Authors

Alex Aster is an author of middle-grade fiction, including the Emblem Island series. She graduated summa cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania, where she studied creative writing. As we learn in Lightlark (Amulet Books), every 100 years the island of Lightlark appears to host the Centennial, a deadly game played only by the rulers of six realms. The invitation to the game is a summons, a call to embrace victory and ruin, baubles and blood. The Centennial offers its players one final chance to break the curses that have plagued their realms for centuries. Each ruler has something to hide, and each curse is uniquely wicked. To destroy the curses, one ruler must die. Isla Crown is the young ruler of Wildling – a realm of temptresses cursed to kill anyone with whom they fall in love. They are feared and despised – and they are counting on Isla to end their suffering. To survive at the Centennial, Isla must lie, cheat, and betray – even as love complicates everything.

Ayman is a 21-year-old college student from Chicago. She is known as @AymansBooks on TikTok and Instagram. When she’s not studying you can find her with a book in hand and obsessing over all things romance somewhere on the internet.

Elizabeth Baez is an artist. Her work was on exhibit in the Harlem Fine Art Show Virtual Art Exhibition and is now part of the art collection at Bay Path University. She has been the curator of the Broward College Annual Hispanic Heritage Group Art Exhibits for the past 16 years, and illustrated Lesléa Newman’s bilingual children’s book Alicia and the Hurricane: A Story of Puerto Rico/Alicia Y El Huracán: Un cuento de Puerto Rico (Children’s Book Press). After snuggling into bed each night, Alicia listens to the big voices of the tiny coquí frogs that live all around Puerto Rico and sing her to sleep. Ko-kee, ko-kee, ko-kee, ko-kee. Then a terrible hurricane hits Puerto Rico, and Alicia and her family take refuge in a shelter. At bedtime, Alicia hears grown-ups snoring, babies crying, wind howling, and rain pounding. She cannot hear the song of the coquí. Are the little tree frogs safe? And will Alicia and her family find at home after the storm is over? Alicia and the Hurricane is a tender look at the resilience of people and native creatures whose lives have been disrupted by a natural disaster.

Carmen Baker is a library services specialist with the Miami-Dade Public Library System. She has more than 20 years of experience in youth services, programming, and general librarianship. Baker manages the library’s local author series and fair – which won a 2020 National Association of Counties (NACo) achievement award – and has received a SEFLIN Summit award for developing programming for infants and the visually impaired. She has represented the library internationally, hosting early literacy workshops at libraries in Medellin, Colombia, and Madrid.

Peter Balakian is the author of eight books of poems, including Ozone Journal, which won the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for poetry, and Ziggurat. His memoir Black Dog of Fate won the PEN/Albrand Award, and The Burning Tigris was a New York Times bestseller and notable book. In his latest collection, No Sign (University of Chicago Press), Balakian wrestles with national and global cultural and political realities as he addresses challenges for the human species and the impact of mass violence. At the collection’s heart is the title piece, another in Balakian’s series of long-form poems, following “A-Train/Ziggurat/Elegy” and “Ozone Journal,” which appeared in his previous two collections. The dialogue that ensues reveals the evolution of a memory spanning decades, reflecting on the geological history of Earth, the climate crisis, the film Hiroshima mon amour, the Vietnam War, and the enduring power of love. Whether meditating on the sensuality of fruits and vegetables, the COVID-19 pandemic, the trauma and memory of the Armenian genocide, James Baldwin in France, or Arshile Gorky in New York City, Balakian’s layered, elliptical language, wired phrases, and shifting tempos engage both life’s harshness and beauty, and define his inventive and distinctive style.

Matthew Ball is the CEO of Epyllion and the former global head of strategy for Amazon Studios. He has written for The New York Times, The Economist, and Bloomberg. His self-published essays on the metaverse have been read millions of times and cited by leaders at Epic Games, Facebook, Tencent, and Coinbase. The term “metaverse” is suddenly everywhere, from the front pages of national newspapers and the latest fashion trends to the plans of the most powerful companies in history. It is already shaping the policy platforms of the U.S. government, the European Union, and the Chinese Communist Party. In The Metaverse: And How It Will Revolutionize Everything (Liveright), leading theorist and venture capitalist Ball explains what the metaverse is, what it will take to build it, and what it means for all of us. He presents it as a persistent and interconnected network of 3D virtual worlds that will eventually serve as the gateway to most online experiences and underpin much of the physical world. For decades, these ideas have been limited to science fiction and video games – now, they are poised to revolutionize every industry and function, from finance and health care to education, consumer products, dating, and beyond.

Taneum Bambrick’s poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in The Nation, The New Yorker, The American Poetry Review, PEN, and elsewhere. Her chapbook, Reservoir, was selected by Ocean Vuong for the 2017 Yemassee Chapbook Prize. Intimacies, Received (Vantage) is her second collection and was chosen for the 2019 American Poetry Review/Honickman first book award. In Intimacies, Received, violence hides in the glint of the carving knife – every intimacy a shadow, every memory a maze to navigate. Set primarily in rural Southern Spain, the poems move through streets, fields, households, and years, following a survivor of sexual assault as she painstakingly reassembles a narrative of self. A brilliant storyteller, Bambrick builds through palimpsest – layering vivid imagery to recall embodiment and dissociation, illness and isolation, and queer female sexuality amidst acts of misogyny. Ultimately, the collection signals agency, as trauma is held to the light and finally named.

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni is a writer, activist, and teacher. She is also the author of 20 books, including Mistress of Spices, Sister of My Heart, and Before We Visit the Goddess. Her work has been published in more than 100 magazines and anthologies and translated into 30 languages. Her awards include an American Book Award and a PEN Josephine Miles Award. In 2015 The Economic Times placed her on their List of 20 Most Influential Global Indian Women. Based on true-life events, The Last Queen: A Novel of Courage and Resistance (William Morrow Paperbacks) tells the story of Jindan. Sharp-eyed, stubborn, and passionate, she was known for her beauty. When she caught the eye of Maharaja Ranjit Singh, she became royalty, his youngest and last queen. When her son, barely 6 years old, unexpectedly inherited the throne, Jindan assumed the regency. She transformed herself from pampered wife to a warrior ruler, determined to protect her people and her son’s birthright from the encroaching British Empire. The Last Queen is a love story of a king and a commoner, a cautionary tale about loyalty and betrayal, and a powerful parable of the indestructible bond between mother and child.

Russell Banks is a fiction writer and twice a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. His work has been translated into 20 languages and received numerous prizes and awards. It’s 1971 in Banks’ The Magic Kingdom: A Novel (Knopf), and a property speculator named Harley Mann begins recording his life story onto a reel-to-reel machine. Reflecting on his childhood in the early 20th century, Harley recounts that after his father’s sudden death, his family migrated to Florida’s swamplands to join a community of Shakers. The place was mere miles away from what would become Disney World. Led by Elder John, a generous man with a mysterious past, the colony devoted itself to labor, faith, and charity, rejecting all temptations that lay beyond the property. This way of life initially saved Harley and his family from complete ruin. But when Harley fell in love with Sadie Pratt, a patient living on the grounds, his loyalty to the Shakers and their conservative worldview grew strained and, ultimately, breaks. As Harley dictates his story – meditating on youth, Florida’s ever-changing landscape, and the search for an American utopia – the truth about Sadie, Elder John, and the Shakers comes to light.

Ayanna Lloyd Banwo is a writer from Trinidad and Tobago. Her work has been published in The Caribbean Writer, Moko Magazine, Small Axe, POUi, Pree, Callaloo, and Anomaly. Her debut When We Were Birds: A Novel (Doubleday), is a mythic love story set in Trinidad. In the old house on a hill, where the city meets the rainforest, Yejide’s mother is dying. She is leaving behind a legacy that now passes to Yejide: One St. Bernard woman in every generation has the power to shepherd the city’s souls into the afterlife. But after years of suffering her mother’s neglect and bitterness, Yejide is looking for a way out. Raised in the countryside by a devout Rastafarian mother, Darwin has always abided by the religious commandment not to interact with death. But when the only job he can find is grave digging, he must betray the beliefs his mother passed on to him to provide for them both. Yejide and Darwin will meet inside the gates of Fidelis, an ancient and sprawling cemetery, where the dead lie uneasy in their graves, and a reckoning with fate beckons.

Steven Barnes is a The New York Times bestselling author of more than 30 novels. He is a pioneering Afrofuturist, nominated for Nebula and Hugo awards, and writer of the Emmy Award-winning “A Stitch In Time” episode of the 1990’s reboot of The Outer Limits. His collaborator and wife, Tananarive Due, is an academic and author whose books include Ghost Summer: Stories, My Soul to Keep, and The Good House. In their collaboration The Keeper (Harry N. Abrams), illustrated by Marco Finnegan, Aisha has lost her parents in a car crash, and now she must move to decrepit and derelict Detroit to live with her ailing grandmother. But shortly after Aisha’s move, her grandmother’s health rapidly deteriorates. With her dying breath, she summons the dark spirit that has protected their family for generations to watch over her granddaughter. At first, it seems that this spirit, the Keeper, is doing what it was asked. But Aisha finds that this being can only sustain itself by stealing life from others, and she and her friends must come together to destroy it or die trying. Barnes’ graphic novel The Eightfold Path (Abrams ComicArts – Megascope), co-authored by Charles Johnson and illustrated by Bryan Christopher Moss, is an anthology of interconnected Afrofuturistic parables inspired by the teachings of Buddha. Eight strangers looking for enlightenment from an ancient spiritual teacher are trapped in a cave high in the mountains on their way to his temple. One of his acolytes directs them to each tell a story that the group can learn from as they wait out the snowstorm raging outside. One by one, the travelers share their stories, each a morality tale representing one of the aspects of final enlightenment taught in Buddhism. Their stories of horror, dystopia, high adventure, cyberpunk, and urban fantasy are spokes on the symbolic Dharma wheel, and each interlocking tale gets them closer to their true destiny – unveiling the future of the human race.  

Derrick Barnes is the author of the picture book Crown: An Ode to the Fresh Cut, which received a Newbery Honor, a Coretta Scott King Author Honor, the Ezra Jack Keats New Writer Award, and the Kirkus Prize for Young Readers. He is also the creator of the New York Times bestselling companion picture books, The King of Kindergarten and The Queen of Kindergarten, and co-wrote the graphic novel Victory. Stand!: Raising My Fist For Justice (Norton Young Readers) with former Olympic track-and-field gold medalist Tommie Smith, illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile. The book revisits the events on October 16, 1968, during the medal ceremony at the Mexico City Olympics. Smith, the gold medal winner in the 200-meter sprint, and John Carlos, the bronze medal winner, stood on the podium in black socks and raised their black-gloved fists to protest racial injustice inflicted upon African Americans. It's a stirring portrait of an iconic moment in Olympic history that still resonates today.

Rick Barot was born in the Philippines and grew up in the San Francisco Bay area. He is the author of the collection The Galleons (Milkweed Editions) and three previous volumes of poetry: The Darker Fall; Want, which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award and won the 2009 GrubStreet National Book Prize; and Chord. His work has appeared in numerous publications, including Poetry, The New Republic, Tin House, Kenyon Review, and The New Yorker, and he is the poetry editor for the New England Review. He will be at Miami Book Fair 2022 as the National Poetry Series moderator for ʻŌiwi (Native Hawaiian) queer poet and educator No’u Revilla, author of Ask the Brindled: Poems (Milkweed Editions).

Ave Barrera (Guadalajara, México, 1980) Narradora y escritora de libros para niños. Actualmente vive en la Ciudad de México. Es licenciada en Letras Hispánicas por la Universidad de Guadalajara y durante varios años fue editora en Oaxaca. Ha sido becaria de la Fundación Carolina para un curso de formación en edición en La Universidad Complutense de Madrid. En 2010 y 2014 obtuvo la beca de Jóvenes Creadores de Novela del Fondo Nacional para la Cultura y las Artes de México (FONCA). Ha trabajado como redactora publicitaria de medios electrónicos. Ha publicado las novelas Puertas demasiado pequeñas (Premio Latinoamericano a la Primera Novela Sergio Galindo 2013 de la Universidad Veracruzana) y Restauración (2019) y, para los niños, Tláloc, piedra de agua (2013), Una noche en el laberinto (2014), Así era Monte Albán (2014) y Nezahualcóyotl. El coyote hambriento (2015). En la feria, Barrera presenta Puertas demasiado pequeñas (Alianza), recién traducida al inglés como The Forgery y publicada por Charco Press en Edimburgo, Reino Unido.

Colin Barrett is from County Mayo, Ireland. In 2009 he was awarded the Penguin Ireland Prize, and his debut collection of stories, Young Skins, won the Rooney Prize, the Frank O’Connor International Short Story Prize, and The Guardian’s First Book Award. He was also a National Book Foundation “5 Under 35.” His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, The Stinging Fly, The New Statesman, Harper’s Magazine, and BBC Radio 4. In his second book, Homesickness (Grove Press), Barrett brings together eight character-driven stories, each showcasing his observant eye and darkly humorous style. This collection follows the lives of outcasts, misfits, and malcontents from County Mayo to Canada. A quiet night in a local pub is shattered by the arrival of a sword-wielding fugitive. A funeral party teeters between this world and the next, as ghosts won’t lay in wake. A shooting leads a veteran policewoman to confront the banality of her existence. An aspiring writer grapples with his father’s cancer diagnosis and, in his despair, wreaks havoc on his mentor’s life. The linguistic originality and sharply drawn portraits of working-class Ireland in his debut earned Barrett comparisons to Faulkner, Hardy, and Musil. Homesickness is an emotionally resonant and wry follow-up.

Dave Barry is a Pulitzer Prize-winning humorist. For 25 years, he was a syndicated columnist whose work appeared in more than 500 newspapers in the United States and abroad. He has also written 30 books, including Dave Barry Slept Here: A Sort of History of the United States, Dave Barry Turns 40 (the basis for the sitcom Dave’s World), Lessons from Lucy, and Dave Barry’s Complete Guide to Guys.

Tanya Batson-Savage is a Jamaican writer, filmmaker, publisher, and creative consultant. She is the publisher and editor of the independent publishing house Blue Banyan Books and its imprint Blouse & Skirt Books. She wrote a collection for children, Pumpkin Belly and Other Stories (2005), produced and script-edited the animated short film Agwe (2018), and wrote the critically acclaimed play Woman Tongue (2016). Her short film script Endeavour earned the award for Best Script in the KingstOOn Anime Festival in 2013. She will appear at Miami Book Fair 2022 to moderate the panel “Out of Many, One People,” where writers with ties to Jamaica will celebrate the 60th anniversary of the island nation’s independence and read from their work.

Kalynn Bayron is the bestselling author of the YA fantasy novels Cinderella Is Dead and This Poison Heart. She is a classically trained vocalist, and when she’s not writing, you can find her listening to Ella Fitzgerald on a loop, attending the theater, watching scary movies, and spending time with her kids. In The Vanquishers (Bloomsbury Children’s Books), we meet Malika “Boog” Wilson. She and her best friends have grown up idolizing the Vanquishers, a group of heroic vampire hunters who wiped out the last horde of the undead decades ago. These days, most people don’t take even the most basic vampire precautions – no garlic wreaths or early curfews – but Boog’s parents still follow the old rules, much to her embarrassment. Then a friend goes missing, and Boog doesn’t know what to think. Is the school counselor, Mr. Rupert, hiding something? Is it something more dangerous? Can it be that vampires might not have been vanquished after all? Boog is determined to save her friend. And while no one ever expected the Vanquishers to return, if their town needs protection from the undead, Boog knows who to call.

Blitz Bazawule is a multidisciplinary artist born in Ghana. His feature directorial debut, The Burial of Kojo, premiered on Netflix. He co-directed Beyoncé’s Black Is King, which earned him a Grammy nomination, and will direct the musical version of The Color Purple for Warner Bros. His artwork has been featured at the Whitney Biennial. In The Scent of Burnt Flowers: A Novel (‎Ballantine Books), when the windshield of his Chevy Impala shatters in a dark diner parking lot in Alabama, Melvin moves without thinking. This time it is the safety of his fiancé, Bernadette, at stake. Impulse keeps them alive, and yet they flee with blood on their hands. With a persistent FBI agent on their trail, they travel to Ghana to seek the help of Melvin’s old college friend – who happens to be the country’s embattled president, Kwame Nkrumah. And the couple’s chance encounter with Ghana’s most beloved highlife musician, Kwesi Kwayson, sparks another leg of a journey full of suspense, lust, magic, and danger. What was meant to be a fresh start quickly spirals into chaos, threatening their relationship and lives. The Scent of Burnt Flowers merges political intrigue, magical encounters, and forbidden romance in an epic collision of morality and power.

Michael Beckley is an associate professor of political science at Tufts University and a non-resident senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. In Dangerzone: The Coming Conflict with China (W. W. Norton & Company), co-authored with Hal Brands, he provides a provocative and urgent analysis of the United States-China rivalry. These superpowers are in a contest of clashing geopolitical interests and an ideological dispute over whether authoritarianism or democracy will dominate the 21st century. According to the authors, history and China’s current trajectory suggest that this rivalry will reach its moment of maximum danger in the 2020s. Rising powers become most aggressive when their fortunes fade and difficulties multiply, and they realize they must achieve their ambitions now or miss the chance to do so forever. China has already started down this path. Over the long run, the Chinese challenge will likely prove more manageable than many pessimists currently believe – but during the 2020s, the prospect of war will be frighteningly real. The U.S. needs a near-term strategy to navigate this danger zone ahead.

Ruth Behar is the author of several travel books, including Translated Woman, The Vulnerable Observer, An Island Called Home, and Traveling Heavy. Other works include Everything I Kept/Todo lo que guardé, a bilingual book of poems; the middle-grade novels Lucky Broken Girl and Letters from Cuba; and the children’s picture book Tía Fortuna’s New Home. Behar will be at Miami Book Fair 2022 to moderate a conversation with Sandra Cisneros, who is presenting Woman Without Shame: Poems (Knopf), her first book of poetry in 28 years, and three-term United States poet laureate Joy Harjo (Virtual), presenting two new books celebrating her 50-year body of work: Catching the Light (Why I Write) (Yale University Press) and Weaving Sundown in a Scarlet Light: Fifty Poems for Fifty Years (W. W. Norton & Company).

Billy-Ray Belcourt is a writer from the Driftpile Cree Nation and the author of the poetry collections This Wound is a World, and NDN Coping Mechanisms, and the nonfiction A History of My Brief Body. He is an assistant professor in the School of Creative Writing at the University of British Columbia. In A Minor Chorus: A Novel (W. W. Norton & Company), set against the stark expanse of Northern Alberta, a queer Indigenous doctoral student steps away from his dissertation to write a novel. His work is informed by a series of poignant encounters, including a heart-to-heart with fellow doctoral student River over the mounting pressure placed on marginalized scholars; and a meeting with Michael, a closeted man from his hometown whose vulnerability and loneliness punctuate the realities of queer life on the fringe. Woven throughout these conversations are memories of Jack, a cousin caught in the cycle of police violence, drugs, and survival. Jack’s life parallels the narrator’s own; the possibilities of escape and imprisonment are left to chance with colonialism stacking the odds. A Minor Chorus is the first novel from a rising literary figure that brings the modern queer and Indigenous experience into sharp relief.

Jorge Eduardo Benavides (Arequipa, Perú, 1964) Narrador. Reside en España. Ha publicado La noche de Morgana, así como las novelas Los años inútiles, El año que rompí contigo, Un millón de soles, La paz de los vencidos (galardonada con el Premio Julio Ramón Ribeyro de novela corta), Un asunto sentimental, El enigma del convento (que obtuvo el XXV Premio Torrente Ballester), El asesinato de Laura Olivo, (que ganó el XIX Premio Fernando Quiñones) y El collar de los Balbases. Ha sido traducido al francés y al inglés. La última novela de Benavides, Volver a Shangri-La, dada a conocer este año por Alianza Editorial, describe, entre otros temas, la nostalgia y el dolor que causan el amor y el exilio y los roles sociales que cercenan la creatividad femenina.

Cristina Bendek (San Andrés, Colombia, 1987) Narradora. Ha vivido en Bogotá y Ciudad de México. Actualmente reside en Berlín. Su debut literario lo hizo con la novela Los cristales de la sal (Laguna libros, 2018), con la cual ganó el Premio Nacional de Novela Elisa Mujica, y que fue traducida al portugués, al danés y al holandés. También ha dado a conocer el cuaderno de ensayo Hilar el ritmo: o la búsqueda que no termina (La diligencia libros, 2021). Bendek trae a la feria su primera novela, Los cristales de la sal, traducida al inglés por Charco Press como Salt Crystals en 2022, en la que narra el regreso de la protagonista a su lugar de origen, la isla de San Andrés en el Caribe colombiano, lo cual la lleva replantearse la relación con su familia y con el sitio donde nació.

Daniel Bergner is a contributing writer for The New York Times Magazine and the author of five previous books of nonfiction: the New York Times bestselling Sing for Your Life, What Do Women Want?, The Other Side of Desire, In the Land of Magic Soldiers, and God of the Rodeo. His writing has also appeared in The Atlantic, Granta, Harper’s Magazine, Mother Jones, Talk, and The New York Times Book Review. In the early 1960s, JFK declared that science would take us to the moon and cure psychiatric illnesses with breakthrough medications. And while we were walking on the moon within a decade, psychiatric cures continue to elude us – as does the mind itself. Recounting his brother’s journey (who, diagnosed as bipolar, took heavy doses of medications with devastating side effects), alongside the stories of Caroline, beset by hallucinations, and David, overtaken by depression, Bergner examines the evolution of how we treat our psyches. The Mind and the Moon: My Brother’s Story, the Science of Our Brains and the Search for Our Psyches (Ecco) raises profound questions about how we understand ourselves and the essential human divide between our brains and our minds.

Felicia Berliner is the author of Shmutz: A Novel (Atria Books). It is her first novel. She grew up in Los Angeles and attended yeshiva high school. Shmutz tells the story of Raizl, who – like the other women in her Brooklyn Hasidic community – expects to find a husband through an arranged marriage. Unlike the other women, however, Raizl has a secret. With a hidden computer to help her complete her college degree, she falls down the slippery slope of online pornography. As she dives deeper into the world of porn at night, her daytime life begins to unravel. Between combative visits with her shrink to complicated arranged dates, Raizl must balance her growing understanding of her sexuality with the more conventional expectations of the family she loves. Shmutz explores what it means to be a fully realized sexual and spiritual being caught between traditional and modern worlds.

Reginald Dwayne Betts is a poet, lawyer, and prison reform advocate. A MacArthur fellow, he is the author of the collection Felon: Poems (W. W. Norton & Company), addressing the effects of incarceration and life post-incarceration. Betts is also the founder and executive director of Freedom Reads, a not-for-profit transforming access to literature in prisons by installing Freedom Libraries across the country. He will be at Miami Book Fair 2022 to lead a conversation with Salvadorean-born Alexandra Lytton Regalado, author of Relinquenda (Beacon Press) and co-director of Editorial Kalina, as part of the Fair’s National Poetry Series program.

Anuradha Bhowmik is a Bangladeshi American poet and writer. She is a 2022 Kundiman fellow and a 2018 AWP Intro Journals Project winner in poetry. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Poetry, the Sun, Copper Nickel, Pleiades, Indiana Review, and elsewhere. Life as a Bangladeshi-born American girl growing up as a first-generation immigrant in the United States shapes her debut collection. Brown Girl Chromatography (University of Pittsburgh Press) explores issues of race, class, gender, and sexuality in post-9/11 America while navigating the poet’s millennial childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. She faces cruelties in the American and Bangladeshi worlds without any guidance or instruction on how to survive. Any visible traces of her Bangladeshi life result in racial ridicule from her peers, while participating and assimilating into American culture is met with violence and abuse at home. As language and memory intersect, Bhowmik draws on pop culture and free association to examine her displacement from many angles and make meaning out of hurt.

Jill Bialosky is the author of six collections of poetry, three novels, and two memoirs, including The New York Times bestseller History of a Suicide: My Sister’s Unfinished Life. Her poems and essays have appeared in The Best American Poetry; The New Yorker; The Atlantic; Harper’s Magazine; O, The Oprah Magazine; and The Paris Review, among other publications. She is also an executive editor and vice president at W. W. Norton & Company. The life of the unnamed narrator in The Deceptions (Counterpoint) is unraveling. Her only child has left home, her 20-year marriage is strained, and the release of her book of poetry looms. She seeks answers to the paradoxes of love, desire, and parenthood among the Greek and Roman gods at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. During those hours in its austere galleries, memories of a yearlong friendship with a fellow poet haunt her. As secret betrayals and deceptions come to light and rage threatens to overwhelm her, the gods assume remarkably vivid lives, forcing her to choose between reality and myth. The Deceptions is a seductively told exploration of female sexuality and ambition, and a human drama that dares to test the stories we tell ourselves.

Adriana Bianco (Argentina) Actriz, escritora y periodista. Radica en Miami. Graduada de Filosofía y Letras, tiene un posgrado en Literatura latinoamericana por la Sorbonne de París. Ha publicado Borges y los otros (Planeta, Argentina), Aventuras de Lupita y Beto (Editorial Progreso, México) y Miami habla (escrito con Rafael Cerrato; Miami). Ha recibido varios galardones por su labor periodística. Tiene una destacada trayectoria como actriz en Argentina. Recibió en 2004 el Premio Cóndor de Plata. También le fue concedido el Premio de la Municipalidad de Buenos Aires y el de La mujer y el cine. Entre otras películas, ha actuado en El ojo que espía (1952), Mi marido hoy duerme en casa (1955) y El primer beso (1958). Bianco conversa con Jamid Mahuad, el expresidente de Ecuador, sobre el libro Así dolarizamos el Ecuador. Memorias de un acierto histórico en América Latina, título editado por Planeta.