Sunday Salon with Orange Island Art Foundation

Cecilia M. Fernandez is an independent journalist and college instructor. Her work has appeared in Latina magazine, Accent Miami, Upstairs at the Duroc: the Paris Workshop journal, Vista magazine, and Le Siecle de George Sand. She has a master's degree in English Literature from the University of Miami and an MFA in creative writing from Florida International University. She teaches writing and literature at Broward College and Miami International University of Art and Design. Adios, Mi Pequena Habana (Beating Windward Press) is the Spanish translation of her debut memoir, Leaving Little Havana: A Memoir of Miami's Cuban Ghetto. Revolution uprooted six-year-old Cecilia from her comfortable middle-class Cuban home and dropped her into the low-income neighborhood of Miami’s Little Havana. Her philandering father focused on rebuilding his career, chasing the American promise of wealth and freedom from the past. Her mother spiraled into madness trying to hold the family together and get him back. Neglected and trapped, Cecilia rebelled against her conservative culture and embraced the 1960s counter-culture - seeking love, attention and a place of her own in America. But immigrant children either thrive or self-destruct in a new land. Will Cecilia beat the odds?

Jameson Tabard is an LGBT novelist from Orlando. He holds a BA and MA in English and is currently a professor in the Creative Writing MFA program at Full Sail University in Orlando, Florida.  He has an unhealthy appreciation of the male physique, antiquated pop culture, and architectural relics. While he is a charming guy, he pales in comparison to fabulous queens he has birthed on paper. His forthcoming novel is The Scottish Bitch (Beating Windward Press). In this modern, drag, update of Macbeth, Scottish drag queen, Latrine Dion, will do whatever it takes to win the title of Grand Dame, even if it means killing off the other contestants. The screenplay adaptation of this novel placed in the top ten at the Richmond International Film Festival.

M.J. (Jessica) Fievre published her first mystery novel at the age of sixteen. She went on to author nine books in French. Her children’s book, I Am Riding, is written in three languages: English, French, and Haitian Creole. Fievre lived in Port-au-Prince, Haiti under the regime of President-Priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. It was a time of violent protests, a crippling embargo, nightly shootings, home invasions and robberies, and the burning alive of former security-militia members in neighborhood streets. Her memoir, A Sky the Color of Chaos (Beating Windward), tells of M.J.’s childhood growing up steeped in the danger and violence that rocked Haiti in the 1990’s. Intent on escaping her country and her home, dominated by her irascible father, Fievre developed an interest in medicine and writing, both of which proved a salvation. Edwidge Danticat writes, “. . . a heartfelt and deeply honest coming of age memoir that examines her family as well as her country.”