Miami, Oct. 22, 2019 – Miami Dade College’s (MDC) 36th Miami Book Fair, Nov. 17-24, will feature presentations and panel discussions related to the LGBTQIA+ experience. Unless otherwise noted, events are free with Fair admission.
LGBTQIA+ discussions and readings @ MBF events:
Saturday, Nov. 23, at 10 a.m.
Where Do I Begin? Stories from a Life Lived Out Loud
Wolfson Campus, Room 2106 (Bldg. 2, First Floor)
300 N.E. Second Ave.
Radio personality Elvis Duran shares his wildest stories and hardest-learned lessons, all with his trademark heart and humor.
Saturday, Nov. 23, at 10 a.m.
I Am Perfectly Designed
Wolfson Campus, Chapman (Bldg. 3, Second Floor)
300 N.E. Second Ave.
Culture expert of Netflix’s hit series Queer Eye Karamo Brown and his son Jason “Rachel” Brown present this picture book for children (and children-at-heart) which is an exuberant celebration of loving who you are, exactly as you are.
Saturday, Nov. 23, at 2 p.m.
Fantastic Loves
Wolfson Campus, Room 8201 (Bldg. 8, Second Floor)
300 N.E. Second Ave.
José Ignacio “Chascas” Valenzuela presents To the End of the World, the first installment in English of his popular Trilogia del Malamor, is a story of love, betrayal and fantasy – and the ultimate quest for survival. Carolina De Robertis’s Cantoras is a revolutionary new novel about five wildly different women who find one another as lovers, friends, and ultimately, family, under an oppressive dictatorship in Uruguay. Andrea Lawlor’s Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl is a riotous, razor-sharp bildungsroman whose hero/ine wends his/her way through a world gutted by loss.
Saturday, Nov. 23, at 3 p.m.
William Dameron on The Lie: A Memoir
Wolfson Campus, Room 8302 (Bldg. 8, 3rd Floor)
300 N.E. Second Ave.
William Dameron’s The Lie: A Memoir of Two Marriages, Catfishing & Coming Out is a candid memoir of denial, stolen identities, betrayal, faking it, and coming out.
Saturday, Nov. 23, at 4 p.m.
How We Got Here: Darryl Pinckney on Busted in New York
Room 2106 (Building 2, First Floor)
In the collection Busted in New York and Other Essays, Darryl Pinckney offers a view of our recent racial history that blends the social and the personal — as it wonders how we arrived at our current moment.
Saturday, Nov. 23, at 4 p.m.
I Belong Here: Identity as Power
Wolfson Campus, MAGIC Screening Room (Bldg. 8, First Floor)
300 N.E. Second Ave.
Author/illustrator Kristen Radtke (Imagine Wanting Only This) moderates a session with writers Maia Kobabe (Gender Queer), Mira Jacob (Good Talk) and Vita Ayala (The Wilds) that explores how the standards of “normality” manipulate perceptions of gender, race, and cultural heritage, and how they’re breaking those standards down.
Saturday, Nov. 23, at 4 p.m.
In Their Own Words: Readings
Wolfson Campus, Room 8302 (Bldg. 8, Third Floor)
300 N.E. Second Ave.
Jimmy Neurosis, James Oseland´s memoir, tells us about being young and gay during the 1970s punk revolution in America and LGBTQ activist Dustin Lance Black explores how he and his conservative Mormon mother, built bridges across today’s great divides in Mama’s Boy: A Story from Our Americas.
Saturday, Nov. 23, at 5 p.m.
Two Memoirs: A Reading
Wolfson Campus, Room 2106 (Bldg. 2, First Floor)
300 N.E. Second Ave.
Television producer Gary Janetti’s Do You Mind If I Cancel?: (Things That Still Annoy Me) chronicles the pains and indignities of everyday life and former Olympic figure skater Adam Rippon recounts his journey from a homeschooled kid in Scranton, PA, to self-professed America’s Sweetheart in his memoir Beautiful on the Outside.
Sunday, Nov. 24, at noon.
Awakenings, A Reading
Wolfson Campus, Room 8203 (Bldg. 8, Second Floor)
300 N.E. Second Ave.
Megan Phelps-Roper’s tells a tale of her moral awakening, from spokesperson of her grandfather’s Westboro Baptist Church, best known for picketing funerals of U.S. service members, to compassionate, empathetic skeptic in the memoir Unfollow. Back in print after more than a decade Mab Segrest’s Memoir of a Race Traitor, chronicles antiracist, antihomophobic activism in the 80s, and what has transpired with the far right since the book’s publication.
Sunday Nov. 24, at 1:30 p.m.
LGBTQ Lives
Wolfson Campus, Room 3209 (Bldg. 3, Second Floor)
300 N.E. Second Ave.
Edie Windsor, an icon of the gay rights movement presents A Wild and Precious Life a lively, intimate memoir describing gay life in 1950s and 60s New York City and her longtime activism, which opened the door for marriage equality. Judith Kasen-Windsor, Edie’s widow, will talk about Edie’s groundbreaking life. Transgender reporter Samantha Allen takes a narrative tour through the surprisingly vibrant queer communities sprouting up in conservative states, offering a vision of a stronger, more humane America in Real Queer America: LGBT Stories from Red States. Part memoir, and part analysis of the political process, Outside In: A Political Memoir is the work of Libby Davies, the first openly lesbian MP in Canadian politics.
In addition to these presentations, MBF will feature the works of prominent LGBTQIA+ authors and poets including Richard Blanco, who recited at the second inauguration of President Barack Obama, and his How to Love a Country; Jericho Brown (The Tradition); Staceyann Chin (Crossfire) and Franny Choi (Soft Science), Jake Skeets (Eyes Bottle Dark with a Mouthful of Flowers), t’ai freedom ford (& more black), Keetje Kuipers (All Its Charms), Yanyi, among many others. Likewise, the LGBTQIA+ experience at MBF encompasses books for youth, such as Walter Naegle (Troublemaker for Justice: The Story of Bayard Rustin, the Man Behind the March on Washington) Alexandra Villasante (The Grief Keeper) and National Book Award Young People’s Literature longlisted authors Colleen AF Venable and Ellen T. Crenshaw (Kiss Number 8) and Hal Schrieve (Out of Salem), to name a few.
For Miami Book Fair updates, please visit www.miamibookfair.com, call 305-237-3528 or email wbookfair@mdc.edu. Follow the Miami Book Fair on social media @miamibookfair. #MiamiReads, #MiamiBookFair2019 #MBF2019
Miami Book Fair contact: Lisa Palley, 305-642-3132 lpalley@bellsouth.net