Making Good Time:
True Stories of How We Do, and Don't, Get Around in South Florida
Design by Topos Graphics
Cover illustration by Anuj Shrestha
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. It contains 31 true transit stories, by 32 South Florida writers.
The anthology launched in September 2019 at Books and Books Coral Gables. You can order the book from the press or at any Books and Books branch. (Follow the link to Books and Books event info here.)
"If you've ever tried to get from one place to another in South Florida, you will love this book."
- T.D. Allman, author of Miami, City of the Future
"Hole onto your roof mattresses: Making Good Time is a loving, alarming, definitive collection of only-in-Miami road tales. Some of South Florida's most treasured writers tackle one of its true miseries—and now I'm nostalgic for I-95 traffic."
- Kenny Malone, Co-host of NPR's Planet Money
"Making Good Time takes us inside a car broken down on the side of an off-ramp, a divorce occuring in real time on a county bus, and a house being robbed by boat. A collection of wonderful true stories, the book imagineatively illustrates our our cities, infrastructures, and the way we get around shape our destinies and our lives."
- Richard Florida, author of The Rise of the Creative Class
Contributors
Diana Abu-Jaber, Chantel Acevedo, Preston L. Allen, Jan Becker, Madeleine Blais, Richard Blanco, Terence Cantarella, Antolin Garcia Carbonell, Joe Clifford, Jennine Capó Crucet, Anjanette Delgado, Denise Duhamel & Julie Marie Wade, Patricia Engel, M.J. Fièvre, Steven Harris, Fabienne Josaphat, Larry Lebowitz, Louis K. Lowy, Sammy Mack, Jennifer Maritza McCauley, Blanca Mesa, Nick Moran, Marina Pruna Moré, Lauren Doyle Owens, Alex Segura, Les Standiford, Thomas Swick, Monica Uszerowicz, Nick Vagnoni, Ana Veciana-Suarez, and Norma Watkins
Illustrator: Anuj Shrestha / Topos Graphics / Publisher Jai Alai Books
MAKING GOOD TIME: True Stories of 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 in Fall 2019 at Books and Books in Coral Gables with more than twenty of the presenters giving the SRO crowd brief (drive-by) glimpses 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 contributors on hand for the conversation and signing books afterwards.
On March 1 at the Books and Books at the Suniland Shops, Madeleine Blais, Richard Blanco, Anjanette Delgado, Les Standiford, and Norma Watkins read from their
stories, just a week before in-person events shut down.
And Books and Books hosted a Crowdcast event online on August 29, the American Booksellers Association Independent Bookstore Day, with Chantel Fabienne Josaphat, Sammy Mack, Thomas Swick, Ana Veciana Suarez readings from the book, discussion, and online q an a, emceed by Lynne Barrett. You can now view this reading and discussion via the Books & Books website. (LINK COMING SOON!)
You can order the book from the press or by calling or visiting Books and Books. (Follow the link to Books and Books event info here.)
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 contributors on hand for the conversation and signing books afterwards.
On March 1 at the Books and Books at the Suniland Shops, Madeleine Blais, Richard Blanco, Anjanette Delgado, Les Standiford, and Norma Watkins read from their
stories, just a week before in-person events shut down.
And Books and Books hosted a Crowdcast event online on August 29, the American Booksellers Association Independent Bookstore Day, with Chantel Fabienne Josaphat, Sammy Mack, Thomas Swick, Ana Veciana Suarez readings from the book, discussion, and online q an a, emceed by Lynne Barrett. You can now view this reading and discussion via the Books & Books website. (LINK COMING SOON!)
You can order the book from the press or by calling or visiting Books and Books. (Follow the link to Books and Books event info here.)
Anthologies Edited
Tigertail, A South Florida Annual: Florida Flash
Cover image, Brian Reedy
"The ninth edition of Tigertail's annual poetry publication moves into prose to explore the edges and overlaps between lyrical and narrative approaches in Tigertail, A South Florida Annual: Florida Flash. Fifty-four authors with connections to Florida contribute prose poetry, flash fiction, and flash nonfiction. For each piece, editor Lynne Barrett set a maximum of no more than 305 words—a number representing the original South Florida area code as well as the limits of a single page—and the result is an exuberant collection that captures both scintillant moments and the faceted turnings of memory."
As editor of Tigertail's 2011 collection, I decided to use very short prose works to explore the edges and overlaps between lyrical and narrative approaches. I chose the maximum of 305 words because it is the basic area code for Miami-Dade County, and was the original one for the whole state of Florida, but also because an odd and unusual number helps to make clear that limitations are arbitrary challenges which should (and did) stimulate creativity. I discussed this--and some of the themes that emerged--in the introduction which is also 305 words.
This Miami New Times interview explains the concept and the range of work included. And Flavorpill Miami's Ewa Josefsson wrote up the issue & the launch. Coverage from Neil de la Flor at the Knight Arts Foundation.
You can listen to an on-air interview I did with Christine DiMattei on WLRN about the book and the South Florida Flash writing contest the WLRN-Miami Herald News ran, inspired by the collection and the 305 word concept. More about the contest here. And some tips on writing flash, including one from me, at The Review Review, here.
The collection launched at Books and Books, Coral Gables with a reading by 21 of the contributors. Over 200 people came out to hear them.
The collection and the concept inspired a contest run by the WLRN-Miami Herald News for "South Florida Flash" pieces. The contest kicked off on Oct. 17th with an interview with me on WLRN, which you can listen to here, along with ecordings of other contributors to the Tigertail collection reading their pieces and discussing what it's like to be a writer in South Florida. Then hundreds submitted pieces to the contest. Entries closed Nov. 13, and the final judging was announced at an awards ceremony on Thursday, Nov. 17 at History Miami.
The collection and the concept inspired a contest run by the WLRN-Miami Herald News for "South Florida Flash" pieces. The contest kicked off on Oct. 17th with an interview with me on WLRN, which you can listen to here, along with ecordings of other contributors to the Tigertail collection reading their pieces and discussing what it's like to be a writer in South Florida. Then hundreds submitted pieces to the contest. Entries closed Nov. 13, and the final judging was announced at an awards ceremony on Thursday, Nov. 17 at History Miami.
I'm editor of The Florida Book Review.
And founding editor of Gulf Stream Magazine. (Still kibitzing there, from time to time.)
Birth: A Literary Companion
Kristin Kovacic and I edited Birth: A Literary Companion, a collection of poetry, fiction, and memoir about the experience of becoming a parent.
"Kristin Kovacic and Lynne Barrett have identified a new genre, birth literature, and delivered something extraordinary: a companionable anthology, an imaginative guidebook—a spiritual Baedeker—to the daunting country of parenthood. It ought to be essential reading for anyone who is setting out (or has already entered) this strangely beautiful, alarming, and mysterious territory."
—Edward Hirsch, author of How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry
"In this marvelous anthology, a chorus of extraordinary writers has been summoned to examine the endlessly fascinating experience of human nativity. In tributes that vary from joyful to unflinching to troubled to lyrical they honor that most fundamental, most immutable truth: all births are complicated, emotionally."
—Madeleine Blais, author of Uphill Walkers: A Memoir of a Family
Birth: A Literary Companion, reviewed in Foreword Magazine by Lori Hall Steele:
In this vibrant literary collection of short essays and poems, sacred hushes fill in pregnant days, women anguish at night, parents travel through the dissonance that occurs when the raw invasion of life head-butts doting smiles, the veneer of parenting joy. The writings of fifty authors (many well-known) explore the mysteries of childbirth and parenting, from conception to late infancy, from otherworldly dreamtime moments to hands being tied, against will, for Caesarean delivery.
There is terror, here, and pain, along with transcendence and beauty, and it's all gorgeously written. . . Birth: A Literary Companion shares the intimacies of this mysterious passage, a collage of the beauty and beastliness of parenting. The short bites make it easy reading for time-pressed new parents. It is a much-needed addition to shelves of parenting books that teach nursing methods and exalt birth, à la Hallmark, without delving into the alarm, tender glories, and transformations it brings.
University of Iowa Press
ISBN 0-87745-831-6
The James M. Cain Cookbook
Roy Hoopes & Lynne Barrett edited The James M. Cain Cookbook, Guide to Home Singing, Physical Fitness and Animals, (Especially Cats).
Carnegie Mellon University Press
ISBN 0-88748-047-8