Michael Moore Closes Out Miami Book Fair with Stump Speech

Michael Moore closed out the 28th edition of the Miami Book Fair last night with a standing-room-only discussion promoting his new book Here Comes Trouble. The book is a collection of non-fiction stories and anecdotes from the filmmakers life.  The event started 30 minutes late. The crowd was surprisingly older…

Chuck Palahniuk at Miami Book Fair: Fainting, Projectiles, and Guts

Chapman, the biggest auditorium on the Book Fair grounds, was packed. It was a young crowd, pretty white for Miami, one might think they were in Austin or Portland. In Hipster-biblio-ville, there’s plenty of plaid and an army of bespectacled soldiers. Chuck Palahniuk walked on stage to a thunderous cheer. Wearing…

Chuck Palahniuk Reimagines Dante’s Inferno Via Judy Blume In Damned

​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…

From Kris Jenner to Tina Fey, Seven Celebrity Books Worth Reading

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,…

Author Andy Borowitz Discusses The 50 Funniest American Writers

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…

Joyce Brabner on Harvey Pekar, American Splendor, and Building Monuments

“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…

Win a Free Copy of John Sayles’s A Moment in the Sun

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…

Poet Roger Reeves on How Poetry Allows Us to Be Flawed and Beautiful

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…

Colson Whitehead Talks Post-Apocalyptic Zombies and Miami Book Fair

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…

Jen Karetnick Haiku Contest, Book Giveaway

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…

Editor Lynne Barrett on Tigertail Anthology of Flash Fiction

​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…