SSBG’s Word of South Afternoon of Programming, With Downloadable Poster
The afternoon of Sunday, April 23, come out to Tallahassee’s Cascades Park and the Midtown Reader Stage for conversations, readings, performances, and panel discussions about “Landscape, Nature, and Biodiversity,” featuring award-winning, critically acclaimed artists such as writers Brian Evenson, Alexandra Kleeman, Amy Brady, Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, and musician Larry Mitchell.
Hello from the Board of the Sunshine State Biodiversity Group! We’re extremely excited to be sponsoring and hosting our first community events the afternoon of Sunday, April 23 at Cascades Park in downtown Tallahassee for the annual Word of South festival of literature and music. In our series, we hope to create spaces for engaging dialog about the environment and our place in it, with nationally-recognized figures in the literary and conservation communities.
Our schedule of events on the Midtown Reader stage begins with readings and performance, followed by an in-conversation and ending with a unique panel discussion. The opening event will be prefaced with a few words from SSBG cofounders CD Davidson-Hiers and Jeff VanderMeer, with remarks during the program by Community Outreach Director Ali Sperling, and our Florida Student News Watch Managing Editor Casey Chapter.
Download, print, and share our poster for this event. Your support helps us grow as we ramp up in 2023 for a host of projects, which include mentoring young writers as environmentally conscious journalists, sponsoring an accessible boardwalk in a cypress swamp, and conducting an urban tree canopy survey in North Florida.
Wonderbook artist Jeremy Zerfoss has created three versions of a poster to showcase SSBG’s programming at Word of South, downloadable at the links (above). The design emphasizes “the connectivity of us to the world and the world to us,” according to Zerfoss, as well as a nod to the nature of the venue, Cascades Park.
SCHEDULE OF EVENTS
All SSBG events occurring on the Midtown Reader stage in Cascades Park.
1:45pm
Whiting Award winner, poet Vanessa Angélica Villarreal, Beast Meridian (2017) and Grammy Award-winner Larry Mitchell, Shadows on the Soul (2020), The Light Within (2020). In conversation with FSU professor and SSBG Community Outreach Director Alison Sperling.
3:00pm
Guggenheim recipient Brian Evenson, The Glassy, Burning Floor of Hell, reading and in conversation with SSBG president Jeff VanderMeer, author of The Southern Reach Trilogy. Introductions by Florida Student News Watch manager and local journalist Casey Chapter.
4:15pm
Alexandra Kleeman, Something New Under the Sun, Amy Brady, editor of House on Fire: Dispatches from a Climate Changed World and Executive Director of Orion Magazine, and Annamarie Simoldoni of the Florida Student News Watch. A panel discussion led by critically acclaimed journalist and SSBG Vice President CD Davidson-Hiers.
We look forward to seeing you at the events. Please don’t be shy and feel free to come up and talk to us about the SSBG. We are thrilled about what is to come.
