Despite the dearth of live events during the winter of COVID-19, there are enough virtual literary events to keep one’s mind engaged. From poetry to fiction to children’s literature and books with local themes and authors, this year’s offerings, while reduced, offer enough stimulation and diversion to almost make you forget our altered state of collective reality. Palm … [Read more...]
JCCs team up for virtual Jewish Book Fest
Along with other iconic institutions such as the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Palace of Versailles and the Guggenheim Museum in New York, the Florida JCC Jewish Book Fest has gone online. Proving that there is strength in numbers, this year the Fest partnered with its neighboring Jewish Communty Centers (The Adolph & Rose Levis JCC Sandler Center, … [Read more...]
Allen’s memoir, like many of his films, is a cut-and-paste job
It seems unlikely that the employees of Hachette Book Group that walked out in protest of that company’s effort to publish Woody Allen’s new memoir, Apropos of Nothing, actually read the manuscript before taking umbrage that the firm would be associated with such an innocuous, albeit entertaining, tome. Cries of censorship could be heard beyond the insular publishing … [Read more...]
Delray author’s debut thriller aims for ‘Homeland’ territory
By Sharon Geltner Goodbye, Homeland. Hello, Sandblast. Showtime’s hit series Homeland ends in May. But covert ops fans can now turn to Sandblast, the first book in an action, adventure and suspense trilogy by Al Pessin, a local author who has covered the world’s hot spots from Afghanistan to Washington, D.C. The plot: after terrorists blow up a plane carrying the … [Read more...]
Area guitarist Telesca tells of struggle with cancer in new book
With a new recording, a new book, and a new lease on life, Boynton Beach-based blues vocalist, bassist and guitarist Mark Telesca (marktelesca.com) has hit a figurative trifecta. Higher Vibrations is his first recording of solo acoustic blues as a singer and guitarist, and that new lease on life is chronicled in Telesca’s debut as an author. Available in online and … [Read more...]
Harris’s Gunnie Rose is a protagonist with legs (and weapon)
By Sharon Geltner Could the latest Charlaine Harris fantasy series evolve into True Grit meets True Blood? It’s possible. There are similarities between the Sookie Stackhouse and the new Gunnie Rose series. (Harris wrote the Southern vampire series about the telepathic Louisiana barmaid inspiring the HBO series, True Blood. She’s published more than 40 books, some in … [Read more...]
Poetry Festival salutes the art of saying the unsayable
By Christina Wood Angela Narciso Torres admits she wrote some pretty bad poetry when she was a kid. Unlike countless other teens pouring out their hearts or communing with their angst in late night writing sessions, however, Torres returned to poetry later in life. She was living in New York with a husband and kids of her own, when she decided to sign up for a creative … [Read more...]
Man-girl love story isn’t about perversion, author insists
By Sharon Geltner Timing is everything. In this #MeToo era, how does an author announce her book, The Best of Crimes, is about a man in love with a 13-year-old girl? With a spoiler on the cover. “This is … about a man who is faced with temptation but does not succumb.” Yet bloggers, who may not have read the entire book, are already disparaging it and chatting about … [Read more...]
Season Preview 2019-20: Literary events show South Florida’s culture isn’t written just in the sand
By Christina Wood The annual Ernest Hemingway look-alike contest held in Key West isn’t exactly what you could call a literary event. (But, if you’re interested, Sloppy Joe’s Bar will host the 40th annual contest July 23-26, 2020.) It is, however, a reminder of South Florida’s long literary legacy. First came intrepid individuals like Hemingway (A Farewell to Arms, in … [Read more...]
Gripping ‘Nickel Boys’ tracks racism’s reach in the Panhandle
Colson Whitehead won both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Award for his novel The Underground Railroad, a compelling story of slaves escaping from Southern plantations on a fictional below-ground train. Now he follows that masterpiece with the story of a brutal boys’ reform school in the Florida Panhandle. The central character is a black … [Read more...]