• By Don Dwiggins
  • Posted Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Library Awarded NEA Big Read Grant

The Forsyth County Public Library, in partnership with Z. Smith Reynolds Library at Wake Forest University has been awarded a prestigious $10,000 Big Read grant from the National Endowment for the Arts for the annual community read project this fall. Forsyth County Public Library is one of just 269 libraries across the country participating in The Big Read from September 2009 - June 2010.

This year’s book selection is Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston’s moving African American novel, set in 1920s Florida, about the growth of a teenage girl into a woman who takes charge of her own destiny.

The Big Read kicks-off September 12th as part of the Bookmarks Festival of Books in downtown Winston-Salem. Forsyth County Big Read Project Chair Elizabeth Skinner gives us a preview of fall programming, “The NEA’s Big Read grant, and partnership with the Z. Smith Reynolds Library, will enable the public library to bring several prestigious Hurston scholars to Winston-Salem. Dr. Robert Hemenway, author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Literary Biography, helped bring Zora Neale Hurston out of obscurity. Dr. Hemenway will serve as the honorary chair of The Big Read and speak at Diggs Gallery on October 1st. The Library will also partner with the North Carolina Black Repertory Company to bring the one-woman show “Zora” to Winston-Salem as the culminating event on October 24-25.”

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