The Arts Academy of Sedona will be partnering with the Verde Valley School to stage a free production of “Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes: A Reading of Their Works,” which will take place on Wednesday, Jan. 29, from 2 to 4 p.m. at Brady Hall at 3511 Verde Valley School Road.

“When you learn about black history, you gain an understanding of the contributions African-Americans have made to this great country and an appreciation of their culture,” Arts Academy of Sedona Executive Director Camilla Ross said. “Black history is American history. By learning about different cultures and people, we can discover connections and see reflections of ourselves within those cultures. That’s something everyone can relate to. No matter what we study, we can find pieces of ourselves in one another.”

Hughes was a noted figure in the Harlem Renaissance who was known for poetry, plays, short stories and essays that celebrated African-American culture and explored the realities of working-class black life, as in one of his best-known works “Let America Be America Again.”

“Zora Neale Hurston wrote groundbreaking works about the culture and folk traditions of southern African-Americans,” an Arts Academy of Sedona press release stated. “A novelist, essayist, journalist and playwright, she is best known for her seminal novel ‘Their Eyes Were Watching God.’ Her work explores universal themes and holds wry observations such as, ‘No matter how far a person can go, the horizon is still way beyond you,” and speaks to the power of love with thoughts such as ‘Love makes your soul crawl out from its hiding place.’”

The event will feature readings by community members and VVS students and staff, including VVS Head of School Ben Lee, Sunday Larson, Joan Westmoreland, Jacquie Foschia, Kaycee Palumbo, Melinda McElroy, Micheel Steele, Che’ Leon and vocalist Margo Braman.

“Last year I read ‘My Most Humiliating Jim Crow Experience’ by Hurston,” Lee said. “This brief and painfully humorous essay — describing Hurston’s visit to a swanky Manhattan medical clinic where she turns a doctor’s attempts to humiliate her back at him — highlights the racist structures of Jim Crow even in the supposedly more progressive enclave of New York City, and demonstrates Hurston’s rhetorical skills and resistance to a race-based caste system. It is both a powerful indictment of injustice and a recipe for personal resilience.”

Larson will perform Hughes’ “Dream Variations” after reading a selection last year from Hurston’s short story “Magnolia Flower,” which was first published in The Spokesman in 1925.

“I’ve always loved this poem and it’s only 17 lines, but within it is the inside the entire problem of focusing on difference as the only guideline,” Larson said. “This is a small poem about a young black boy who longs for the night because it’s black like him, and he doesn’t feel entirely comfortable in the day … I’m looking forward to the other readings, and I hope people are there to participate and ask questions and take advantage of this opportunity. And I hope it is successful enough that [the Arts Academy of Sedona] will keep doing it.”

“Hughes leaves a legacy of truth and it’s his truth about America,” Ross said. “We get to learn about his story. We get to learn about his life, because you don’t get to know about Langston Hughes. Langston, you know, was an amazing writer, but he had a life, and he was a person and he was human, and so we get to sit in that seat and we get to share what we learn about him as a person.”

The performance will take place before February’s Black History Month, the theme of which will be “African- Americans and Labor.”

For more information, call (860) 705-971 or email info@artsacademyofsedona.org, or visit artsacademyofsedona.org.