Featured Events in Sarasota in May, 2025 (April Updated)

The show will be located in the heart of Downtown Sarasota in 5 Points Park, on Central and First Street. Sarasota is well known for its famous white sandy beaches, friendly locals and visitors and inviting architecture. A variety of jewelry, pottery, ceramics, photography, painting, clothing and much more - all handmade in America - will be on display, ranging from $15 to $3,000. An expansive Green Market with plants, orchids, exotic flora, handmade soaps, gourmet spices and freshly popped kettle corn further compliments the weekend, blending nature with nurture. Information Source: American Craft Endeavors (ACE) | eventbrite

Welcome to UTC FIT – Zumba Edition! Join us the first Friday of every month at 6:30 pm for a high-energy dance party workout with Yael Campbell and her Zumba Rockstars. This one-hour Zumba class will have you moving, grooving, smiling and forgetting that you’re even working out. Classes are free, no registration required. Just bring water, wear comfortable clothes and get ready to move! UTC FIT classes are held on The Green at UTC, located across from The Vitamin Shoppe. Information Source: University Town Center | eventbrite

3 :00 PM - Come early to hear 20's themed jazzy vibes. 4:00 PM - Sip a Mint Julip and join in Derby games. 5:00 PM - Enter into the dressed to impress contest, wear your best hat or fascinator! 6:00 PM - Get ready to watch the race < sound on > on multiple screens in the Gallery Lounge. >>> VIP Tables available by inquiring with Robyn directly at rholl@artovationhotel.com. VIP Experience includes table service for a max of 4 and a minimum spend of $300. Information Source: Art Ovation Hotel | eventbrite

Look closely and learn more about this season's exhibitions with Sarasota Art Museum’s Senior Curator Rangsook Yoon. Our tour will feature a walkthrough of our current exhibitions. As this talk will be exploring works in the galleries, there will be standing room only. Information Source: Sarasota Art Museum | eventbrite

This monthly book club led by Doug Knowlton is for those who like to read and discuss poetry. It celebrates the integral role of poets and poetry in life and literature. May's selection is I LOVE HEARING YOUR DREAMS by Matthew Zapruder, a poet celebrated for his razor eye for the remnants and revenants of modern culture (The New York Times). We meet in person in the loft of our store in The Mark building at 117 South Pineapple Avenue. The cost is your purchase of the book ($26), which can be picked up at Bookstore1 any time before our meeting. ABOUT THE BOOK: From a poet whose “poems don’t merely attempt beauty; they attain it” (Boston Review), an enchanting and harrowing journey through the landscape of dreams and twenty-first century hopes and disillusions. “Your dreams / have no hidden / agenda to be wise / they are made / to be forgotten / so something / can be known” I Love Hearing Your Dreams is a book of reveries, of failed elegies, of “the last time that things were real” and the moments that come afterward. These are dream songs for an age of insomnia, where the poet is always awake “at that oddest hour / that does not end, / the crooked, unnumbered one” and the future seems to be “just the past in a suit / that will never be in style.” Yet dreams in Matthew Zapruder’s poems are also a place of possibility, of reality envisioned anew—sleep shows us not merely what the world is, but what it could be. From a poet celebrated for his “razor eye for the remnants and revenants of modern culture” (The New York Times), I Love Hearing Your Dreams is a startlingly beautiful and deeply vulnerable book where lives journey into a mystifying place and emerge transformed. ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Matthew Zapruder is the author of six collections of poetry, including Come on All You Ghosts, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year; Father’s Day; Why Poetry; and Story of a Poem, a National Book Critics Circle Award finalist; and I Love Hearing Your Dreams. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, the William Carlos Williams Award, a May Sarton Award from the Academy of American Arts and Sciences, and a Lannan Foundation Residency Fellowship. His poetry has been adapted and performed by Gabriel Kahane and Brooklyn Rider and Attacca Quartet at Carnegie Hall and San Francisco Performances and was the libretto for Vespers for a New Dark Age, a piece by Missy Mazzoli commissioned for the Ecstatic Music Festival at Carnegie Hall. He was Guest Editor of Best American Poetry 2022, and from 2016 to 2017, he held the annually rotating position of Editor of the weekly Poetry Column for The New York Times Magazine. He lives with his wife and son in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he is editor at large at Wave Books, and teaches in the MFA in creative writing program at Saint Mary’s College of California. Information Source: Bookstore1Sarasota | eventbrite

Welcome to SPM @ Art Ovation Sarasota: Documenting Sarasota Artists! Join us for an exciting event showcasing the incredible talent of local artists in Sarasota. This in-person event will be held at the stunning Art Ovation Hotel, Autograph Collection. Come immerse yourself in the vibrant art scene of Sarasota and discover the diverse works of our talented artists. Don't miss this unique opportunity to experience the creativity and passion that Sarasota artists bring to the community. We can't wait to see you there! Information Source: Samantha Ponzillo Media | eventbrite