There will be no Thanksgiving turkey at Jonathan Safran Foer's house. The author of the acclaimed novels Everything is Illuminated and Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close gave up eating animals in favor of writing Eating Animals (Little Brown, $25.99), a personal and philosophical exploration of food choices he discussed Tuesday in Miami Beach.
In Paula Froelich's winning debut novel, her overworked newspaper reporter heroine accidentally starts a fire in the newsroom after leaving a cigarette smoldering in the photo studio-slash-smoking hideout.
In this novel told from three perspectives, a student perpetually tries to come of age over the years.
The author doesn't preach vegetarianism but urges us to take responsibility.
''I love rereading, because it inserts you so deeply under a book's skin, and I've just reread two marvelous books. One is Famous Fathers, a story collection by Pia Z. Ehrhardt. She's masterful at stopping time at disturbing moments and then making us sit still with this ticking discomfort. . . . And I reread a debut poetry collection called What the Right Hand Knows by Tom Healy. It's alarming and beautiful and offers just enough framework for your imagination to race in and construct entire, sometimes devastating, narratives.''
TUESDAY Susie Essman and ``What Would Susie Say?'' 6:30 p.m. The Bookstore in the Grove, 3399 Virginia St., #620, Coconut Grove. $25 includes a signed book, reserved seating, free parking and wine and cheese.
Readers revel in good writing -- and weather -- at the book fair in downtown Miami.
A huge book fair audience listened to words about love from Orhan Pamuk.
Though he had a meager memory of his own father, Armando Lucas Correa dreamed of becoming one at an early age. Even as a boy he knew that home and hearth, the comfort of family, was what he most enjoyed.
Jo Maeder has described her family ties as ''wisps of a cotton puff that couldn't hold a single thing together.'' So when she left a glamorous life as a radio DJ in New York to help care for a mother she didn't particularly like in North Carolina, her friends thought she was crazy.
Mary Karr begins her new memoir, Lit, with an open letter to her son. She remembers how he had to visit her in a mental hospital when he was 4.
People who live in glass houses shouldn't get stoned. Not if they expect to keep paranoia at bay. And they sure shouldn't get so stoned that they start to see things. Because with all that glass, things just might start looking back.
Derek McGinnis proudly points to a display of running bibs hung on the wall of his garage. There's one from the 2006 Marine Corps Marathon, one from the 2006 Army 10-Miler, one from the 2007 Alcatraz Challenge.
Quotes from letters of the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, Ayn Rand and the Unabomber are included in this impressive list.
These stories and poems skillfully blend humor and tragedy.
Expert Ann Louise Bardach takes a three-pronged approach in an attempt to peek into the future.
Here's what you need to know to survive -- and even enjoy -- the weekend at the fair, held at Miami Dade College's Wolfson Campus, 300 NE Second Ave., Miami.
Isabella Rossellini brought `Green Porno' to the book fair on Thursday -- and it's not what you might think.
Hialeah, author Jennine Capó Crucet has learned, is something of a mystery to people living outside South Florida. ''Most of the time people assume it's a woman who has scorned someone,'' she says. ''Usually the reaction is: 'Who's Hialeah that you need to leave her?' ''
You've heard the phrase ''Stranger than fiction''? Jane Alison has lived it: ''In 1965, when I was four, my parents met another couple, got along well, and within a few months traded partners.''
You may think you don't know John Hodgman, but you do. He's PC to Justin Long's Mac in the ubiquitous Apple computer commercials. You probably see him more than you see your kids.
David Small's story is almost unimaginable. A young boy grows up in suburban Detroit during the 1950s in a home full of anger, secrets and silence. Mother is a cold, angry, bitter woman with congenital medical problems and a deep secret. Older brother torments his sibling. Father is a distant, smug and aloof radiologist who treats his young son's minor respiratory difficulties with massive doses of X-rays, resulting in a long-neglected lump on the boy's neck.
Larry Wilmore has been a staple of TV comedy for more than 30 years. A producer, actor, comedian and writer, he wrote for In Living Color, The Office, The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and The Bernie Mac Show (for which he won an Emmy and a Peabody).
Crowned the Queen of Italian Cuisine, Lidia Bastianich presides over six restaurants in three cities, multiple public television shows, a close-knit brood of children and grandchildren and a growing series of cookbooks based on travels throughout her homeland.
At the Miami Book Fair International Wednesday night, a novelist wowed a smaller crowd with some big ideas.
Novelist Richard Powers thrives at the intersection of science and wonder, raising questions that illuminate the human condition. In his provocative ninth novel, he poses an intriguing query guaranteed to spark the imagination: What would happen if we discovered a gene for happiness?
Celebrities such as Isabella Rossellini draw readers to the Miami Book Fair International, but organizers say they focus on their work as authors.
Economic pressures in the publishing industry prompt authors to become their own marketing muscle.
A memoirist's message Tuesday at the Miami Book Fair: When times are tough, it's time to get tough.
Wild Thing from the popular book-turned-movie Where the Wild Things Are will be among the characters inhabiting Children's Alley, the magical world within the Miami Book Fair International that was created for kids.
There was a time when no one was allowed to laugh about breast cancer -- much less wax sarcastic or cynical, ironic or arch about it -- because breast cancer usually meant disfigurement and often meant death.
The featured authors at Monday's book fair events delighted their listeners.
``It's sort of like being the absent-minded professor times five,'' says Tim Page. After a lifetime of struggling to relate to fellow human beings, he received a diagnosis of Asperger's syndrome at age 45. Seven years later, Page, then the music critic for The Washington Post, revealed his condition in an essay in the New Yorker, which he has expanded into a new memoir, Parallel Play: Growing Up With Undiagnosed Asperger's (Doubleday, $26).
The author is so smitten with his protagonist that he imbues him with qualities that offset his sins
This volume contains stories from four collections of Lydia Davis, each with its own feel.
''I have just read Francine Prose's Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife. This is an amazing book. It pulls together into one volume with great order and clarity much of what has been written about both Anne Frank and the publication of her diary over the years, but also (and most importantly, I think) focuses on Anne Frank as an accomplished writer who with great skill and talent edited herself in a way that makes clear her aspirations as someone who wanted her work to be published and read. As one of the many thousands upon millions of girls who was fixated on and obsessed with Anne Frank early in life -- finding in her work great inspiration as a writer and as a human, I was thrilled to find Prose's book. This is thorough, thoughtful, beautifully written.''
WEDNESDAY Abdella Taïa and ''Salvation Army.'' 6:30 p.m. Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables.
Miami Book Fair International kicked off Sunday night at Miami Dade College with novelist Margaret Atwood, poet Elizabeth Alexander and a fingers-crossed hope that troublesome Topical Storm Ida keeps heading north.
Here are Monday's events at Miami Book Fair International at Miami Dade College, 300 NE Second Ave., Miami. Tickets for ``Evenings With . . .'' events can be downloaded at www.miamibookfair.com
''God gave unto the Animals / A wisdom past our power to see,'' goes a hymn sung by God's Gardeners, the ecologically minded, deeply spiritual but eminently practical religious cult in Margaret Atwood's fire-breathing new novel, The Year of the Flood.
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