In a city that’s less than literary, O, Miami, is a beacon of eloquent verse, scriberly (did we just invent a word?) skill and the power of prose. This ode to all things poetic is back for its third incarnation, and like a good canto, it gets more epic with…
Travel across the Magic City from Little Havana to Lemon City, Hialeah to Homestead, or South Beach to Surfside and you’ll be serenaded by a sonorous canto of contrasting voices. For interdisciplinary artists Juana Meneses and Leila Leder Kremer, that multicultural heart is the inspiration for “Home: Beyond Geography,” their…
When it comes to bibliophilia, these aren’t the glory days of Reading Rainbow (we miss you, Levar!). With attention spans shortening, libraries closing, and book publishers going broke, any chance to promote tomes lengthier than 140 characters is a step in the right direction. Enter the Big Read, a National…
If you’ve stepped into a public school in the last decade or so, you may have noticed an apple core poster, listing out eight “character traits,” including kindness, responsibility and respect. They’re all good things to remember, but if you know anything about kids, you know they need a little…
It’s amazing the things you can learn from a book. When was the last time that you had a look? It’s true what they say. You should read every day, because good books are playgrounds where strong minds can play. Children the most should be taught how to read, because…
Since, the onset of the Kindle and e-readers, palpable, hand-held books have been in danger of becoming obsolete, but true book-lovers in Miami have found a way to preserve the sanctity of real books. Last month, 27-year-old Isis Miller started the Wynwood Book Club, dedicated to spreading the love of…
Award-winning author Piper Kerman is busting out of her frozen New York digs and making her way to the Magic City, which happens to be one of her favorite places to visit. Kerman, who wrote Orange Is the New Black: My Year in a Woman’s Prison, will stop by to…
Stuff. So much of our lives are spent wanting it, buying it, trying to keep it. We work 60-hour workweeks so we can fill our drawers and purses and closets and storage units and attics with stuff. We take pictures of our stuff to post on Instagram, spend weekends picking…
George Saunders has never been to Miami. But when he arrives on Thursday to discuss his latest book, he will likely immediately recognize it. That’s because Miami is almost identical to the creepy, dystopian, sci-fi landscape conjured up in his short stories. “I’m very class anxious and have been my…
In NoViolet Bulawayo’s debut novel We Need New Names — a finalist for this year’s Man Booker Prize — teenager Darling moves from Zimbabwe to Michigan, where she is struck by a rather large difference between Americans and the people back home. In Zimbabwe, Darling thinks, fatness “did not interfere…
George Packer knows how to write. He’s won accolades for his powerful pieces in The New Yorker, inked several novels, and penned a prize-winning analysis of America’s invasion of Iraq. If anyone needed more proof of his talents it came on Wednesday, when Packer was awarded a National Book Award…
If you live in South Florida, it’s hard not to have a mega literary crush on Karen Russell. The Miami native is just 32 years old, has three bad-ass books to her name, and is a MacArthur-certified genius. More important, perhaps, is that she’s hilarious and didn’t hang up on…
Growing up on Key Biscayne, author Soman Chainani was surrounded by lots of good children and lots of evil children. He was able to combine his observations on their behaviors with his imagination to write the New York Times bestselling young adult novel, The School for Good and Evil. This…
Daniel Alarcón had been driving for days along one of the most dangerous routes in the world — a serpentine service road recently carved into the dense Peruvian countryside — when he suddenly sensed that he wasn’t alone. “You look around you and think, OK, up in the hills somebody…
Drugs — the illegal kind — really get a bad rap. They ruin lives, we’re told. Devastate communities. Drive people mad. In some cases that’s true. What we’re not told, however, is that the overwhelming majority of those who use drugs, even regularly, including hard drugs, emerge from their merrymaking…
If we didn’t know better, we’d think the organizers of the Miami Book Fair had consulted a psychic before planning this year’s week-long festival of author appearances. The fair, which celebrates its 30th anniversary this year, got a pretty sweet gift from the National Book Foundation this week: a pair…
D.T. Max almost approached David Foster Wallace at a book release party, but ended up getting cold feet. It was only after writing an entire book about the famed recluse that Max could be sure he made the right choice in holding back. Two things became abundantly clear during his…
How many books could you read in 30 years? Five hundred? Three thousand? Could you break into the six figures? No matter your estimate, Miami Book Fair International likely has you beat. In its three-decade run, MBFI has featured about 7,500 authors promoting countless books — and that’s just in…
Tim Maxeiner”I really feel like I did some of my best work while at the Miami Herald,” Evelyn McDonnell admits. The writer spent eight years there as the pop music critic. But she was familiar with Miami even before moving here. She’d attended years of Winter Music Conference (which she…
March: Book One isn’t just a graphic novel. It’s an autobiography, a coming-of-age story, and a call to action all rolled up into one. The book’s co-author, Georgia Congressman John Lewis, uses the graphic novel to reflect on how his childhood experiences set him on the path of non-violence and…
Like most poets, Jonathan Galassi is also the president of one of the world’s most renowned publishing houses and is the foremost translator of Nobel Prize-winning Italian poet Eugenio Montale. He probably also has a cat. Galassi runs Farrar, Straus and Giroux, which has Montale and 21 other Nobel laureates…
The first appearance of El Comandante, the ersatz Fidel Castro in Cristina García’s King of Cuba, finds the enfeebled dictator confined to lead his revolution from his bed. “The tyrant shifted onto his left arm, aiming his scrawny buttocks at the Straits of Florida, and released a sputtering, malodorous stream…
