First Draft: A Creative Writing Social with Jamie Ford
August 12th, 2025 / 6:30 PM – 8:00 PM / via Zoom
Miami Book Fair presents First Draft, a series of free and informal writing events where community, craft, and rapid-fire creativity meet for monthly themed virtual salons where writers get social, share their work, and leave with great stories.
Theme: “Rescuing Yourself”
In this generative workshop, we’ll write from prompts that send you back in time to visit a younger version of yourself. What will you say and what would your former self do with that knowledge? Part writing exercise, part emotional labor, we’ll pull the curtain back on the typical Roman à clef and fearlessly go there.
Jamie Ford is the author of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, which spent two-and-a-half years on the New York Times bestseller list and won the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature. This multi-cultural tale has been optioned for film, as well as a stage musical, and is now read widely in hundreds of schools nationwide. His other bestselling novels include Songs of Willow Frost, and more recently, The Many Daughters of Afong Moy, which was published in August 2022 and has been optioned by Jenna Bush Hager’s production company, Thousand Voices. His work has been translated into 35 languages.
