Florida Book Award Winners 2012: Lynne Barrett on Magpies, Bob Graham, Keys to the Kingdom, Jessica Martinez on The Space Between Us and Stephen Kampa on Cracks in the Invisible: Poems

Sunday, Nov. 18, 12:30 p.m., Room 8502 (Building 8, 5th Floor)

Author(s) and Guest(s)

Lynne Barrett

In Lynne Barrett's short-story collection, Magpies (Carnegie-Mellon University Press, $17.95), winner of the 2012 Florida Book Award for general fiction, characters move through the past decade's glitter and darkness. From the Internet's fragmented pages to a gossip columnist’s sweet poison to the ABCs of a hurricane season, these stories explore storytelling as a means of connection, betrayal, and survival. Barrett, an Edgar Allen Poe prize winner, is also the author of The Secret Names of Women and The Land of Go.

Senator Bob Graham

Senator Bob Graham is the former two–term governor of Florida who also served for 18 years in the United States Senate. Senator Graham is also the author of several books including America: The Owner’s Manual, which teaches the skills of civic participation, and the novel Keys to the Kingdom, an international thriller, which draws upon his background in government and intelligence.

Jessica Martinez

In Jessica Martinez’s young adult novel, The Space Between Us (Simon Pulse, $16.99), Amelia is used to being upstaged by her charismatic younger sister, Charly. She doesn’t mind that it always falls to her to cover for Charly’s crazy, impulsive antics. But one night, Charly’s thoughtlessness goes way too far, and she lands both sisters in serious trouble. Martinez is the author of the young adult novel Virtuosity.

Stephen Kampa

Stephen Kampa’s poems in his debut collection, Cracks in the Invisible (Ohio University Press, $16.95), are restless in their pursuit of an intelligent modern faith. They range from a four-line satire of office inspirational posters to a lengthy meditation on the silence of God. “Kampa possesses a Byronic delight in and virtuosity with rhyme. . . It's rather extraordinary that this is only his first book.”—The Hopkins Review.