2010 Fairgoer's Guide - Miami Book Fair International

www.miamibookfair.com | 305.237.3258 or 305.237.3314 During the Week
Thursday, Nov. 18
An Evening with
Eugene Robinson
Chapman (Bldg. 3, 2nd Floor)
6 p.m. | Admission: $10
Friday, Nov. 19
5:30 p.m. | Visit Twilight Tastings and delight in the flavors of Mexico | Room 6100 (Bldg. 6, 1st Floor) | Free and open to the public
Courtesy of the Mexican Cultural Institute and the Mexican Tourism Board in Miami
In Disintegration: The Splintering of
Black America (Doubleday, $24.95),
Eugene Robinson, Pulitzer Prize–
winning journalist for the Washington
Post, provides persuasive evidence
that the African-American population
has splintered into four distinct and
increasingly disconnected entities:
a small elite with enormous influence, a mainstream middle-class
majority, a newly emergent group of recent immigrants from Africa and
the Caribbean and an abandoned minority “with less hope of escaping
poverty than at any time since Reconstruction’s end.”
Robinson explores 140 years of black history in America, focusing on
how the civil rights movement, desegregation and affirmative action
contributed to the fragmentation.
Robinson has also authored Coal to Cream: A Black Man’s Journey
Beyond Color to an Affirmation of Race and Last Dance in Havana: The
Final Days of Fidel and the Start of the New Cuban Revolution.
An Evening with
Pat Conroy
Chapman (Bldg. 3, 2nd Floor)
8 p.m. | Admission: $10
As is the case with most writers,
bestselling author Pat Conroy readily
acknowledges the huge influence
books have had upon him. For Conroy,
however, reading is not simply a
pleasure to be enjoyed in off-hours
or as a source of inspiration for his
own writing. In My Reading Life (Nan
A. Talese, $25), Conroy credits books for saving both his life and his
sanity. The book includes wonderful anecdotes from Conroy’s school
days, moving accounts of how reading pulled him through his most
difficult times, and lists of books that had a particular influence on him
at various stages of his life, including grammar school, high school and
college.
My Reading Life is the story of the stories that helped create a master
storyteller. Conroy is the author of several immensely popular books,
including The Water is Wide, The Great Santini, The Prince of Tides and
South of Broad.
And in Spanish…
(For more information, see page 23.)
6 p.m. - Ximena Escalante
6:30 p.m. - Linkgua Publishers
7:30 p.m. - Mexican Poetry
8:30 p.m. - Alma Muriel’s monologue
Para tí, Sor Juana
In Plaza Mexico…
(For more information, see pages 25-27.)
5:30 p.m. - Estela Leñero
6 p.m. - Mexican films (World Stage)
7 p.m. - Ballet Mexcaltitán
Daína Chaviano
An Evening with
E.O. Wilson
Chapman (Bldg. 3, 2nd Floor)
6 p.m. | Admission: $10
In Anthill: A Novel (W.W. Norton, $24.95),
world renowned biologist, E. O. Wilson,
blends a lifetime of groundbreaking
research into his first work of literary
fiction. The story depicts the evolution of
an ardent boy-naturalist enthralled by a
mound-building ant species into a Harvardtrained
lawyer. Publishers Weekly calls
Anthill, “Lush with organic details.” A professor at Harvard University, Wilson
has won more than one hundred awards around the world and is the author
of more than twenty books, two of which have received Pulitzer Prizes
for nonfiction. Anthill, a New York Times bestseller, has already won the
Heartland Prize for Fiction, and will soon be made into a movie.
In conversation with his editor, Robert Weil, executive editor and vice
president at W. W. Norton & Company, Wilson will reflect on what caused
him to write a novel, and how he feels that Anthill can inspire people to work
for the preservation of our imperiled environment.
An Evening with
Patti Smith
Chapman (Bldg. 3, 2nd Floor)
8 p.m. | Admission: $10
Presented in collaboration with O, Miami:
a poetry festival debuting in April 2011 (omiami.org).
Patti Smith was a formative figure in
the New York-based art-punk scene during
the 1970s. In her memoir, Just Kids (Ecco,
$27), Smith recounts her arrival in New
York from her native Philadelphia during
the summer of love — homeless, jobless
and hungry, Smith would meet a young man named Robert Mapplethorpe.
The two developed a deep and abiding love and respect for each other.
Mapplethorpe’s death from AIDS in 1989 would end their time together,
but not their connection. The Washington Post called the book, “beautifully
written . . . a haunted elegy for both her soul mate Robert Mapplethorpe and
a lost New York City.”
Smith has recorded twelve albums and written several books, including
the poetry collection Auguries of Innocence. Her seminal album, Horses,
bearing Mapplethorpe’s renowned photograph, has been hailed as one
of the top 100 albums of all time. In 2005, the French Ministry of Culture
awarded Smith the prestigious title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres.
And in Spanish… (For more information, see page 23.)
6 p.m. - David Olguín
6:30 p.m. - Session on Mariel
7:30 p.m. - Panel: Castro’s influence in America
8:30 p.m. - Alma Muriel’s monologue Para tí, Sor Juana
In Plaza Mexico… (For more information, see pages 25-27.)
5:30 p.m. - Victor Manuel Mendiola
6 p.m. - Colectivo Nortec in concert (World Stage)
6 p.m. - María Baranda
7 p.m. - Ballet Mexcaltitán
7:30 p.m. - Coral Bracho
5