Love of Literacy Luncheon

New York Times Bestselling Author

Tayari Jones

Thursday, April 9, 2026  

Kravis Center for the Performing Arts

We are excited to announce that our 35th annual Love of Literacy Luncheon featured speaker will be Tayari Jones on April 9! This is Coalition’s signature event, bringing the community together to increase awareness of significant literacy needs and to raise crucial funds to support literacy programs serving our community from Jupiter to Boca Raton to Belle Glade.

New York Times best-selling author Tayari Jones is the author of award-winning novels, including An American Marriage, which is an Oprah’s Book Club Selection and named a notable book by the New York Times and The Washington Post, as well as one of the 100 Best Books of the 21st Century by the New York Times. An American Marriage was also awarded the Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Aspen Words Prize, and an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work in Fiction. It has been published in over 20 countries, with more than a million copies in print around the world.

Jones has written a new unforgettable novel Kin, (released Feb 24, 2026), that sparkles with wit and intelligence and deep feeling about two lifelong friends whose worlds converge after many years apart in the face of a devastating tragedy. A novel about mothers and daughters, friendship and sisterhood, and the complexities of being a woman in the American South, Kin is an exuberant, emotionally rich, unforgettable work from one of the brightest and most irresistible voices in contemporary fiction.

Jones, a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow, is a recipient of the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, United States Artist Fellowship, NEA Fellowship, and Radcliffe Institute Bunting Fellowship. Her third novel, Silver Sparrow, was added to the NEA Big Read Library of classics in 2016. She is a graduate of Spelman College, University of Iowa, and Arizona State University. She is an Andrew D. White Professor-at-Large at Cornell University and the Charles Howard Candler Professor of Creative Writing at Emory University.

Contact Dawn for more information: 561-767-3370 or Communications@LiteracyPBC.org

34th Love of Literacy Luncheon

Thank you to our supporters and volunteers who joined us on April 10, 2025, at the Literacy Coalition’s 34th Love of Literacy Luncheon, presented by Bank of America, featuring New York Times and USA Today Best Selling author Victoria Christopher Murray. It was an inspiring and exciting day in celebration of literacy.

Ms. Murray is the author of more than 30 novels including two she co-wrote with Marie Benedict: The Personal Librarian about the remarkable story of J.P. Morgan’s personal librarian, Belle da Costa Greene, the Black American woman who hid her true identity to leave a lasting legacy and The First Ladies about the extraordinary partnership between First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt and civil rights activist Mary McLeod Bethune – an unlikely friendship that changed the world. Her latest book, Harlem Rhapsody, was released Feb. 4, 2025, and is inspired by the life of Jessie Redmon Fauset, the woman who ignited the Harlem Renaissance. With more than 3 million books in print, Victoria is one of the country’s top African American contemporary authors.