. As an advocate for racial inclusion, equity, and access, Jeffreen has developed a curatorial and leadership approach that invites community participation, particularly those in historically excluded communities. Her curatorial projects include SILOS (2016-18), Augusta Savage: Renaissance Woman (2018-2020), AFRICOBRA: Messages to the People (2018), Process (2019) and AFRICOBRA: Nation Time (2019).

Dr. Laura Helton

Laura Helton is the author of  Scattered and Fugitive Things: How Black Collectors Created Archives and Remade History (Columbia University Press, 2024), explores the emergence of African American archives and libraries to show how historical recuperation shaped forms of racial imagination in the early twentieth century.

Dr. Karida Brown	Charly Palmer

Dr. Karida Brown and Charly Palmer coauthored The New Brownies' Book: A Love Letter to Black Families, which reprises the groundbreaking children's book created by W. E. B. DuBois in 1920.

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