The Life of Herod the Great - Launch Event with Deborah G. Plant

Tombolo Books and The Woodson African American Musuem of Florida invite you to celebrate a never before published novel from beloved author Zora Neale Hurston, revealing the historical Herod the Great—not the villain the Bible makes him out to be but a religious and philosophical man who lived a life of valor and vision.

Scholar-Editor Dr. Deborah G. Plant and local author Sheree L. Greer celebrate the life and work of one of the most essential voices in the canon of Florida literature, Zora Neale Hurson!

The event will take place at The Woodson African American Museum of Florida located at 2240 9th Ave South, St. Petersburg FL 33712. Doors open at 6pm for a pre-event reception with light refreshments, and the event begins at 6:30pm. Tombolo Books will be on site with copies of The Life of Herod the Great for purchase.

In the 1950s, as a continuation of Moses, Man of the Mountain, Zora Neale Hurston penned a historical novel about one of the most infamous figures in the Bible, Herod the Great. In Hurston’s retelling, Herod is not the wicked ruler of the New Testament who is charged with the “slaughter of the innocents,” but a forerunner of Christ—a beloved king who enriched Jewish culture and brought prosperity and peace to Judea.

Portraying Herod within this vivid and dynamic world of antiquity, little known to modern readers, Hurston’s unfinished manuscript brings this complex, compelling, and misunderstood leader fully into focus. Hurston shared her findings about Herod’s rise, his reign, and his waning days in letters to friends and associates. Text from three of these letters concludes the manuscript in an intimate way.

Decades later, Dr. Deborah G. Plant has dedicated much of her career to studying the life and work of Hurston. In her role as scholar-editor, Plant’s "Commentary: A Story Finally Told" assesses Hurston’s pioneering work and underscores Hurston’s perspective that the first century BCE has much to teach us and that the lens through which to view this dramatic and stirring era is the life and times of Herod the Great.

Zora Neale Hurston wrote four novels (Jonah’s Gourd Vine; Their Eyes Were Watching God; Moses, Man of the Mountains; and Seraph on the Suwanee) and was still working on her fifth novel, The Life of Herod the Great, when she died; three books of folklore (Mules and Men and the posthumously published Go Gator and Muddy the Water and Every Tongue Got to Confess); a work of anthropological research (Tell My Horse); an autobiography (Dust Tracks on a Road); an international bestselling ethnographic work (Barracoon); and over fifty short stories, essays, and plays. She was born in Notasulga, Alabama, grew up in Eatonville, Florida, and lived her last years in Fort Pierce, Florida.

Deborah G. Plant is an African American and Africana Studies independent scholar, author of Of Greed and Glory: In Pursuit of Freedom for All, and literary critic specializing in the life and works of Zora Neale Hurston. She is editor of the New York Times bestseller Barracoon: The Story of the Last “Black Cargo” by Zora Neale Hurston and the author of Alice Walker: A Woman for Our Times, a philosophical biography. She is also editor of The Inside Light: New Critical Essays on Zora Neale Hurston, and the author of Zora Neale Hurston: A Biography of the Spirit and Every Tub Must Sit On Its Own Bottom: The Philosophy and Politics of Zora Neale Hurston. She holds MA and Ph. D. degrees in English from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. Plant played an instrumental role in founding the University of South Florida’s Department of Africana Studies, where she chaired the department for five years. She presently resides in Florida.

Sheree L. Greer is a writer, teacher, and arts administrator living in Tampa, Florida. She is the author of two novels, Let the Lover Be (Bold Strokes Books 2014) and A Return to Arms (Bold Strokes Books 2016). Her work has been published online and in print at the Bellevue Literary Review, Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora, Burrow Press Review, LezTalk Anthology, VerySmartBrothas, Autostraddle, The Windy City Times, Bleed Literary Journal, Current: An Anthology for Jackson, Mississippi, Windy City Queer Anthology: Dispatches from the Third Coast, and others. In 2014, she founded Kitchen Table Literary Arts to showcase and support the work of BIPOC women and femme-identified nonbinary writers and poets. Sheree holds an MFA at Columbia College Chicago and is a VONA/VOICES alum, Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice grantee, Yaddo fellow, and Ragdale Artist House Rubin Fellow.

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