{"id":20952,"date":"2025-04-03T11:02:43","date_gmt":"2025-04-03T15:02:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wfsu.org\/local-routes\/?post_type=wfsu-news&#038;p=20952"},"modified":"2025-04-03T11:42:18","modified_gmt":"2025-04-03T15:42:18","slug":"authors-and-musicians-are-heading-to-tallahassees-word-of-south-festival","status":"publish","type":"wfsu-news","link":"https:\/\/wfsu.org\/local-routes\/wfsu-news\/authors-and-musicians-are-heading-to-tallahassees-word-of-south-festival\/","title":{"rendered":"Authors and musicians are heading to Tallahassee&#8217;s Word of South Festival"},"content":{"rendered":"<!--[if lt IE 9]><script>document.createElement('audio');<\/script><![endif]-->\n<audio class=\"wp-audio-shortcode\" id=\"audio-20952-1\" preload=\"none\" style=\"width: 100%;\" controls=\"controls\"><source type=\"audio\/mpeg\" src=\"https:\/\/cpa.ds.npr.org\/s390\/audio\/2025\/04\/seg-a-word-of-south.mp3?_=1\" \/><a href=\"https:\/\/cpa.ds.npr.org\/s390\/audio\/2025\/04\/seg-a-word-of-south.mp3\">https:\/\/cpa.ds.npr.org\/s390\/audio\/2025\/04\/seg-a-word-of-south.mp3<\/a><\/audio>\n<p>Tallahassee\u2019s Word of South Festival kicks off Friday evening with a sold out concert in the Adderley Amphitheater at Cascades Park. The concert features a mashup of the <a href=\"https:\/\/vfemmes.com\/\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Violent Femmes<\/a> and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tallahasseesymphony.org\/\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Tallahassee Symphony Orchestra<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.tallahasseesymphony.org\/\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Dozens of musicians and authors<\/a> will appear together on various stages all weekend, and most events are free.<\/p>\n<p>The annual festival of music and literature was created over a decade ago by Tallahassee attorney and author Mark Mustian. He will be onstage discussing his new novel, <i>Boy With Wings<\/i>, joined by Parliament-Funkadelic keyboardist Daniel Bedrosian.<\/p>\n<p>We speak to several featured authors on this week\u2019s <i>Speaking Of<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><b>Shonda Knight<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Former Tallahassee TV news anchor Shonda Knight will discuss her new children\u2019s book, <i>My Omnilocks,<\/i> inspired by her daughter.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cShe wanted me to straighten her hair for the (father daughter) dance, and the weather that day was just not conducive for hair of our texture to be straight,\u201d Knight says. \u201cShe felt defeated.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI took it as an opportunity to really pour into her, and I just started telling her why her hair was so special,\u201d Knight says. \u201cIt can be curly one day, it can be straight the next. You can braid it. You can lock it. It\u2019s so versatile.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>From that conversation, Knight wound up with an interactive board book geared toward young children.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI knew the concept from the beginning would be that there would be a face, and as you turn the pages, the hairstyle would change on that same face on the back cover,\u201d Knight says. YouTube helped her figure out how to print and <a href=\"https:\/\/myomnilocks.com\/\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">self-publish the book<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Knight, Executive Director of Community and Media Relations for the Leon County Sheriff&#8217;s Office, is now on a book tour sponsored by McDonald\u2019s. She\u2019s visiting some of the fast food restaurants around Florida and also taking the book into <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fldoe.org\/policy\/federal-edu-programs\/title-i-part-a-improving-the-academic-\/#:~:text=Title%20I%20provides%20additional%20resources,designed%20to%20raise%20student%20achievement.\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Title 1<\/a> schools.<\/p>\n<p><b>Kristen Arnett<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Author Kristen Arnett is making her second Word of South appearance for her new novel, <i>Stop Me If You&#8217;ve Heard This One. <\/i>It\u2019s about a lesbian birthday party clown. \u201cYou know, that classic story,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n<p>The book is about an Orlando woman who \u201cis trying to take her artistry, which is clowning, to the next level.\u201d Arnette says. \u201cSo she is kind of bumbling through life in this messy kind of way but at the same time trying to make art in a capitalist society.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Arnett\u2019s work has appeared in many major outlets like TIME, Oprah Magazine, The New York Times, and PBS Newshour.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI say usually I write about gay Florida, specifically gay central Florida. I consider myself very much to be a place writer.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Arnett says any of her work is steeped in Florida, \u201clike a very strong tea maybe. But I am always very interested in writing about central Florida in the ways that people don\u2019t necessarily see\u2026 If your brain is already thinking theme parks (or) Florida Man ( or) the government that we have in Florida, then here\u2019s a little magnifying glass on a place of Florida that maybe somebody who\u2019s not from here gets to take a peek inside of.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><b>Craig Pittman<\/b><\/p>\n<p>Craig Pittman is a podcaster, best-selling author, and award-winning journalist. He spent much of his career covering environmental stories for the Tampa Bay Times.<\/p>\n<p>He\u2019s written about Florida\u2019s wealth of quirkiness, like \u201ca religious cult that smuggled <a href=\"https:\/\/www.fdacs.gov\/Agriculture-Industry\/Pests-and-Diseases\/Plant-Pests-and-Diseases\/Invasive-Mollusks\/Giant-African-Land-Snail\" class=\"Link\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Giant African Land Snails<\/a> in because they thought drinking the mucus would make you healthy,\u201d Pittman says. \u201cIt actually had the opposite effect.\u201d By the way, these snails are also good at eating stucco off your house.<\/p>\n<p>Pittman has written seven non-fiction books. The latest is <i>Welcome to Florida: True Tales from America\u2019s Most Interesting State<\/i>. \u201cIf you\u2019re new to Florida, and every day we get 900 new people who move here and don\u2019t know what they\u2019ve gotten themselves into, grab this book and it\u2019ll teach you some stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Pittman says he is still making money from his nearly decade-old book, <i>Oh, Florida!: How America&#8217;s Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country. <\/i>\u201cThe point of that book is, yes we are weird, but we are also more than that. And if you just think we\u2019re weird, you\u2019re making a big mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Click LISTEN above to hear this entire segment of <i>Speaking Of<\/i>.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/npr.brightspotcdn.com\/ed\/69\/d6b7007b41efa7be24f709c33d15\/wordofsouth2024-1.jpg\" width=\"1200\" height=\"799\" alt=\"The Adderley Amphitheater is full for Word of South 2024\"> <\/p>\n<div class=\"fullattribution\">Copyright 2025 WFSU<\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":20953,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"tdm_status":"","tdm_grid_status":"","wds_primary_category":0},"categories":[],"tags":[1136,1135],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v21.3 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Authors and musicians are heading to Tallahassee&#039;s Word of South Festival - WFSU Local Routes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/wfsu.org\/local-routes\/wfsu-news\/authors-and-musicians-are-heading-to-tallahassees-word-of-south-festival\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Authors and musicians are heading to Tallahassee&#039;s Word of South Festival - WFSU Local Routes\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Tallahassee\u2019s Word of South Festival kicks off Friday evening with a sold out concert. 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