 Photo by J. Tomás López Writer, Editor, Teacher
BooksJust Published!
MAKING GOOD TIME: TRUE STORIES ABOUT HOW WE DO, AND DON'T GET AROUND IN SOUTH FLORIDA, edited and with an introduction by Lynne Barrett, published by Jai-Alai Books, launched on Sept. 21, 2019 at Books and Books in Coral Gables, FL, 7 PM, with many of the 32 stellar authors who've contributed new nonfiction about the adventures and misadventures of moving around on our (crazy) South Florida map. Signed copies available via Books & Books. 
Now in its second 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 
MagpiesMy 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."
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. 
Signing at the IWWG booth at AWP.
Around the web
and around town
You can hear me reading 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
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. 
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The latest...
Illustrator: Anuj Shrestha / Topos Graphics / Publisher Jai Alai Books
Want to write your own Making Good Time story?
Just open for registration: The Miami Book Fair is offering Making Good Time: Story and the Map of Opportunity, a generative workshop for writers of both fiction and nonfiction that I will be teaching February 8, 2020 at Books & Books in Coral Gables, 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. At Books and Books (itself a crossroads), we’ll look at how writers use place, movement, territory, obstacles, access, boundary crossing, departures, returns, and other aspects of spatial movement to construct, shape, and give meaning to stories, whether true or invented. Short examples from published work will focus on South Florida, while participants can draw on locations anywhere, real, imagined, or somewhere in between, for what you’ll write. You can get going on new writing or find a new angle on work in progress. Suitable for those interested in writing memoir, personal essay, narrative nonfiction, and fiction, from flash length to longer projects. This is a limited-size class, with a fee of $75. Full info. and registration via Miami Book Fair. 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.
Around town: MAKING GOOD TIME: True Stories of How We Do, and Don't, Get Around in South Florida, edited and with an intruction by Lynne Barrett, published by Jai-Alai Books, launched in at Books and Books Coral Gables with more than twenty of the presenters giving short (drive-by) glimpsed of their work. And we had a great session at Miami Book Fair featuring Terence Cantarella, Jennine Capó Crucet, Sammy Mack, Alex Segura, and Lynne Barrett, with other stellar contribuors on hand for the conversation and signing books afterwards. with ou can order the book from the press or at any Books and Books branch. (Follow the link to Books and Books event info here.)
Image: courtesy of The Biscayne Times, Nov. 2019. Spread photo by Silvia Rios.
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Writers workshop: On Feb. 8, 2020 from 10 AM to 1 PM, at Books and Books in Coral Gables, I'll be teaching a Miami Book Fair year-round workshop using the concepts that went into Making Good Time to help you 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. More details at the top of this page. Registration now open.
March 13 & 14, 2020, I will be at the Gulf Coast Association of Creative Writing Teachers annual conference in Fairhope, AL. I'm the current president of this regional organization for writers, students, teachers, editors and publishers in or interested in the Gulf states region, which I've been part of since the late 1990s. Registration will be open very soon.
...short stories, nonfiction, & more
I was among the authors interviewed by Nancy Stetson in Florida Weekly about our favorite punctuation marks, for National Punctuation Day, September 24th. Which was mine? Take a look...
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.
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 inforomation about the Miami Book Fair, including details on getting there by train Palm Beach and Broward Counties.
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.)
Lynne Barrett reading at Soya y Pomodoro, Miami.
At the International Womens Writing Guild's 42nd annual summer conference, held at Muhlenberg College in Allentown, PA, July 12-19, 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.
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.
"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."
"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. |
