 Photo by J. Tomás López 
We love independent booksellers! To see some of those where readers have found or ordered Magpies, check out the Publications Page. If you would like a signed copy, they are available from Books & Books, 305-442-4408.  |
The latest:
You can hear me reading "Polylingual," at the start of this great, short slideshow about the WLRN and O Miami Poetry Festival "That's So Miami" project. Just follow this link and scroll down. 
My essay about the rise, fall, and rise again of Biscayne Boulevard is in the Spring issue of FORUM, the Florida Humanities Council magazine, in their series on writers' favorite places. left: Spring issue of FORUM, Florida Humanities Council Upcoming Events
I'll be teaching at Grub Street's Muse & the Marketplace Conference in early May at the Park Plaza Hotel in Boston. I'm teaching "A Beginner's Guide to Plot," on Friday, May 3rd and "Secrets & Lies," on what's hidden and how it emerges in stories, Saturday, May 4th. Full information about the conference is here.
September 21, I'll be a featured speaker at the Gulf Coast Writers Conference in Panama City, FL. I'm one of the contributors to the fiction collection Fifteen Views of Miami, which will be out in Fall 2013. November 7-10, I'll be teaching at the FGCU Sanibel Island Writers Conference. To see details about upcoming book group meetings, workshops, and conferences, please go to the Events page. Magpies ~ Gold Medal, Florida Book Awards
Featured in LitBridge, December 2012. 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." Chauncey Mabe asks "Why does Lynne Barrett hate me?" in his review. Melissa Slayton in the Apalachee Review says, "Fans of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit From the Goon Squad or Tony Earley’s Here We Are in Paradise will enjoy Lynne Barrett’s third collection of short stories, which won the Florida Book Awards Gold Medal for General Fiction. Barrett’s aesthetic blends a wry take on contemporary American culture with a unique awareness of the Florida landscape. Within this book, one is as likely to encounter an overwrought editor as a sink hole, a gossip columnist as a tropical depression....This collection is tightly crafted yet eclectic." Emma Trelles says Magpies is "an assemblage of delightfully strange stories" in her New Times list of best things about Miami. The book launch at Books & Books in Coral Gables, FL is described in this great blog by Geoffrey Philp. Magpies is published by Carnegie Mellon University Press and distributed via University Press of New England. For more about the book, see the Magpies page. And while there, learn about Sterling Mulbry, the artist whose painting is on the cover. Learn more about the Florida Book Awards here. WLRN Topical Currents Interview
You can hear my conversation with Ariel Gonzalez on WLRN's Topical Currents by going to the About Lynne page or download the full show's MP3 here.
Conversations around the web
"Angles of Belonging," my guest blog about having grown up in NJ, being a "Florida writer," and the many ways characters can connect to place, is at Lisa Romeo Writes.
Dena Santoro has written an appreciation of the (bad) girls in my short stories, at Like Fire. At The Writerly Life, Gerry Wilson and I discuss thinking about a story's edges and the ever-challenging issue of trying to get too many things done. Necee Regis interviewed me about Magpies (and compared reading the collection to eating Belgian chocolates) at Beyond the Margins. On Casey Pycior's blog, The Story is the Cure, we discussed, among other things, my story "Links" and unanticipated consequences of writing about the dot com world. Laura Richardson interviewed me about Magpies, plot, editing, and much more for Sliver of Stone Magazine. Angela Kelsey has done a four-part (they're short!) interview with me on her blog. Topics covered include how suspense is created in literary stories, and tips for writers. 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 one of the 2012 Florida International University Top Scholars, 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 one for Excellence in Research. With FIU President Mark Rosenberg at the 2012 Top Scholars Reception, April 2012. Some other projects:
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 Works Edited page. "What Editors Want"
Glimmer Train republished "What Editors Want" in their Bulletin of Sept. 1, 2011. When The Review Review published "What Editors Want," an essay about the submission process, it "went viral." As editor Becky Tuch reported in their weekly newsletter: "Over at The Review Review, things have been more than a little insane. For one thing, Lynne Barrett's article... 'What Editors Want...' spread around the globe and back, earning us coverage in the L.A. Times and The New Yorker. Yeah, we were pretty excited."
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