Miami, Oct. 11, 2019 – Miami Dade College’s (MDC) Miami Book Fair, Nov. 17 – 24, will once again host the cream of the literary crop and headline makers. This year’s eclectic Evenings With program and special author events includes Samantha Power, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations; columnist George F. Will; filmmaker John Waters; playwright, author, performer, and activist Eve Ensler; Debbie Harry and Chris Stein of the band, Blondie; the 2019 National Book Award winners and nominees, among others.
Most evening author events require a ticket. Tickets will be available to the general public at 10 a.m., on Oct. 21 (and are already available for Friends of the Fair). To become a Friend and receive this and other benefits of membership, go to www.miamibookfair.com and click on Become a Friend or call 305-460-6575.
WLRN is once again the Presenting Media Sponsor of most evening programs.
Complete list of Evenings With and special author events:
An Evening With Samantha Power
Sunday, Nov. 17, at 4 p.m. | Chapman (Bldg. 3, Second Floor) Tickets $20
Power is the Professor of the Practice of Global Leadership and Public Policy at Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of Practice in Human Rights at Harvard Law School. She served in the Cabinet of President Barack Obama and as U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (2013-2017). From 2009 to 2013, she worked on the National Security Council as Special Assistant to the President for Multilateral Affairs and Human Rights. Power began her career as a journalist reporting from Bosnia, East Timor, Rwanda, and Sudan, among other countries. She is the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize, and she was named one of the world’s 100 Most Influential People by TIME and one of the World’s 100 Most Powerful Women by Forbes. In her new memoir, The Education of an Idealist (Dey Street Books), Power offers an answer to the question “What can one person do?” while tracing a distinctly American journey from immigrant, to war correspondent, to presidential cabinet official. Secretary of State Madeline Albright said that Power’s “absorbing, heartfelt, and remarkably candid memoir offers essential lessons to anyone aspiring to follow in her footsteps in shaping the world for the better.”
An Evening with Joy-Ann Reid
Sunday, Nov. 17, at 7 p.m. | Chapman (Bldg. 3, Second Floor) Tickets $20
Reid is the host of AM Joy –a twice-weekly political talk show that airs weekend mornings on MSNBC. She is also a political analyst for NBC News and MSNBC and writes a weekly column for The Daily Beast. Reid is the author or editor of two previous books: Fracture, Barack Obama, the Clintons, and the Racial Divide, and We Are the Change We Seek: the Speeches of Barack Obama. In The Man Who Sold America (William Morrow), through interviews with American and international thought leaders and in-depth analysis, Reid places the Trump era within the context of modern history, examining the profound social changes that led us to this point. 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. Michael Tomasky, contributing opinion writer to The New York Times and author of If We Can Keep It: How the Republic Collapsed and How It Might Be Saved, wrote, “Passionate, smart, and breathtakingly original, The Man Who Sold America will explain Trump to readers for years to come.”
Bari Weiss in Conversation with Alana Newhouse
Monday, Nov. 18, 6 p.m. | Chapman (Bldg. 3, Second Floor) – Tickets $20
Weiss is a staff editor and writer for the New York Times covering culture and politics. She was an op-ed and book review editor at the Wall Street Journal before joining the Times in 2017. She is a native of Pittsburgh and graduated from Columbia University. On October 27, 2018, eleven Jews were gunned down as they prayed at their synagogue in Pittsburgh. It was the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. For most Americans, the massacre at Tree of Life, the synagogue where Weiss became a bat mitzvah, came as a total shock. But anti-Semitism is the oldest hatred, commonplace across the Middle East and on the rise for years in Europe. So, that terrible morning in Pittsburgh raised a question Americans can no longer avoid: Could it happen here? How to Fight Anti-Semitism (Crown) is Weiss’s answer. Not just for the sake of America’s Jews, but for the sake of America. Weiss’s cri de coeur is an unnerving reminder that Jews must never lose their hard-won instinct for danger, and a powerful case for renewing Jewish and American values in uncertain times. Author Lisa Taddeo calls How to Fight Anti-Semitism “Stunning . . . Bari Weiss is heroic, fearless, brilliant, and bighearted. Most importantly, she is right.” Weiss will be in conversation with Alana Newhouse, the editor-in-chief of Tablet Magazine.
Eve Ensler in Conversation with Aja Monet
Monday, Nov. 18, 8 p.m. | Chapman (Bldg. 3, Second Floor) – Tickets $20
Ensler is a Tony Award-winning playwright, author, performer, and activist. Her international phenomenon, The Vagina Monologues, has been published in 48 languages and performed in more than 140 countries. She is the founder of V-Day, the global activist movement to end violence against women and girls, and One Billion Rising, the largest global mass action to end gender-based violence in over 200 countries. Like millions of women, Eve Ensler has been waiting much of her lifetime for an apology. Sexually and physically abused by her father, Ensler 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. The Apology (Bloomsbury), written by Ensler 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. Jane Fonda calls The Apology “A crucial step forward . . . This is an urgently needed book right now.”
Monet is a Caribbean-American poet. Her wise, lyrical, and courageous poems won her the legendary Nuyorican Poet’s Café Grand Slam title. She is internationally-recognized for combining her spellbound voice and vivid poetic imagery on stage. In 2018, Monet’s first full collection of poetry, My Mother Was A Freedom Fighter, was nominated for an NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work. She was a featured speaker at TEDWomen 2018 for her meaningful work in South Florida with Smoke Signals Studio.
An Evening With George F. Will
Tuesday, Nov. 19, 6 p.m. | Chapman (Bldg. 3, Second Floor) Tickets $20
The man The Wall Street Journal once called “perhaps the most powerful journalist in America” began his column with the Washington Post in 1974, and received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977. To date, will has written fourteen books, including One Man’s America; Men at Work; and Statecraft as Soulcraft. He writes a twice-weekly syndicated column on politics and domestic and foreign affairs for the Washington Post. He is also a regular contributor to MSNBC and NBC News. In his latest book, The Conservative Sensibility (Hachette Books), Will examines how the Founders’ belief in natural rights created a great American political tradition. Their beliefs in natural rights, limited government, religious freedom, and human virtue and dignity ushered in two centuries of American prosperity. Now, as Will shows, conservatism is under threat — both from progressives and elements inside the Republican Party. Senator Ben Sasse (R-Nebraska) called The Conservative Sensibility “A monumental achievement. [It] is not a ‘Washington book’ about partisan politics — it’s much bigger than that. It’s a career capstone that will stir your soul with its passionate reminder of what conservatism really means.”
Mona Eltahawy Presents The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls
Tuesday, Nov. 19, 7 p.m. | MDC Live Arts Lab (Bldg. 1, First floor) FREE
Join feminist activist Mona Eltahawy in conversation with Tiffany Madera, Founder of Hanan Arts, as they discuss Eltahawy’s The Seven Necessary Sins for Women and Girls, described as an international mandate for how girls and women can defy, disobey, and disrupt patriarchy everywhere. Later in the week, Eltahawy will join Madera in Havana, Cuba amongst hundreds of Cuban women, feminist thinkers, scholars, artists, and dancers from the international community at the Havana Habibi Festival. Powered by the Knight Foundation Knight Arts Challenge, Havana Habibi seeks to foster dialogue between Miami and Havana through film screenings, dance workshops, and live performances on the themes of diaspora, dance, and identity that were explored in the documentary film Havana Habibi.
In Conversation With John Waters
Tuesday, Nov. 19, 8 p.m. | Chapman (Bldg. 3, Second Floor) Tickets $20
Waters is an American film director, screenwriter, actor, stand-up comedian, author, journalist, visual artist, and art collector. He is also the author of the best-selling books Role Models (2010) and Carsick (2014). His spoken word shows This Filthy World and A John Waters Christmas continue to be performed around the world. He rose to fame in the early 1970s for his transgressive cult films, especially Pink Flamingos, Female Trouble, and Desperate Living, which he has called the Trash Trilogy, as well as (slightly) more mainstream films Polyester and Hairspray, which was turned into a Broadway hit. In his newest book Mr. Know-It-All (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), Waters dishes it up well-done, and done more than once. He features cameos by a cast of dozens, from Divine, Mink Stole and Johnny Depp, to Kathleen Turner, Patricia Hearst, and Tracey Ullman, and includes photos from the author’s personal collection. In The New York Times Book Review, Alan Cumming noted “That John Waters is a national treasure is a surety. Period. Thank you and good night . . . [He] shows a vulnerability and an honesty and an almost frantic desire to impart to us, before he can no longer, his manic mantras, his obsessive treatises and his biting and blisteringly honest bons mots that are actually really enlightening life lessons.”
An Evening With Mo Rocca
Wednesday, Nov. 20, 6 p.m. | Chapman (Bldg. 3, Second Floor) Tickets $20
Rocca is a correspondent for CBS Sunday Morning, host of The Henry Ford’s Innovation Nation, and host and creator of the Cooking Channel’s My Grandmother’s Ravioli, in which he learns to cook from grandmothers and grandfathers across the country. He’s a frequent panelist on NPR’s hit weekly quiz show Wait, Wait…Don’t Tell Me!, spent four seasons as a correspondent on Comedy Central’s The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and four seasons as a correspondent on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno. In Mobituaries (Simon & Schuster), the journalist, humorist, and history buff profiles the people who have long fascinated him but whose lives were never truly examined, including Thomas Paine, Audrey Hepburn, and Billy Carter. Mobituaries is an insightful and unconventional account of the people who made life worth living for the rest of us, one that asks us to think about who gets remembered, and why.
Pat Mitchell Presents Becoming a Dangerous Woman
Wednesday, November 20, 7 p.m. | Auditorium (Bldg. 1, Second Floor) FREE
Raised in a small town in Georgia with no money or connections, Pat Mitchell went on to become a consummate media game-changer. She was the first woman president of PBS, CNN Productions, and The Paley Center for Media, as well as an award-winning producer of documentaries and TV series. She is the cofounder and curator of TEDWomen and the Connected Women Leaders Initiative, chair of Sundance Institute and Co-Chair of The Women’s Media Center, trustee of the Skoll Foundation, and advisor to Participant Media. In Becoming a Dangerous Woman (Seal Press), she shares her own path to power, from a childhood spent on a cotton farm in the South to her unprecedented rise in media and global affairs. Alongside revelatory interviews with other dangerous women, Mitchell takes us on a lively journey, sharing with readers intimate anecdotes about navigating the power paradigms of Washington D.C. and Hollywood, traveling to war zones with Eve Ensler and Glenn Close, pressing Fidel Castro into making a historic admission about the Cold War, and matching wits with Ted Turner and Robert Redford. Mitchell will be in conversation with Catalina Escobar, recognized social entrepreneur. Granted the National Merit Order Award by Colombian President Juan Manuel Santos in 2011, she joined the Fortune/U.S.State Department Global Women´s Mentoring Partnership and became a CNN Hero in 2012.
An Evening With Debbie Harry
Wednesday, Nov. 20, at 8 p.m. | Chapman (Bldg. 3, Second Floor) Tickets $20
Harry is a musician, actor, and activist, best known as the singer of the punk/New Wave/pop band Blondie. After the group broke up in the early ‘80s, Harry embarked on a successful solo career, recording five solo albums. Meanwhile, Harry developed an acting career during which she amassed 30 film roles and several television appearances. In her memoir, Face It (Dey Street Books), she blends first-person essays, interviews conducted by journalist Sylvie Simmons, never-before-seen photographs, illustrations, and fan art installations to recount in intimate detail the downtown scene of 1970s New York City, a time and a place where Blondie played alongside the Ramones, Television, Talking Heads, Iggy Pop, and David Bowie and interacted with artists such as Jean-Michel Basquiat. The book traces her path from commercial success and heroin addiction, to the near death of her partner and Blondie co-founder Chris Stein, bankruptcy, Blondie’s breakup, her acting career, and the return of the band. Harry will be joined by CHRIS STEIN; and moderator ROB ROTH, who is also creative director of Face It and director of this multimedia performance.
Mitchell Wolfson Presents Wolfsonian-FIU: Founder’s Choice
Thursday, Nov. 21 at 7 p.m. | Auditorium (Bldg. 1, Second Floor) FREE
Mitchell “Micky” Wolfson, Jr. established The Wolfsonian Foundation, a research center and museum in Miami Beach, in 1986. He is an avid collector of modern art and design. In 1997, he donated his collection, estimated at 80,000 objects, and the state-of-the-art museum to Florida International University. It was the basis for the Wolfsonian Museum-FIU, a research center and museum. In Wolfsonian-FIU: Founder’s Choice (Editions Scala), Wolfson offers a personal take on the museum’s rich and varied collection of cultural artifacts, and a glimpse into the art of collecting. Rooted in the greatest century of growth and change humanity has ever known – 1850 to 1950 – The Wolfsonian Museum-FIU traces the odyssey from agrarian to urban, from colonial empires to Cold War superpowers, and from the first spike of the Transcontinental Railroad to the advent of television.
An Evening With Richard Russo
Thursday, Nov. 21, at 8 p.m. | Chapman (Bldg. 3, Second Floor) Tickets $20
Russo is the author of eight novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Empire Falls, two collections of stories, a collection of essays, and a memoir. Chances Are … (Penguin Random House), his 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 at 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 at the Vineyard in 1971: the disappearance of the woman they all loved. Publishers Weekly’s review noted that Russo’s Chances Are … “mixes his signature themes—father-and-son relationships, unrequited love, New England small-town living, and the hiccups of aging— with stealthy clue-dropping in a slow-to-build mystery. This is vintage Russo.”
An Evening With the National Book Awards Winners and Finalists
Friday, Nov. 22, at 6 p.m. | Auditorium (Bldg. 1, Second Floor) Tickets $20
Miami Book Fair, in partnership with the National Book Foundation and with the generous support of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation, welcomes the finalists and winners of the prestigious National Book Foundation’s National Book Awards. Previous winners of the Award—including William Carlos Williams, Joyce Carol Oates, and William Faulkner—comprise a who’s who of American literature. Following the awards ceremony in New York City on November 20, at which the winners will be announced, Winners and Finalists in the categories of Fiction, Nonfiction, Translation, Poetry, and Young People’s Literature will travel to Miami for this remarkable gathering of literary talent.
For Miami Book Fair information, visit www.miamibookfair.com and/or download a PDF of the guide https://www.miamibookfair.com/downloadable-guide/ or call 305-237-3528 or email wbookfair@mdc.edu.
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About Miami Book Fair
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. The Fair features readings and discussions with the world’s most renowned authors, generating discourse on contemporary literature and current issues of international importance. The Fair also include culinary presentations; live music and interdisciplinary performances; interactive, educational activities for children; and more than 200 booksellers and publishers during the Street Fair. Events take place in English, Spanish, Haitian Creole and French. In addition to the annual festival, the Miami Book Fair responds to community needs with a year-round schedule of activities, including The Little Haiti Book Festival, highlighting Haiti’s literary acumen; creative writing and publishing workshops; author presentations; reading campaigns; and Read to Learn Books for Free, a partnership with The Children’s Trust that distributes more than 150,000 free books a year to children in Miami-Dade County.
Miami Book Fair is made possible through the generous support of the State of Florida and the National Endowment for the Arts; the City of Miami; Miami-Dade County Department of Cultural Affairs and the Cultural Affairs Council, the Miami-Dade County Mayor and Board of County Commissioners; Miami-Dade County Public Schools; the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau; the Miami Downtown Development Authority; and the Friends of the Fair; as well as many corporate partners. Miami Book Fair: Building community, one reader at a time.
Miami Book Fair contact: Lisa Palley, 305-642-3132 lpalley@bellsouth.net