The Writer’s Voice: Karen Russell on Swamplandia! , Diana Abu-Jaber on Birds of Paradise, Elizabeth Stuckey-French on em>The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady and Sterling Watson on Fighting in the Shade
Saturday, Nov. 19, 3:30 p.m., Auditorium (Building 1, 2nd Floor, Room 1261)
Author(s) and Guest(s)
Karen Russell
In Karen Russell's much-heralded debut novel, Swamplandia! (Random House, $14.95), Ava is a resourceful thirteen year old whose Florida island home and gator-wrestling theme park, Swamplandia!, is being threatened by a fearsome and sophisticated competitor called the World of Darkness. "Lavishly imagined and spectacularly crafted," says Booklist. Russell was named by The New Yorker in its list of "20 Under 40 Authors to Watch."
Diana Abu-Jaber
Diana Abu-Jaber's novel, Birds of Paradise (Norton, $25.95), is set in Miami, where after five years of skateboarding, clubbing, and sleeping in a squat house or on the beach, Felice is about to turn eighteen. Felice must reckon with the guilty secret that drove her away, and face her fear of losing her family and her sense of self forever. "From the verdant streets of Coral Gables to the back lots of Little Haiti and the seedy underbelly of Miami Beach, the metropolis is floridly, meticulously detailed," says The New York Times. Abu-Jaber is the author of her memoir-with-recipes, The Language of Baklava, and two novels.
Elizabeth Stuckey-French
The Revenge of the Radioactive Lady (Doubleday, $25.95) is Elizabeth Stuckey-French's darkly funny mystery. In 1953, Wilson gave Marylou a radioactive cocktail without her consent, as part of a secret government study that had horrible consequences. Fifty years later, she is still ticked off, and now that she has recently discovered where he lives, she’s on a mission. She's going to kill Wilson come hell or high water. Stuckey-French is the author of the novel Mermaids on the Moon and the short story collection The First Paper Girl in Red Oak, Iowa.
Sterling Watson
Sterling Watson's novel, Fighting in the Shade (Akashic, $15.95) is set in the brutal summer of 1964 in Gulf Coast Florida. Billy fights for a starting spot on the team, the Spartans. He makes the team, but in a horrific hazing scene, he badly injures his team rival. Billy is presented with a Faustian bargain, and the boy must accept the consequences of his decision. “A brilliant, fearless look at the savage rites of passage that exist in the fraternity of American sports," says Dennis Lehane. Watson is the author of five previous novels.
Schedule
Location
Miami Book Fair International * Miami Dade College
300 NE Second Ave., Miami, FL 33132
Auditorium (Building 1, 2nd Floor, Room 1261)
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