Miami, Nov. 5, 2018 – Miami Dade College’s (MDC) 35th Miami Book Fair, Nov. 11 – 18, will feature a variety author presentation and panel discussions by and for the LGBTQI+ community. Unless otherwise noted, events are free with Fair admission.
LGBTQI+ discussions and readings @ MBF events:
Saturday, Nov. 17, at 11 a.m.
Alexander Chee in Conversation with Garnette Cadogan
Wolfson Campus, Room 8202 (Building 8, 2nd floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Chee’s How to Write an Autobiographical Novel: Essays (Mariner Books) explores the author’s education as a man, writer and activist – and how we form our identities in life and in art.
Saturday, Nov. 17, at 11 a.m.
The Baddest New Superheroes on the Block
Wolfson Campus, Magic Screening Room (Building 8, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Gabby Rivera’s critically acclaimed debut novel Juliet Takes a Breath was listed by Mic as one of the 25 essential books to read for Women’s History Month, and it was called the “dopest LGBTQA YA book ever” by Latina. She is currently writing America (Marvel). America is Marvel’s first Latina lesbian superhero. Rivera will also present at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 18, at the Magic Screening Room.
Saturday, Nov. 17, at 2 p.m.
Odd One Out: Memoirs of Un-Belonging
Wolfson Campus, Magic Screening Room (Building 8, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Erin Nation’s latest book, Gumballs (Top Shelf Productions), is a one-man variety show spanning graphic memoir, observational comedy, razor-sharp character studies, and so much more. Nations is an illustrator and cartoonist living in Portland, Oregon. Since 2014, he has self-published a handful of zines and his first comic, Twins-Triplet.
Saturday, Nov. 17, at 3 p.m.
Celebrating the 2017 National Poetry Winners
Wolfson Campus, Room 6100 (Building 6, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Jos Charles is a trans poet, editor, and author of feeld (Milkweed Editions), a winner of the 2017 National Poetry Series, selected by Fady Joudah and Safe Space, a finalist for the 2016 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry.
Saturday, Nov. 17, at 4:30 p.m.
If They Come for Us: Four Fierce and Tender Debuts
Wolfson Campus, Room 6100 (Building 6, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Fatimah Asghar is a nationally touring poet, performer, educator, and writer. She is the writer of Brown Girls, an Emmy-nominated web series that highlights friendships between women of color. Her debut poetry collection, If They Come for Us (One World) grapples with coming of age and navigating questions of sexuality and race without the guidance of a mother or father. In Cenzontle (BOA Editions), a highly lyrical, imagistic debut, Marcelo Hernandez Castillo creates a nuanced narrative of life before, during, and after crossing the US/Mexico border. He is a CantoMundo Fellow and cofounded Undocupoets, for which he was awarded the 2016 Barnes & Noble Writers for Writers Award from Poets & Writers.
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 10:30 a.m.
Neil de la Flor and Maureen Seaton – Anthologies That Rock and Resist
Wolfson Campus, Room 6100 (Building 6, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
De la Flor is a writer, educator, artist, and executive director of Reading Queer, a Miami-based organization dedicated to promoting and fostering queer literary culture in South Florida. Seaton has authored seventeen poetry collections, both solo and collaborative. Reading Queer: Poetry in a Time of Chaos (Anhinga Press), edited by de la Flor and Seaton, is a collection of the most subversive, gritty, moving, and courageous writing to come out of the U.S. queer community in recent political times.
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 12:30 p.m.
Real-Life Economics: Readings from New Fiction
Wolfson Campus, Room 6100 (Building 7, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Rowan Moore-Gerety is a Miami-based journalist. He studied anthropology at Columbia University and was a Fulbright fellow in Mozambique. His first book, Go Tell the Crocodiles, explores the efforts of ordinary people to provide for themselves where foreign aid, the formal economy, and the government have fallen short.
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 1 p.m.
Reading Queer Presents Three YA Stories (for grades 9 – 12)
Wolfson Campus, MDC Live Arts Lab (Building 1, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
In T. Cooper & Allison Glock-Cooper’s series finale, Changers: Forever, Kim changes into the body of her dreams, but will she keep it? In Nic Stone’s Odd One Out, Rae wants to kiss him. And her. Which is…perplexing. Maggie Thrash follows up her acclaimed coming-out memoir with Lost Soul, Be at Peace, an honest and humorous examination of her struggle with depression. Moderated by David Levithan, the author of many acclaimed novels, including Every Day, Another Day, Two Boys Kissing, and Boy Meets Boy. His bestselling collaborations include Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (written with Rachel Cohn) and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (written with John Green). Levithan will also present at 5 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 18, at the MDC Live Arts Lab (Building 1, 1st floor).
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 1 p.m.
You’ve Got a Friend in Me: Heartwarming Stories of Identity and Belonging (for grades 3 – 7)
Wolfson Campus, Children’s Alley (Building 1, by the fountain)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Alex Gino is the author of You Don’t Know Everything, Jilly P! (Scholastic Press). Their first novel, George, received the Children’s Stonewall Award, the Lambda Literary Award, and the Children’s Choice Book Awards, among a host of others.
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 1:30 p.m.
ReadCaribbean Presents Three Groundbreaking Poets
Wolfson Campus, Room 6100 (Building 6, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Rajiv Mohabir is the award-winning author of the poetry collections The Taxidermist’s Cut and The Cowherd’s Son. His awards include the Kundiman Poetry Prize, the 2015 AWP Intro Journals award, and a PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant.
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 2 p.m.
Identity, Faith and Family: An LGBTQI+ Memoir
Garrard Conley in conversation with Jaie Laplante, director, Miami Film Festival
Wolfson Campus, Room 8302 (Building 8, 3rd floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Garrard Conley’s fiction and nonfiction can be found in Time, Vice, The Virginia Quarterly Review, and on CNN.com, Buzzfeed, and elsewhere. Boy Erased: A Memoir of Identity, Faith, and Family (Riverhead Books) was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award, and will be released as a feature film this fall.
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 2 p.m.
Two Memoirs: A Reading
Wolfson Campus, Room 8202 (Building 8, 2nd floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Sandra Gail Lambert is a writer of both fiction and memoir. She is the author of The River’s Memory. She was awarded an NEA fellowship based on an excerpt from A Certain Loneliness A Memoir (University of Nebraska Press).
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 2:30 p.m.
My Body is My Own: YA Women Fight Back (for grades 9 – 12)
Wolfson Campus, MDC Live Arts Lab (Building 1, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Natasha Ngan is the author of Girls of Paper and Fire (Jimmy Patterson). Each year, eight beautiful girls are chosen as Paper Girls to serve the king. It’s the highest honor they could hope for…and the most demeaning. This year, there’s a ninth. And instead of paper, she’s made of fire.
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 3 p.m.
LGBTQI+ Lives in Fiction: A Reading from Two Novels
Wolfson Campus, Room 8302 (Building 8, third floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Joseph Cassara is the author of The House of Impossible Beauties: A Novel (Ecco), a gritty and gorgeous debut that follows a cast of gay and transgender club kids navigating the Harlem ball scene of the 1980s and ’90s. Laurie Frankel is the author of three novels: Goodbye For Now, The Atlas Of Love, and most recently This Is How It Always Is: A Novel (Flatiron Books).
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 3 p.m.
Intolerable Violences: Writing Into the Wound
Wolfson Campus, Room 6100 (Building 6, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Joseph O. Legaspi, a Fulbright and NYFA fellow, is the author of Threshold (CavanKerry), Imago and two chapbooks: Aviary, Bestiary and Subways. His poems have appeared in the Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, jubilat, Orion, Painted Bride Quarterly, and Salt Hill. He is the cofounder of Kundiman, a nonprofit organization serving Asian American writers. Hieu Minh Nguyen is a child of Vietnamese immigrants. His debut collection of poetry, This Way to the Sugar, was a finalist for both the MN Book Awards and the Lambda Literary Awards.
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 3 p.m.
Pretty on the Outside: Village Secrets in Fiction
Wolfson Campus, Magic Screening Room (Building 8, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
David Small’s latest book, Home After Dark: A novel (Liveright), is a literary tour-de-force that renders the brutality of adolescence in the so-called nostalgic 1950s, evoking such classics as The Lord of the Flies. In addition to children’s books, Small makes editorial drawings for publications, such as the New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, and is a frequent contributor to many national magazines.
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 4 p.m.
On LGBTQI Histories and Issues Today
Wolfson Campus, Room 8302 (Building 8, third floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Julio Capó Jr. is assistant professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He is the author of Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami before 1940 (The University of North Carolina Press). Arlene Stein is a professor of sociology at Rutgers University and director of the Institute for Research on Women. The author of six books, she received the Ruth Benedict Prize for her book The Stranger Next Door. Robert W. Fieseler is a recipient of the Pulitzer Traveling Fellowship and the Lynton Fellowship in Book Writing. He is the author of Tinderbox: The Untold Story of the Up Stairs Lounge Fire and the Rise of Gay Liberation (Liveright), an essential work of American civil rights history.
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 4:30 p.m.
Readings from New Fiction
Wolfson Campus, Auditorium (Building 1, 2nd floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Andrew Sean Greer is the bestselling author of five works of fiction, including Less: A Novel (Lee Boudreaux Books), his hilarious Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and The Confessions of Max Tivoli, which was named a best book of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune.
Sunday, Nov. 18, at 5 p.m.
YA Authors on Love, Loneliness, and Everything in Between
Wolfson Campus, Live Arts Lab (Building 1, 1st floor)
300 N.E. 2nd Ave.
Ngozi Ukazu’s webcomic-turned-graphic novel, Check, Please! (First Second) is a coming-of-age story in which vlogger and pâtissier Eric Bittle struggles to come out to his college hockey team—and the very attractive but moody captain, Jack Zimmermann. David Levithan is the author of many acclaimed novels, including Two Boys Kissing, and Boy Meets Boy. His bestselling collaborations include Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist (written with Rachel Cohn) and Will Grayson, Will Grayson (written with John Green). In Someday (Knopf), the sequel to Every Day and its companion novel, Another Day, A discovers others who wake up every day in a new body, with a new life, and new choices.
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 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.
For Miami Book Fair updates, please visit www.miamibookfair.com, call 305-237-3528 or email wbookfair@mdc.edu.
Find Miami Book Fair at:
https://twitter.com/miamibookfair
https://www.facebook.com/MiamiBookFair
http://instagram.com/miamibookfair
#MiamiReads, #MiamiBookFair2018
Miami Book Fair contact: Lisa Palley, 305-642-3132 lpalley@bellsouth.net