What would happen if Judy Blume rewrote Dante’s Inferno to star a sexually repressed teenager who thinks she’s in hell for overdosing on pot? There’s only one author alive qualified to tackle that question; luckily Chuck Palahniuk, maverick author of Fight Club and Choke, decided to give it a shot…
Nicole Krauss will break your heart. You’ll be reading one of her novels and suddenly the pages will be damp. Confused, you’ll check the page number — 12 — and swear to yourself that you couldn’t possibly be weeping before even learning the narrator’s name. But you are. Don’t worry. It’s…
On a recent episode of Chelsea Lately, Handler discussed the literary success of Are You There Vodka? It’s Me Chelsea. When one of her guests brought up the fact that Handler had topped the New York Times’ Best-Seller list, the show’s host quickly added, “Yeah, so did Snooki.” She’s right,…
Miami Book Fair 2011: Chuck Palahniuk, Nicole Krauss, street festival Nov. 18-20
Adam Mansbach’s children’s-book-not-for-children Go the Fuck to Sleep reads like The Very Hungry Caterpillar according to Lenny Bruce. A taste: “The owls fly forth from the treetops. Through the air, they soar and they sweep. A hot crimson rage fills my heart, love. For real, shut the fuck up and…
It would be easier to begrudge Téa Obreht’s extraordinary success at such a young age if her writing weren’t so damn good.Her debut, The Tiger’s Wife — published last year when she was just 24 — is the hauntingly beautiful tale of Natalia, a young Yugoslavian doctor, struggling to understand…
Ever wish you had taken the time to really get to know author and filmmaker John Sayles? Like, really get to know him, not just re-Tumblr his ROFLcopters or poke him on Facebook? This week, Sayles is giving the Magic City a mighty stone — that is, two separate appearances…
We can all breathe a collective sigh of relief; the great debate as to which 50 American writers are the absolute funniest of all time has finally ended. Andy Borowitz’s new book, The 50 Funniest American Writers (Library of America), is a collection of hilarious pieces ranging from O. Henty’s…
“Comics are words and pictures,” opined the late Harvey Pekar, comic book writer, critic and cult-personality. “You can make anything with words and pictures.” For over three decades — as the writer (and main character) of navel-gazing indie comic book American Splendor — Pekar’s life was dedicated to the infinite…
Postmodernism is slipperier than a greased watermelon. Society used to have simple standards and reasonable expectations: up was up, men and women were men and women, and fiction tidily progressed from beginning to end in a linear fashion. But then Postmodernism — the literary and arts movement that threw out…
There’s nothing worse than having a holiday dinner — or a funeral, or a wedding — to force you to spend an extended and unnecessary amount of time with your family. Unless you happen to be forced to do that by a hurricane, which, in turn, forces you to confront…
As part of the University of Wynwood reading series, poet Roger Reeves is appearing at Lester’s Bar this Friday. UW founder P. Scott Cunningham recently spotted Reeves at a writers’ conference. He was impressed by the poet’s intellect and charisma, noting “His work combines formal rigor and contemporary speech that…
At the end of Michael Moore’s remarkable documentary Roger & Me, the filmmaker corners former General Motors CEO Roger Smith and asks him if he’d visit a family who’d been evicted from their home in Flint, Michigan. Smith’s decision to shut down several plants in the city cost 30,000 folks…
The inimitable Miami Book Fair is just around the corner. For those who say that Miami is a cultural wasteland, we say, “phooey!” For an intellectual vortex, we sure get lucky hosting the best, brightest, and biggest names in the literary world every year.And that is why the coolest, edgiest,…
Colson Whitehead, best known for his 2009 novel Sag Harbor, recently released a novel about zombies, Zone One. The book challenges literary conventions and may very well represent a change in perspective from the literary establishment toward genre novels. Spanning three days in a post-apocalyptic world, the story deftly handles traditional…
When we interviewed Karen Russell about her debut novel Swamplandia!, we characterized her fiction as swamp gothic – equal parts adventure and macabre. But when Hollywood types got a hold of this story set in South Florida, they saw comedy. HBO has picked up Swamplandia, a half-hour comedy series based…
Can you haiku? Join local journalist and former Miami New Times food critic Jen Karetnick, in conjunction with Next@19th, as they host Rooftop Chaiku (“chai” is a Hebrew word meaning “life” or “living,” for all you gentiles. It’s also the name of a damn fine spice milk tea, but that’s…
Tigertail releases a print poetry publication annually, each with a different guest editor. This year’s annual, the ninth in their series, was edited by Lynne Barrett, Professor of English at Florida International University, and has moved into prose. Authors submitted prose poetry, flash fiction, and flash nonfiction with a word…
As writers, we were totally annoyed by Lip Service at the Miracle Theatre last night. How dare they choose an attorney, a marketing teacher, and a television communications director to stand on stage and read their writing to a full house of eager listeners? In our book, writers are supposed…
One Hundred Thousand Poets for Change is a worldwide poetry gathering — basically the largest organized poetry event in history. Sound like a grandiose statement? It is. This Saturday, there will be 650 events in 95 countries, including 13 events in South Florida alone. Expect a poetic dialogue promoting environmental,…
Tyra Banks may have just penned America’s Next Top Novel, for teens, that is. Alas, the joke is terrible, but it needed to be made. The former supermodel published her first book, describing it as a fantasy and adventure tale for young women entitled Modelland.Her goal is to make young…
On the second page of Birds of Paradise, Diana Abu-Jaber evokes local carpet salesman Don Bailey as that “thirty-foot naked man reclining, selling God-knows-what.” The novel, which is steeped in the visual cues of Miami life, flips back and forth between a wayward daughter’s street life on the pink sidewalks…
