Preview performance of Passion Dey Couldn’t Steal – The Zora Neale Hurston

Although Zora Neale Hurston was born in Alabama, she moved with her family to Florida at the age of three and is counted as one of Florida’s great literary figures. She attended Howard University, then Barnard College, where she earned a BA in Anthropology, followed by two years of graduate studies at Columbia University. She became a central figure in the Harlem Renaissance, publishing four novels, numerous nonfiction anthropology studies, poetry, and several plays. Her literary papers reside in the University of Florida Smathers Libraries.

While she continued to write and to conduct ethnographic research in the Caribbean, her fiction fell out of the literary limelight until Pulitzer Prize-winning author Alice Walker revived interest in her work posthumously.

Pamela D. Marshall is an author, actress, Peace Ambassador, and Executive Director of At The WELLness Network/Publishing. A passionate advocate for justice and healing through storytelling, she has written and performed original one-woman shows, including a stirring portrayal of civil rights icon Fannie Lou Hamer, and The Lullaby Rebellion – A Mother’s Day Gift to America, a searing tribute to the enslaved Black women, “wet nurses”, forced to nurse a nation. Pamela has embodied historic figures such as Ida B. Wells in If These Dolls Could Talk and Anna Murray-Douglass in A Conversation with Frederick Douglass and Captain John Brown. She is the author of four books and uses her pen and platform to make forgotten voices unforgettable.