Jack. E. Davis, who appears at Selby Library in Sarasota on March 22, 2025. Credit: Photo via Fuzheado, CC BY-SA 4.0

The Florida Humanities Festival invites Florida Suncoast residents to explore the culture and history that made the area what it is today.

The festival kicked off last weekend with panels and cultural demonstrations on Suncoast shapers like native Tocobaga and Calusa tribes, Spanish explorers, freedom seekers and business tycoons.

Jack E. Davis, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his book “Gulf: The Making of an American Sea,” headlines the festival’s culminating event with a keynote presentation.

The day also includes a preview screening of WGCU TV’s Hurricane Ian documentary “Rising: Surviving the Surge,” panel discussions, and kids read-alongs with local authors.

There’s no cover for Florida Humanities Festival Suncoast happening Saturday, March 22 at Selby Public Library in Sarasota.

Readers are invited to submit their own events to Creative Loafing Tampa Bay’s things to do calendar.

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This article appears in Mar 13-19, 2025.

Read his 2016 intro letter and disclosures from 2022 and 2021. Ray Roa started freelancing for Creative Loafing Tampa in January 2011 and was hired as music editor in August 2016. He became Editor-In-Chief...