Open Page the Newsletter of The Florida Center for the Literary Arts‏

Great Escapes: Tales of Travel from Around the World – and Beyond

7:30 p.m., March 12, 2009

Bagua

4736 N.E. 2nd Ave., Miami

Free and open to the public.



Feel the walls closing in? If it’s been awhile since the last vacation and you need to get away, come and spend an evening listening to travel-inspired stories, poetry and music ranging from the practical to the metaphysical. Hear some of South Florida’s best travel writers, including: Tom Swick, former Sun-Sentinel travel editor and the author of two books, Unquiet Days: At Home in Poland, and A Way to See the World: From Texas to Transylvania with a Maverick Traveler; Fabiola Santiago, the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist with The Miami Herald and the author of the novel, Reclaiming Paris; and Liz Balmaseda, a Palm Beach Post writer and former Miami Herald columnist and Pulitzer-prize winning journalist whose first novel, Sweet Mary, will be published in May.





Books and Books reading

Zoe Heller, author of The Believers

8 p.m., March 13, 2009

Books & Books, 265 Aragon Ave., Coral Gables.

Free and open to the public.



Meet the Litvinoff clan: a radical New York lawyer, a heroin addict, a devoted social worker hoping to adopt a child, and a disillusioned revolutionary. In The Believers, they battle their own demons, each other and are forced to examine their faith and question their own identities. This tragic, comic family story has been called “one of the outstanding novels of year,” by the Sunday Times (London). Heller is the author of Everything You Know and What Was She Thinking? Notes on a Scandal, which was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize in 2003.



IN SPANISH



Xavier Serbia, author of La Riqueza en Cuatro Pisos

7 p.m., March 18, 2009

Centro Cultural Español
800 Douglas Rd. Suite 170, Coral Gables

Free and open to the public.

Serbia will share his financial expertise, including insights into how to survive in times of economic uncertainty. Presented in collaboration with Editorial Santillana and the Centro Cultural Español. For more information, call 305-237-3126.

Lorenzo Silva, author of El Alquimista Impaciente and Carta Blanca; and Carlos Castán, author of Sólo de lo Perdido and El Aire Que Me Espía, at 7 p.m., March 24, Centro Cultural Español, 800 Douglas Rd., Suite 170, Coral Gables. This reading is part of the Spanish Authors in America program, presented in collaboration with America Reads Spanish and the Instituto Cervantes in New York.




Registration is ongoing for the 2009 Writers Institute, May 6-9, 2009 and classes are filling up. In addition to intensive workshops on fiction, nonfiction, poetry, plot, there are some practical matters relevant to the “new economy,” like how to get published. Joelle Delbourgo, a former executive with Harper Collins and Random House, will analyze the current state of publishing and dole out recommendations for published and yet-to-be-published authors in a daily briefing, “Recession-Era Publishing: An Agent’s POV.”

This year’s Writer’s Institute features two National Book Award winners; poet Mark Doty, the author of six books of poetry, including the collection, Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems; and novelist Percival Everett, author of sixteen novels, including The Water Cure.

For details on instructors, fees, times, places and to register, please visit http://www.flcenterlitarts.com/writersinstitute.htm. Workshop attendance is limited and manuscript consultation slots go quickly, so register early!