LYNNE BARRETT

Photo by J. Tomás López

Writer, Editor, & Teacher

Books

Illustrator: Anuj Shrestha / Topos Graphics / Publisher Jai Alai Books

Making Good Time events and exerpts you can access online:

     On August 29, 2020, national Independent Bookstore Day, Books and Books hosted a Making Good Time reading and discussion, which I emceed, with contributors Chantel Acevedo, Fabienne Josaphat, Sammy Mack, Thomas Swick, and Ana Veciana Suarez sharing their work.
     We talked about aspects of access, limits, boundaries, and the meanings our journeys accrue that are in this book, and also how our current situation has amplified many of the anthology's themes.
        You can watch the Crowdcast recording of this event here, via Books and Books.

On the radio! WLRN Public Media's Chris Remington interviewed me for Sundial, talking about MAKING GOOD TIME: True Stories of How We Do, And Don't, Get Around in South Florida, and the funny, sad, frightening, and thrilling stories told by its 32 contributors.

See much more at the Making Good Time page.

Cover image, Biscayne Times, Vo. 17, Issue 9, November 2019.

Making Good Time was the cover story in the November issue of the Biscayne Times, with an excerpt from my introduction, nonfiction stories by Madeleine Blais, Terence Cantarella, Lauren Doyle Owens, Alex Segura, and a collaborative essay by Denise Duhamel and Julie Marie Wade.

You can check out the Biscayne Times cover feature online. Sneak peek at the feature's first page & start of my introduction is on the Making Good Time page.

Copies are available via the press or Books & Books--which you can call and they will mail one, or visit one of their stores, now reopened with social distancing.

Now in its third printing:

What Editors Want: A Must-Read for Writers Submitting to Literary Magazines covers the steps in the submission process and how to handle them...and stay as sane as a writer can.

Please use this link to order from the publisher Rain Chain Press. and save on shipping. Discounts available for those ordering multiple copies, as many writers' groups have done.

Praise for What Editors Want:

"Chock full of incredible insights. Every writer shold read this to make the most of their lit mag submissions."
—Becky Tuch, Editor, The Review Review

Magpies

My third short story collection, MAGPIES, published by Carnegie Mellon University Press, received the Gold Medal for General Fiction in the Florida Book Awards.

Selected by the Center for Literature and Writing at Miami Dade College for their Current Voices In Literature Program.

Publishers Weekly says of Magpies: "Barrett portrays adult lives with minimal flourishes and a powerful command of setting. Florida is electric with the tension of "all that can happen"—hurricanes, sinkholes, and a boom-and-bust history. It becomes as eerie as it is richly imagined, whether stories take place in an Art Deco building or a gas station. One of the year's finer university press offerings..."

In The Rumpus, Joseph Olshan writes: "Sentence for sentence, Barrett is a superb writer. Her work brims with original ideas, questions and philosophical musings, the product of a probing intelligence and a highly literate sensibility. But what separates her from many contemporary short fiction writers is her consummate story-telling ability."

For more reviews and information about the book, please go to the Magpies page.

To see some of the independent bookstores where readers have found or ordered Magpies, check out the Publications Page.

If you would like a signed copy of Magpies or Making Good Time, they are available from Miami's great independent bookseller Books & Books, 305-442-4408.

Signing at the IWWG booth at AWP.

Around the web

I'm among the writers discussing their habits, tastes, and distastes for Monica Uszerowicz's feature in Bon Appétit: "Nine Authors on What They Eat While Writing."

and around town

I read my poem "Polylingual" at the start of this short slideshow about the WLRN and O Miami Poetry Festival "That's So Miami" project. Just follow this link and scroll down.

To see some of the independent bookstores where readers have found or ordered Magpies, check out the Publications Page.

If you would like a signed copy, they are available from Miami's great independent bookseller Books & Books, 305-442-4408.

Women of Florida Fiction

Women of Florida Fiction, Essays on 12 Sunshine State Writers, edited by Tammy Powley and April Van Camp, is available from McFarland. "Florida as symbol and myth is the subject of this collection of new critical essays exploring fiction written by female Floridian authors."

Scholar Claudia Slate contributes a chapter on the stories in Magpies, and the book’s final section includes interviews with Florida authors Lynne Barrett, Jeannine Capó Cruz, Vicki Hendricks, and Angela Hunt.

At the 2015 Florida College English Association conference in St. Petersburg, Vicki Hendricks and I spoke about what it's like to write in and about Florida at a plenary session and a panel of critics and teachers discussed Magpies. The conference theme was "Turn Back the Page: Discovering Florida's History through Texts"

More journals and anthologies

Just to Watch Them Die: Crime Stories Inspired by the Songs of Johnny Cash, from Gutter Books, includes my short story, "A Boy Named Zoé."

Just to Watch Them Die was a 2018 finalist for the Anthony Award for Best Anthology.

S.W. Lauden interviewed several of the contributors to this anthology, including Lynne, about their connections to the music of Johnny Cash and his influence on their crime stories.

Two of my flash fiction pieces, "Distance" and "Little Red Returns," are included in John Dufresne's Flash! Writing the Very Short Story, published by Norton, which offers a great array of flash writing along with lots of exercises and prompts to try.

Florida Flash:

As editor of Tigertail, A South Florida Annual: Florida Flash, I looked for very short prose works to explore the edges and overlaps between lyrical and narrative approaches. Fifty-four authors with connections to Florida contributed prose poetry, flash fiction, and flash nonfiction of no more than 305 words—a number representing the original South Florida area code.

More about the collection, and the radio contest it inspired, on the Anthologies page.

To learn about more of my work you can find online or in print, please go to the pages for my books, stories, creative nonfiction, poems, and other projects, all under the Publications menu.

For the record: Events that couldn't happen as planned

In my backyard, where I spent a lot of time from March 2020 on through 2021.

National Independent Bookstores Day, originally April 27, 2020, was rescheduled for August 29, 2020.

Making Good Time, which had been scheduled to be part of the festivities at Books and Books in Coral Gables, instead became a Books and Books Crowdcast event, with contributors Chantel Acevedo, Fabienne Josaphat, Sammy Mack, Thomas Swick, and Ana Veciana-Suarez reading from and discussing their stories about how we do, and don't, get around in South Florida, in the past, now, and in the future, along with the anthology's editor Lynne Barrett as emcee.

You can now view the event on the Books and Books website.

CANCELLED: April 3-5, 2020, I was looking forward to again being among those presenting at Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace conference in Boston, MA. The conference has been cancelled for this year.

BUT Grub Street moved as much of its regular teaching offerings as possible online and is now transitioning for Spring 2022 to a mixture of online and in-person. Please check their website for more information.

Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers annual conference was to take place March 13 & 14, 2020, in Fairhope, AL, but had to be canceled. And as things went, 2021 couldn't be planned for at all.

I'm the current president of this regional organization for writers, students, teachers, editors, and publishers in or connected to the Gulf states region.. Learn more.

CANCELLED: March 19, 2020 craft talks and panel (with Lynne Barrett, M.J. Fievre, Louis K. Lowy, Lauren Doyle Owens, Thomas Swick) ---and the whole Coral Springs Festival of the Arts. This event may be rescheduled . . .

The latest...

I'll be teaching a morning Fiction Writing Workshop at the International Women's Writing Guild Writing & Wellness Retreat in Kingston, NY, August 11-15, 2025. There will be two mornng workshop periods, with four workshops in each, their topics running across Tuesday-Thursday. The afternoons will offer a range of offerings from writing sessions with group sharing, to breakout sessions by genres, to wellness experiences. And the evenings offer the opportunity to share work at open mics. Information here.

My short story "Mary Anne's Tan" will be appearing in Real South/West Magazine in their April/May issue (Link to follow.)

At the 2025 Key West Literary Seminar Writers' Workshops, Jan. 5-9, 2025, I taught a generative workshop, "A Path Through the Labyrinth: Plot and Structure, Structure and Plot." As the description said, "This is a course for writers of fiction (novel, short story, flash), memoir, and narrative nonfiction, who want to tell stories, real or invented, that have compelling, intriguing plots presented effectively through structures that serve them." Full information about the KWLS workshop program here.

I had the pleasure of presenting at the Florida Gulf Coast University conference which took place on FGCU's Fort Myers campus, starting the evening of Nov. 8 & then all day Nov. 9, 2024.

This shorter version of the Sanibel Island Writers Conference was illuminating and enoyable. This conference was free to FGCU students and to anyone else who registered on the website.

My 3-hour workshop: "Secrets and Lies: Writing Mystery and Suspense," drew a great, participatory crowd. One lasting suspense question remains:

Will we get to return to have the conference on the island, next Fall?

Lynne Barrett, author signing, IWWG summer conference August 2024, photo by Alice Klughertz.

At the International Women's Writing Guild Conference WRITING TOGETHER: Community, Connection, Creation, held at Roger Williams University in Bristol, Rhode Island August 1-5, 2024, I taught a three-day workshop (90 minutes each morning) focused on writing works that use mystery and suspense, whether stories or longer. This was a lecture with examples and lots of participation by the more than 45 attendees who packed the room.

In addition, I led a two-afternoon fiction critique session, solo one day and the next with author Melissa Michal, where participants shared a short scene from their projects in progress, generating supportive questions and suggestions. (See above for the IWWG's 2025 summer conference information.)

In Spring 2024: I was among those teaching at the Miami Dade College Student Writers Conference, at the Padrón Campus, on May 31, 2024. My session focused on how, whether the setting for a story is a real location, entirely invented, or somewhere in between, the map of the action becomes a powerful part of the way a story enters the reader’s (or viewer’s) imagination as complications, opportunities, and obstacles test and change characters. I presented the workshop twice, to different sets of attendees, a conference structure that assures students access to more presentations.

The Autumn 2023 issue of 34 Orchard ("A literary journal that takes you to dark places") includes my short story, "Adultery in Modern Massachusetts," which takes you to a hotel that sits on the edge of the uncanny. Click on the photo, and you'll find the magazine along with a bounty of stories, poems, and one piece of a ghost-hunter's creative nonfiction, beautifully edited and downloadable from the website as a pdf, with a modest request for a $1.99 donation.

2023 Events

I'm happy to say that I was among those presenting at Florida Gulf Coast University's "Sanibel On Campus Writers Conference" which took place in person at the Fort Myers campus Friday evening, Nov. 3 and all day Saturday Nov. 4, 2023. All the presenters (who you see on the flyer at left) are Floridians, and the conference drew a lot of attendees, both FGCU students and others from the area and across the state. Mine was a three hour generative workshop on "Plot, Story, and Structure."

After Hurricane Ian blew away plans for the conference to return to the island in early November 2022, the conference offered online panels about writing craft and publishing (see below), which are still accessible for free on the conference schedule page. I met by phone with each of four conference registrants who'd submitted manuscripts for in-person-one-on-ones. Their resilience and determination to learn and carry on is also the spirit of the conference organizers. The 2023 conference was a big step towards rebuilding and plans are in the works for 2024,

July 20-24, 2023, I was among those teaching at the International Women's Writing Guild Conference on the campus of Chestnut Hill College, in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia, PA. The conference theme was Writing for Equity & Inclusion. Mine was an Intensive Fiction class, "A Path Through the Labyrinth," for which those registering in advance submitted manuscripts which we workshopped as a group.

Chestnut Hill College, listed on the National Register of Historic Places

On May 19, 2023, I had the pleasure of teaching at the Miami Dade College Student Writers Conference, which took place at the Padrón Campus after having been online in recent years. It was set up so that those who wished to participate from afar could attend classes and the keynote address by Jennifer Maritza McCauley remotely.

2022 and before

The Sanibel Island Writers Conference was expected to return to the newly updated and expanded Big Arts center, on Sanibel Island, FL, Nov. 3-6, 2022 as promised in the poster. However, Hurricane Ian intervened, so that instead we did a live-streamed day of SWIC panel presentations, free, which is what had been offered in 2021 and 2020 when the conference could not be held in person.

On Facebook you can still view, free, the live streamed SIWC panels from the past three (remote) SIWC's, including: "Lynne Barrett, Joe Clifford, and M.J. Fievre on Anthologies," & "Lynne Barrett, Ron Cooper, Tod Goldberg (moderated by Hank Phillippi Ryan): The Secrets of Suspense: Whether You Write Crime Fiction or Not!" (both 2022), "Will They Believe You: Speaking the Unspeakable" (2021) and "Plot" (2020), along with many others. Check them out at the SIWC Facebook Page.

Here's hoping that we may be able to return to Big Arts on Sanibel in November 2023. Note, see above, the venue and lodging on Sanibel took a beating. But I'll be at the FGCU campus.

In April 2022 WLRN-FM -O, Miami Zip Ode competition, I used the FIU BBC zip code (five lines, in this case with word count: 3 3 1 8 1) for my ode, "Here I'm teaching..." It was selected in blind judging to be a spotlight poem, published online via Instagram and Facebook, and I was among the spotlight poets who read their (very brief) work and were interviewed in the Zip Ode finale event on Aprl 27, which was hosted on WLRN's Facebook and YouTube. More information and the video recording of the Spotlight readings and interviews are online here.

My short story "Bait & Tackle" has been published in the Spring 2022 Issue 3 of Rivanna Review. What happens when two long estranged friends meet up at their old, now upscaled hangout on Palometa Beach and tell each other the truth about the past?

Rivanna Review is a print literary magazine that includes stories, essays, poems, art, reviews, news, and more. The single print issue ($8) or a subscription may be ordered by mail: Info here.

Robert Pinsky reads as part of Miami Book Fair session of poets and others, including Miami Mayor, reading favorite poems on the outdoor stage. Photo by Lynne Barrett

In November 2022, the Miami Book Fair was open at the downtown campus of Miami Dade College, returning in even greater strength than the year. You can see photos and read reporting from the events because the Florida Book Review blogged the fair, covering both in-person events and online ones.

The Miami Trilogy, a Knight Foundation supported project of O,Miami.org .

For me a highlight was the standing-room-only, incredibly moving session launching More Than What Happened: The Aftermath of Gun Violence in Miami, edited and with an introduction by Nadege Green.

This is the third volume completing the The Miami Trilogy, and O, Miami, the publisher of the trilogy (and much more), was back with a booth, where the anthologies, Making Good Time: True Stories of How We Do, and Don't Get Around in South Florida (which I edited), Waterproof: Evidence of a Miami Worth Remembering, and More Than What Happened were available individually and as a boxed set, as they are on the O,Miami website.

July 22-28, 2022, I was among those teaching at the International Women's Writing Guild summer conference, "Reconnect and Reimagine" at Endicott College in Beverly, MA. My Advanced Seminar in Fiction Writing was just one of a wide range of offerings.

On May 13, 2022, I was among the presenters at the third annual Miami Dade College Student Writers Conference. My session, "Branching Paths: Where Writing Can Take You," focused on the connections between skills learned in writing classes (including collaboration, revision, understanding audience, dramatic storytelling vs. exposition, and more) and real world work of many kinds. The 2023 Student Writers Conference is in the works.

Projection on Miami Dade College Bldg. 8, Miami Book Fair, Nov. 2021. Photo by Giselda Aguiar.

The Miami Book Fair returned to downtown Miami November 14-21, 2021 with well-spaced in-person author events as well as online ones, and a smaller than in the past but lively Street Fair on Nov. 19-21. Along with James Barrett-Morison, I coordinated the Florida Book Review blog of the Fair, with photos celebrating the return. You can read about events, and see many photos celebrating the return, on the FBR Book Fair 2021 page. In addition, you can still view the online events and in-person ones which were also live-streamed, at Miami Book Fair Online.

As part of the 2021 Miami Book Fair, I spoke with author Larry Baker about his new novel Wyman and the Florida Knights, published by Ice Cube press. The novel brings together Knightsville, a Florida town dominated by one family since the nineteenth century, and portrait painter Peter Wyman, who goes there seeking to disappear just as buried secrets from the past are surfacing during the lead-up to the 2016 election. Our session is online and still available to view.

I had the pleasure of returning to Florida Gulf Coast University in person, on Nov. 4, 2021, where M.J. Fievre and I taught workshops for FGCU students in the afternoon, and then in the evening we did a public reading together, and answered questions about writing, publishing, and the writing life. This, along with presentations the next day by Denise Duhamel and John Dufresne, was the in-person part one of the FGCU Sanibel Island Writers Conference, followed by the online FGCU conference two days later (see below).

I was among the presenters for Florida Gulf Coast University's Sanibel Island Writers Conference online, on Nov. 6, 2021. All the sessions are still free and open to all to view. Denise Duhamel, Beth Ann Fennelly, and I discussed "Will They Believe You?: Speaking the Unspeakable," and read from our work in the anthology GRABBED: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment, and Healing. Just go here to view our session.Also, while there you can see the other panels, via that same page. And the full set of presentations from last year is also available there.

My poem, 'Morning Glories in Miami," was SWWIM's Poem of the Day for Oct. 4, 2021. In part it's about how gardening taught me dailyness, and how Florida welcomed my un-green thumb. Read it here.

Nancy Stetson, writing for Florida Weekly in "Travel: A Sense of Place, Travel Florida Old and New Through Reading," interviewed me along with other Florida writers and book critics, for this feature covering a great range of FL fiction and nonfiction.

Lots of great works and writers here to check out.

You can read my (very short) story "Backyard Chair: Miami" in 50-Word Stories.

My short story "The Old Broads of the Mermaid Beach Apartments," published in the Orange Blossom Review, was selected by the magazine to nominate for the Sundress Publications Best of the Net anthology.

My micro-fiction piece "Explore Florida!" was part of the Extra Virgin Press 2020 Miami 100s project, for which S. Florida writers contributed works just 100 characters long for limited edition broadsheets by artist and printer Tom Virgin.

The Miami Book Fair Online features a video with 30-second readings by Tom Virgin and some of the authors. "Explore Florida!" was, as I say there, inspired by my "fascination with the history and mythology of Florida tourism."

Thumbnail gives just part of the story--see the full broadsheet at Extra Virgin Press & on the video.

Praise for Miami Noir: The Classics:

“This historical survey makes a fine case for Miami as a timeless setting for great crime fiction.”
--Publishers Weekly

Oline Cogdill writes in her review for the Sun Sentinel, "The 19 stories featured in the superb Miami Noir: The Classics are solidly entertaining and a thoughtful history about life, crime and punishment in South Florida. . . Each story ... illuminates South Florida’s landscape of immigration, ecology, grifters, betrayal and fresh starts. Some characters manufacture their own peril while others are just trying to survive.

“A collection that shows how far a city can come and still maintain a strong noir tradition.”
--Kirkus Reviews

Kirkus adds in its review: "The economic angst of the 1990s is highlighted in Elmore Leonard’s “The Odyssey,” T.J. MacGregor’s “The Works,” Lynne Barrett’s “To Go,” and editor Standiford’s “Tahiti Junk Shop.”

"To Go" was first published in the mid-1990s in the Tampa Review and became the lead story in my collection The Secret Names of Women. The story was also presented as a staged production by the Shee Theatre company in the early 2000s in California. It's amazing how many lives one short story can have.

Miami Noir: The Classics: Virtual events viewable online,

Nov. 10, 2020, Books & Books hosted (via Crowdcast) the book launch with Les Standiford, Preston Allen, Lynne Barrett, Vicki Hendricks, and T. J. McGregor. You can view the event online via the Books and Books website here.

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The Miami Book Fair is now streaming a virtual Miami Noir: The Classics reading & discussion with Les Standiford, Preston Allen, Lynne Barrett, and John Dufresne. The session went live on the first day of the Fair, Nov. 15th, and you can view it and loads of other Book Fair sessions simply by registering at the Miami Book Fair Online.

Miami Noir: The Classics

My short story "To Go" is included in Akashic's Miami Noir: the Classics, edited by Les Standiford, just published in November 2020. From Marjorie Stoneman Douglas, Zora Neale Hurston, and Damon Runyon onward, you can see the full list of authors at Akashic Books, where the collection is now available.

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CrimeReads features Les Standiford's introduction about Miami's history of noir crime writing— "The Classics of Miami Noir:Long on Beauty, Short on Rectitude."

For fans of crime writing, Murder on the Beach Mystery Bookstore is a great bookshop in Delray Beach, FL which carries both new and older works of mystery, thrillers, and suspense. They have Miami Noir: The Classics on hand, will ship, and offer very low shipping for multiple books.

My essay "First Kiss" has been published in Grabbed: Poets and Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment, and Healing, from Beacon Press. Edited by Elisa Albo, Richard Blanco, Caridad Moro, and Nikki Moustaki, this anthology has an introduction by Joyce Maynard and an afterward by Anita Hill.

I was part of the Books and Books virtual launch reading & panel. You can still view the Crowdcast recording of the launch here, where it's archived on the Books & Books website.

The Grabbed anthology website has interviews, writing prompts, and resources for teachers.

Prague Astronomical Clock. Source By Steve Collis from Melbourne, Australia - Astronomical Clock, CC BY 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24306300

Feb. 6, 2021: I presented a craft class on
DISENTANGLING TIME

Offered by the Asheville-based Flatiron Writers Room, LLC, via Zoom.

"What's past? What's present? What's shown onstage? What's held for later? How much of the past is just background information, what really matters, and when (and how should it emerge?...The time structure of any narrative form creates the reader's experience of the story."
Read more about the Flatiron Writers online offerings.

I presented "Character in a Flash," an online generative workshop for writers of fiction and nonfiction, hosted by The Cream Literary Alliance, LLC in January. You can see their upcoming online offerings here.

And I also presented about "Character in a Flash" at the Miami Dade College Student Writing Conference on May 21, 2021.

The Sanibel Island Writers Conference took place virtually, via StreamYard, viewable for free on Facebook and YouTube on Oct. 24 & 25, 2020. Joe Clifford, Steve Womack, and I did a lively panel on plot on Sunday, Oct. 25th, and you can still watch it here.

...short stories, essays, & more

NEWS: I am honored and delighted that my essay "Scar Tissue," published in Summer 2019 in The Hong Kong Review was nominated from among essays published in the magazine in 2019 as for the The Pushcart Prize Best of the Small Presses Series and for Best American Essays. You can see the list of nominees and read short excerpts from the nominated work at the magazine website.

Learn more about this journal, which aims to bring together "literary voices from all over the world."

My short story "Marble" was published in Mystery Tribune, (available in both print and digital form, as are subscriptions) features South Florida penthouses, dive motels, and murder...

... and I'm honored to announce that "Marble" made the list of the year's "Other Distinguished Mystery Stories" in Best American Mysteries 2018. Series editor Otto Penzler's foreword describes the process of reading more than three thousand published stories in print journals, e-zines, and anthologies to cull from 3000-plus short stories, which shows both how strong the interest in short crime fiction is today, and how tough the competition.

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I was among the authors interviewed by Nancy Stetson in Florida Weekly about our favorite punctuation marks, for National Punctuation Day, September 24, 2019. Which was mine? Take a look...

My flash essay "Window Vent" is up at River Teeth as part of their Beautiful Things series.

Issue #13 of New Flash Fiction Review includes my very short story "Accordion."

2020 & 2021 Events

Oct. 24, 2020, from 1 to 4 PM, I presented an online class for the International Women's Writing Guild: "Haunted: 21st Century Ghosts & the Uses of the Uncanny." This was generative workshop, with lecture, examples from short published work, and prompts. You can learn about other IWWG offerings on their website.

I did a lead-off reading of flash fiction, along with poet Eileen Cleary, as part of the International Women's Writing Guild series of Summer 2020 open mics, on July 30th at 2 PM. This ongoing IWWG series is free but registration is required.

As part of the International Women's Writing Guild's Summer Picnic for Writers, on June 29, 2020 I taught an online workshop on "What Editors Want" in their WRITING AS BUSINESS series.

To learn about 2022 events check here on the IWWG website.

My short story "Texaco on Biscayne," which appears in Magpies, was selected for inclusion in Florida International University's new Lit 1000 textbook: The FIU Introduction to Literature, a collaboration with W.W. Norton and Company that includes some works with a South Florida setting. The book's launch was celebrated at the Green Library on FIU's MMC Campus, with a book cover image-frosted cake. More details here.

On June 29, 2020, I taught an workshop, "What EditorsWant, " about the ins and outs of the submission process for writers.The Zoom format allowed me to take those who registered on a tour of a variety literary magazine websites to look at how they present themselves, how to find information about their submission process, and more. This class was part of the International Women's Writing Guild's Writing as Business series See the schedule here.

March 1, 2020 at 4 P.M. at Books and Books in the Suniland Shopping Center, Pinecrest, FL, a great crowd came out to hear Madeleine Blais, Richard Blanco, Anjanette Delgado, Les Standiford, and Norma Watkins read from their essays in Making Good Time: True Stories of How We Do, and Don't, Get Around in South Florida, with editor Lynne Barrett on hand as emcee.

The wonderful Books and Books team has since moved to having remote author events, and we now have one scheduled for August 29, 2020.

Writers workshop: On Feb. 8, 2020 from 10 AM to 1 PM, at Books and Books in Coral Gables, I taught a Miami Book Fair year-round workshop: Making Good Time and the Map of Opportunity, using the concepts that went into Making Good Time to help a group of 15 writers learn to use territory, place, boundary crossing, and other concepts where spatial movement helps to construct and shape stories, fictional and nonfictional, to get going on new projects or get a handle on ongoing ones.

2019 Event Highlights

On Sunday, Nov. 24, at 11 AM, I had the pleasure of leading a Miami Book Fair session focusing on Making Good Time: True Stories of How We Do, and Don't, Get Around in South Florida, featuring contributors Terence Cantarella, Jennine Capó Crucet, Sammy Mack, and Alex Segura, with other contributors on hand for the conversation and book signing.

As part of the Florida Gulf Coast University OFF THE ISLAND mini-conference, I taught a workshop for students and did a reading along with M.J. Fievre at FGCU's campus in Fort Myers.

Oct. 16: 6 PM: Making Good Time Panel at the Mandel Public Library of West Palm Beach, 411 Clematis St. Featuring editor Lynne Barrett and contributing authors Lauren Doyle Owens, Thomas Swick, and Monica Uszerowiz, were on hand to read from their work and discuss the issues it raises, with a lively audience. We also distributed information about the Miami Book Fair, including details on getting there by train Palm Beach and Broward Counties.

Oct 1: 6:30 PM MGT First Draft: A Literary Social, Books & Books @ The Arsht. Miami Book Fair presented Lynne Barrett leading a Making Good Time-themed session of guided writing prompts and conviviality.

Making Good Time: True Stories of How We Do, and Don't, Get Around in South Florida launched on Sept. 21, 2019 at Books and Books Coral Gables. 19 of the 32 contributors read from their work for one minute each, so that the large and receptivie audience got a quick tour of the range of voices, places, and experiences in the book. You can order the book via any Books and Books branch. (Follow the link to Books and Books event info here.)

LtoR:MDT-TV host Stephanie Saint Come, Lynne Barrett Jan Becker, and Louis K. Lowy

Along with Jan Becker and Louis K. Lowy, I was interviewed about Making Good Time by MDC-TV in a Sept. 2019 feature. The program can be viewed online.

Lynne Barrett reading at Soya y Pomodoro, Miami.

On August 28th, I spoke at Soya y Pomodoro in their historic downtown Miami building, sharing some of the ways Miami gets my stories going, for To Write Miami, the great series organized by Anjanette Delgado and the Museum of Art and Design at MDC.

For more info. about the series, the venue, and Lynne, check out this great piece by J.J. Colagrande at The Jitney, "To Write Miami and Lynne Barrett Coming to Downtown for Best Literary Series in Miami."

At the International Womens Writing Guild's 42nd annual summer conference, held at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, July 12-19, 2019, I taught an advanced fiction workshop, "A Path Through the Labyrinth," which was limited to ten, and filled with a great group of fiction writers. The overall conference theme was Writing the Body: Voice, Art, and Craft in a Changing World, and it offered workshops, critique sessions, readings by participants, and more. The organization holds some regional one-day workshops in addition to the summer conference, and offers online webinars and other resources to members. More on the IWWG here.

I presented two craft classes on plot and structure ("Disentangling Time" and "Crossing Paths: The Map of Opportunity in Story") at Grub Street's Muse and the Marketplace Conference in Boston, April 5-7th, 2019. The Writer magazine says the Muse is the "#1 Writers' Conference in America." I will be presenting there again in 2020.

Photo by Sara DiVello from Muse & the Marketplace. Photos at literary events often include the backs of heads. LB

Noir at the Bar readers at Miami Book Fair International. L to R: Lynne Barrett, Lauren Doyle Owens, Alex Segura, Mike Creeden, Jon McGoran , Joe Clifford, and Hector Duarte, Jr. Photo by Melissa Messulam

I was part of Miami Book Fair's Noir at the Bar reading on November 15, 2018. Our emcee Alex Segura, Joe Clifford, Mike Creeden, Hector Duarte Jr., Jon McGoran, and Lauren Doyle Owens and I served up slices of crime fictionand Gold Dust Lounge provided live noir lounge music, at MBFI's The Porch at Miami-Dade College's Wolfson Campus in Downtown Miami.

I also ran The Florida Book Review's annual Book Fair blog, which takes you to many of the readings and panels as well as giving a sense of the amazing street fair. Check it out here.

To see other recent events and to get more details about upcoming book group meetings, workshops, and conferences, please go to the Events page.

"Dancing in the Dark" appears in Trouble in the Heartland: Crime Fiction Inspired by the Songs of Bruce Springsteen. (Part of the proceeds benefit the Bob Woodruff Foundation.) Trouble in the Heartland was a finalist for the Anthony Award for Best Anthology or Collection. Read more about the project from editor Joe Clifford. (Cover by Chuck Regan of Zelmer Pulp.)

"Morning Glories" is in Fifteen Views of Miami, a collection of lightly linked stories edited by Jaquira Diaz and published by Burrow Press.

Connie Ogle discusses the collection and interviews the editor and some of the contributors in a great piece in the Miami Herald. And Tina Egnoski reviews it for the Florida Book Review.

Miami New Times has named Fifteen Views of Miami to its list of "The Seven Best Books About Miami."

"Millinery," a memoir piece about my first landlady, storytelling, and hats as essential clues to character, is in the Southern Women's Review.

The issue (which has a needlework theme) can be downloaded as a pdf.

"The Tree Man" was published in Wraparound South. Read it here.

A brief excerpt from the story was used as the text for a broadsheet Pip Brandt and I did for the Sweat Broadsheet project. You can see the broadsheet on the Stories, Essays, Poems, page

The Editors of Wraparound South nominated "The Tree Man" for Sundress Publications' Best of the Net anthology, the Million Writers Prize, and for a Pushcart Prize.

Teaching

I teach in the Creative Writing program in FIU's English Dept, and often speak at writers' conferences around the country. I'm immensely proud of my students, and you can read about some of their many achievements on my Teaching Page.

I was honored to be chosen as a Florida International University Top Scholar in 2012, and to be featured in a full-page ad for the university in the Miami Herald.

In 2011 I received an FIU Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentorship, and I previously received the FIU Award for Excellence in Research. In addition, I have received an award for Service from FIU's College of Arts, Sciences, and Education (CASE) and one for Teaching from the Department of English.

With FIU President Mark Rosenberg, 2012 Top Scholars Reception, April 2012.