MDC News

The acclaimed Miami Book Fair, the nation’s finest and largest literary gathering for more than three decades, returns Nov. 17 – 24 to MDC’s Wolfson Campus in downtown Miami.

Attended by more than 200,000 people over eight days, Miami Book Fair features more than 600 authors and poets from around the world with readings from new works in English, Spanish and Kreyol and panel discussions on many topics. Other highlights include author readings, storytelling, and interactive experiences for children and teens, as well as panels on comics and graphic novels.

Founded in 1984 by Miami Dade College and partners, Miami Book Fair engages the community through inclusive, accessible programs that promote reading and support writers year-round. The annual eight-day festival has grown into the largest and most comprehensive community-rooted literary gathering in the United States generating discourse on contemporary literature and current issues of international importance.

2019 Evenings With Series

The Evenings With program spotlights well-known authors and contemporary figures and makes them accessible through intimate one-on-one conversation. Tickets will be available soon. Book Fair members get early ticketing opportunities and the latest programming updates.

Below are the Evenings With speakers featured this year:

Samantha Power, Education of an Idealist (Sun., 11/17)

Pulitzer Prize winner Samantha Power, a relentless advocate for promoting human rights, has been heralded by President Barack Obama as one of America’s “foremost thinkers on foreign policy.” She served for four years as Obama’s human rights adviser and in 2013, he named her U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, the youngest American to assume the role. The Education of an Idealist traces Power’s distinctly American journey from immigrant to war correspondent to presidential Cabinet official.

Joy Reid,  The Man Who Sold America: Trump and the Unraveling of the American Story  (Sun., 11/17)

The host of AM Joy on MSNBC argues that President Trump’s administration is characterized by grift and venality that demeans the office and diminishes America.” —New York Times Book Review. Is Donald Trump running the “longest con” in U.S. history? How did we get here? What will be left of America when he leaves office? Candidate Trump sold Americans a vision that was seemingly at odds with their country’s founding principles. Now in office, he’s put up a “for sale” sign—on the prestige of the presidency, on America’s global stature, and on our national identity. At what cost have these deals come? Providing new context and depth to our understanding, The Man Who Sold America reveals the causes and consequences of the Trump presidency and contends with the future that awaits us.

Eve Ensler, The Apology (Mon., 11/18)

Like millions of women, Eve Ensler has been waiting much of her lifetime for an apology. Sexually and physically abused by her father beginning when she was 5, Eve has struggled her whole life from this betrayal, longing for an honest reckoning from a man who is long dead. After years of work as an anti-violence activist, she decided she would wait no longer; an apology could be imagined, by her, for her, to her. The Apology, written by Eve from her father’s point of view in the words she longed to hear, attempts to transform the abuse she suffered with unflinching truthfulness, compassion, and an expansive vision for the future.

George Will, The Conservative Sensibility (Tues., 11/19)

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, an “astonishing” and “enthralling” (Booklist) new examination of how the Founders’ belief in natural rights created a great American political tradition. “Easily one of the best books on American Conservatism ever written.” Jonah Goldberg

John Waters, Mr. Know-It-All: The Tarnished Wisdom of a Filth Elder  (Tues., 11/19)

No one knows more about everything—especially everything rude, clever, and offensively compelling—than John Waters. The auteur of the transgressive movie classics PinkFlamingos, Polyester, Hairspray, Cry-Baby, and A Dirty Shame, is one of the world’s great sophisticates and in Mr. Know-It-All he serves it up raw: how to fail upward in Hollywood; how to develop musical taste, from Nervous Norvus to Maria Callas; how to build a home so ugly and trendy that no one but you would dare live in it; more important, how to tell someone you love them without emotional risk; and yes, how to cheat death itself. Through it all, Waters swears by one undeniable truth, “Whatever you might have heard, there is absolutely no downside to being famous. None at all.” Mr. Know-It-All is Waters’ most hypnotically readable, upsetting, revelatory book and promises to be another instant Waters classic.

Debbie Harry, Face It (Wed., 11/20)

This memoir features first-person essays with interviews conducted by journalist Sylvie Simmons, and documents Blondie’s ascent to New Wave fame, including previously unseen photos and fan art. “I was saying things in songs that female singers didn’t really say back then. I wasn’t submissive or begging him to come back, I was kicking his ass, kicking him out, kicking my own ass too. My Blondie character was an inflatable doll but with a dark, provocative, aggressive side. I was playing it up yet I was very serious.” — Debbie Harry in Face It.

Mo Rocca, Mobituaries: Great Lives Worth Reliving (Wed., 11/20)

Not every notable life has gotten the send-off it deserves. In Mobituaries, the book companion to the CBS podcast of the same name, the journalist, humorist and history buff is righting that wrong, profiling the people who have long fascinated him—from the 20th century’s greatest entertainer to sitcom characters gone all too soon, to a shamefully forgotten Founding Father. In his inimitable way, Rocca chronicles the stories of the people who made a difference, but whose lives—for some reason or another—were never truly examined.

Richard Russo, Chances Are . . . (Thurs., 11/21)

Russo’s first stand-alone novel in 10 years, is an absorbing saga in which the bonds of friendship prove as constricting, and rewarding, as those of family or any other community. One beautiful September day, three men, friends ever since meeting in college circa the sixties, convene on Martha’s Vineyard. Each holds his own secrets, in addition to the mystery that none of them has ever stopped puzzling over since a Memorial Day weekend on the Vineyard in 1971: the disappearance of the woman they all loved.