Authors

Since stepping into librarianship in 1987, ELLEN BOOK has managed several Miami-Dade libraries and currently oversees the Pinecrest branch of the Miami-Dade Public Library System. A literacy advocate, she led a project distributing 27,000 dictionaries to local schools. A respected community leader, she has served as past president of the Rotary Club of South Miami and the Dade County Library Association, while her nationally awarded sustainability programs teach composting and transform plastic bags into mats for the homeless, impacting thousands. In 2024, she proudly returns for her seventh year as a Miami Book Fair moderator.

MAX BOOT is a historian, bestselling author, and foreign policy analyst. He is the Jeane J. Kirkpatrick senior fellow for national security studies at the Council on Foreign Relations and a weekly columnist for The Washington Post. Boot’s new biography of Ronald Reagan, Reagan: His Life and Legend (Liveright), has been acclaimed as “an exceptional biography of an exceptional man” (David Petraeus) and “a timely and fascinating book” (Walter Isaacson). His previous biography, The Road Not Taken: Edward Lansdale and the American Tragedy in Vietnam (Liveright), was a New York Times bestseller and a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize in biography.

ANDREW BORYGA grew up in the Bronx, New York, and now lives in Miami with his family. His writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Atlantic, and has been awarded prizes by Cornell University, the University of Miami, The Susquehanna Review, and The Michener Awards Foundation. He attended the Tin House Workshop and has taught writing to college students, elementary school students, and incarcerated adults. Victim: A Novel (Doubleday) is his debut novel.

ZOË BOSSIERE (they/she) is a writer, editor, and teacher from Tucson, Arizona. She is the managing editor of Brevity: A Journal of Concise Literary Nonfiction, and co-editor of the anthologies The Best of Brevity: Twenty Groundbreaking Years of Flash Nonfiction (Rose Metal Press) and The Lyric Essay as Resistance: Truth from the Margins (Wayne State University Press). Bossiere currently lives in Oregon with her partner and child. Learn more about her and her work at ZoeBossiere.com.

REBECCA BOYLE is a columnist at Atlas Obscura and a contributor to Scientific American, Quanta Magazine, The Atlantic, The New York Times, Popular Science, Smithsonian’s Air & Space Magazine, and many other publications. She is a member of the group science blog The Last Word on Nothing. Boyle was a Knight Science Journalism Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and is the recipient of numerous writing awards. Her work has been anthologized three times in The Best American Science & Nature Writing. She is a former Space Camp attendee and lifelong moon enthusiast.

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN is a reproductive justice activist, abortion storyteller, and writer. She is the founder and co-executive director of We Testify, an organization dedicated to the leadership and representation of people who have abortions and share their stories at the intersection of race, class, and gender identity. She is also an executive producer of Ours to Tell, an award-winning documentary elevating the voices of people who’ve had abortions, and co-host of The A Files: A Secret History of Abortion, a podcast from The Meteor. She lives in Washington, D.C.

ALLY BRAITHWAITE CONDIE is the author of the No. 1 New York Times bestselling Matched series and the Edgar Award finalist Summerlost (Dutton Books for Young Readers), among other novels. She has also written several picture books, including Here: I Can Be Mindful (Viking Books for Young Readers). A former English teacher, Condie resides outside Salt Lake City with her family, including her four children. She has an MFA from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and is the founder and director of the nonprofit WriteOut Foundation. The Unwedding: A Novel (Grand Central Publishing) is her debut adult work of fiction.

BENJAMIN BREEN is the author of The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade, which won the 2021 William H. Welch Medal from the American Association for the History of Medicine. He is an associate professor of history at the University of California, Santa Cruz, specializing in the history of science, medicine, globalization, and the impacts of technological change. Breen was previously a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. He lives in Santa Cruz, California.

BEATRICE A. BRICKELL pursued a career as an international trade lawyer in Washington, D.C. She earned a juris doctorate from American University's Washington College of Law and an LLM in International Law from Georgetown University. With a lifelong passion for the law, she also loves to travel and swim. Brickell has also enjoyed restoring old properties and recounting tales of Miami and old Florida learned from her Kellum and Brickell families.

TRACI BRIMHALL is the author of Love Prodigal (Copper Canyon Press) and four other books: Come the Slumberless to the Land of Nod (Copper Canyon Press), Saudade (Copper Canyon Press), Our Lady of the Ruins: Poems (W.W. Norton and Company) – which won the Barnard Women Poets Prize – and Rookery (Southern Illinois University Press), winner of the Crab Orchard Series in Poetry First Book Award. Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Poetry Magazine, The New Republic, Orion, The New York Times Magazine, and Best American Poetry. She has received fellowships from the National Education Association, the National Park Service, and the Academy of American Poets. Brimhall is the current poet laureate of Kansas.

FRANK BRUNI has been a journalist for more than three decades, including more than 25 years at The New York Times, in roles as diverse as op-ed columnist, White House correspondent, Rome bureau chief, and chief restaurant critic. He is the author of four The New York Times bestsellers. In July 2021, he became a full professor at Duke University, teaching at the Sanford School of Public Policy. He currently writes his popular weekly newsletter for the Times and produces additional essays as one of the newspaper’s contributing opinion writers.

A native New Yorker, STEPHEN BRUNO grew up scribbling words in marble notebooks and playing sports on the streets of the Bronx. He’s a graduate of CUNY Hunter College’s MFA program and the author of the memoir Building Material: The Memoir of a Park Avenue Doorman (Harper). Bruno resides in New York City, where he can still be found engaged in poetry and movement in the form of salsa dancing, which he loves.

ESTELLE-SARAH BULLE is a French author of Guadeloupean and Belgian descent who was born in Créteil, France. Basses Terres (Liana Levi) is her third novel. Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Where Dogs Bark with Their Tails/Là où les chiens aboient par la queue (Farrar, Straus and Giroux), won several prestigious literary awards, including the Prix Stanislas Julien and the Prix Carbet de la Caraïbe et du Tout-Monde. Through her vibrant storytelling and poetic language, Bulle explores the complexities of Caribbean identity, cultural memory, and colonial legacies, drawing on her heritage to create rich narratives that span Guadeloupe and its diaspora. In addition to her adult fiction, she has authored children’s books such as Les Fantômes d'Issa (EDL), and her work continues to illuminate the intersections of race, history, and belonging​.

JOY BUOLAMWINI is the founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, a groundbreaking researcher, and a sought-after speaker. Her writing has been featured in publications such as Time, The New York Times, Harvard Business Review, and The Atlantic. As the "Poet of Code," she creates art to illuminate the impact of artificial intelligence on society and advises world leaders on preventing AI harm. She has received numerous awards, including a Rhodes Scholarship, the inaugural Morals & Machines Prize, and the Technological Innovation Award from the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Nonviolent Social Change. Her MIT research on facial recognition technologies is featured in the Emmy-nominated documentary Coded Bias. Born in Canada to Ghanaian immigrants, Buolamwini lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

MICHAEL J. BUSTAMANTE, PH.D., is an associate professor of history and the Emilio Bacardí Moreau Chair in Cuban and Cuban-American studies at the University of Miami. He is the author of Cuban Memory Wars: Retrospective Politics in Revolution and Exile (University of North Carolina Press), published in 2021. With Jennifer Lambe of Brown University, he is the co-editor of The Revolution from Within: Cuba, 1959 – 1980 (Duke University Press), published in 2019. At UM, Bustamante serves as the director of academic programs at the Cuban Heritage Collection, the largest archival repository dedicated to Cuban materials outside of the island and the largest collection of materials on the Cuban diaspora in the world. In that capacity, he oversees fellowship and grant competitions, conferences, and other academic initiatives designed to activate the collection for scholarship and public conversations in the field of Cuban studies. He simultaneously directs the undergraduate program in Cuban studies at the College of Arts and Sciences and its affiliated academic minor. Bustamante's scholarly writing has appeared in the Journal of American Ethnic History, Latino Studies, Cuban Studies, the Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, Anthurium: A Caribbean Studies Journal, and the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History. His writing on contemporary Cuban affairs has been featured in Foreign Affairs, NACLA Report on the Americas, Slate, the Financial Times, and The Washington Post, among other publications. He is co-editor of the journal Cuban Studies.

ANA MARIA CABALLERO is an award-winning literary artist whose work explores how biology delimits societal and cultural rites, ripping the veil off romanticized motherhood and questioning notions that package sacrifice as a virtue. She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, the International Beverly Prize, Colombia’s José Manuel Arango National Poetry Prize, the Steel Toe Books Poetry Award, a Future Art Writers Award, and a Sevens Foundation grant. In 2024, Caballero became the first living poet to sell a poem at Sotheby’s and sold the first digital poem via live auction in Spain. Her Pushcart Prize- and Best of the Net-nominated work has been published extensively and exhibited at fine art museums and leading international venues, such as the Wroclaw Contemporary Museum, Museo de Arte Miguel Urrutia, Bitforms Gallery, Office Impart, Poetry Society of America, Gazelli Art House, New World Center, and Times Square. The author of six books, Caballero also co-founded the digital poetry gallery theVERSEverse.

GERDA CADOSTIN, born in Haiti in 1958 and now residing in France, is an emerging voice in Caribbean literature. Her debut novel, Laisse folie courir, vividly portrays the lives of three generations of women in the fictional village of Guérot. Drawing on Haiti's rich cultural heritage, Cadostin weaves a narrative that blends humor, mysticism, and the raw realities of womanhood. With lyrical prose and deeply rooted connections to Creole folklore, Laisse folie courir captures the resilience of its characters while exploring the enduring complexities of tradition and identity. Cadostin’s writing offers a fresh, audacious perspective on Haitian life and culture.

ILIA CALDERÓN es coanfitriona del noticiero insignia de Univision Network, “Noticiero Univision”, y de “Aquí y Ahora”, la revista de noticias en horario estelar de Univision. Es una periodista pionera, reconocida como la primera Afro-Latina en ser presentadora de un noticiero nocturno para una importante cadena de televisión en los Estados Unidos. Nacida en Chocó, Colombia, hizo historia al convertirse en la primera presentadora Afro-Colombiana de un noticiero nacional en su país natal. Recientemente, co-moderó el debate de las primarias presidenciales republicanas en la Biblioteca Presidencial Ronald Reagan, demostrando su versatilidad e influencia en el periodismo y convirtiéndose en la primera Afro-Latina en hacerlo. Calderón ha recibido varios reconocimientos durante su carrera profesional, incluyendo dos Premios Emmy®, el Premio Paul White 2024 de RTDNA y su carrera está destacada en la exhibición “¡De última hora!: Latinas Report Breaking News” en el Museo Nacional de Historia Americana del Smithsonian. Calderón es conocida por su compromiso con la justicia social y la representación en los medios, cubriendo temas críticos que afectan a la comunidad Latinx.

ADA CALHOUN is the author of Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me (Grove Press), which was named one of the best books of 2022 by The Washington Post, NPR, and Oprah Daily. The New York Times also named it one of the year’s "100 Notable Books." Her previous books include the New York City historical chronicle St. Marks Is Dead: The Many Lives of America’s Hippest Street (W.W. Norton & Company), the essay collection Wedding Toasts I’ll Never Give (W.W. Norton & Company), and the NYT bestseller Why We Can't Sleep: Women's New Midlife Crisis (Grove Press). Calhoun’s next book, Crush: A Novel (Viking) will be published in early 2025.

ISABELLE CAMILLE is an accomplished educator with more than 34 years of experience at Miami-Dade County Public Schools and as an adjunct professor at Miami Dade College. With a Bachelor of Science in chemistry from the University of Florida and a Master of Education in science teacher education from Florida International University, her commitment to education and her impactful work have earned her recognition, including being an honored listee in Marquis' Who’s Who. Fluent in French and Haitian Creole, Camille is also passionate about community outreach, curriculum development, and educational technology. Her personal journey with her transgender child has transformed her into a passionate advocate for LGBTQ+ rights, actively participating in support groups and working closely with organizations like the YES Institute to promote awareness and empathy for transgender individuals and their families. Camille’s dedication to fostering inclusive and understanding environments both in her professional and personal life underscores her commitment to positively impacting the world.

BONNIE JO CAMPBELL is the author of The Waters: A Novel (W. W. Norton & Company), a Today Show "Read with Jenna” Book Club selection. Her other novels include Once Upon A River, a national bestseller that was adapted into an award-winning film, and Q Road. Campbell’s short story collections include American Salvage, which was a finalist for the National Book Award and National Book Critics Circle Award, and Women and Other Animals, an AWP Grace Paley Prize winner. She is a 2011 Guggenheim Fellow, and a recipient of the Eudora Welty Prize and Mark Twain Award. She lives in Kalamazoo, Michigan, with her husband and donkeys.

ALE CAMPOS is a multi-instrumentalist and music educator from Miami. With a deep-rooted love for punk and hardcore music, Campos has been an integral part of the music scene since her teenage years. Since 2012 she has been actively touring with her bands and has had the privilege of collaborating with artists such as Iggy Pop, Thurston Moore, and Naama Tsabar. She has performed at  venues and festivals across the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. She is a composer, guitarist, and vocalist with her current band, Las Nubes. Campos is also the rhythm guitarist in Iggy Pop’s band, all while devoting her time to teaching guitar to aspiring young musicians in Miami. Additionally, she shares her passion for music as a vinyl DJ.

NATALIE CAÑA is a writer who loves to incorporate her you’ll-never-believe-what-just-happened-to-me personal experiences, enthusiasm for telenovela tomfoolery, and love for her Latine culture into creating saucy stories with shenanigans and sabor.

FAUSTO CANEL pertenece a la generación de cineastas que fundó el Instituto Cubano del Cine (ICAIC). Fue crítico de cine del periódico Revolución y colaboró en el magazine literario Lunes de Revolución, que tanta influencia tuvo en Europa y América Latina. Este año presenta en la Feria Revólver, una novela en la que obsesionados con la identidad de un misterioso viajero, espías británicos y soviéticos se enfrentan a un grupo de agentes cubanos en un Swinging London lleno de intrigas políticas y música de los Beatles … Un asesinato en la embajada de Cuba complica aún más un conflicto cuyo desenlace afectará a toda una generación … El futuro de la isla en juego. Para más información visite faustocanel.com

JUAN MANUEL CAO nació en La Habana, Cuba. A los 20 años fue acusado de escribir literatura subversiva y cumplió por ello tres años de cárcel. Poco después se marchó a Panamá donde inició una carrera periodística que dura hasta hoy. Se estableció en los Estados Unidos donde ha trabajado en la televisión, la radio y la prensa plana. Ha ganado tres premios Emmy por sus reportajes investigativos y ha escrito para el teatro y el cine. Ha publicado la novela Te juro que soy culpable (Planeta 2004) y el libro de crónicas El impertinente (Planeta 2015). Llega este año con La gran locura (Ediciones Universal), donde incursiona en los géneros de la comedia y el absurdo. Los personajes de la novela viven en un mundo sin pies ni cabeza. Un mundo que los anula. Donde los excesos de la imaginación humana se combinan con las facultades de la ciencia y con el poder político. Es esta, por lo tanto, una novela sobre los disparates y los desafueros del poder. Actualmente Cao conduce el programa A Fondo de América TeVé, y el espacio del mismo nombre en América Radio.

JULIO CAPÓ JR. is a history professor at Florida International University, author of Welcome to Fairyland: Queer Miami Before 1940, and curator of several exhibitions, including Queer Miami: A History of LGBTQ Communities at HistoryMiami Museum. He has held fellowships at Yale University and the University of Sydney. A former journalist, he works as an editor for the Made by History section at Time. He serves on the advisory board of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Latino, as well as the National Portrait Gallery.

LIDIA ELENA CARABALLO, 1968 (Cuba). Cursó estudios de Historia en la Universidad de Oriente, Cuba. Licenciada en Humanidades y Lengua y Literatura Española por la Universidad Internacional de la Florida, USA; cofundadora del grupo artístico Proyecto Setra y de la revista literaria Nagari que actualmente se publica en Miami, Florida. En 2013 publicó el libro Ensō, una compilación de haiku y poemas cortos, y se prepara para publicar el libro de poesía El corazón y el silencio. Sus textos han sido publicados en varios medios literarios. Este año participa en la presentación del libro Agua sagrada de Rubí Arana en su versión bilingüe, con el cual se dará un homenaje póstumo a su vida y obra, con la participación de escritores cercanos a la poeta, que compartirán sus poemas y anécdotas más preciadas.

With a career that is rooted in Black music history, storied venues, spectacular pairings, and momentous events, JOI CARDWELL stands alone as a vocalist, songwriter, producer, gay icon, and maverick who has always walked a path all her own. Her professional career started at “Amateur Night at The Apollo,” where as a college freshman she won five times. From there she claimed her spot in the pop/R&B producer Kashif’s (Whitney Houston) girl band The Promise at a cattle call audition, and sang her way into an Arista recording contract after one song at the piano for music industry icon Clive Davis. After leaving Arista, another fateful audition with Sony recording artist Lil Louis led to the classic album Journey with the Lonely, which spawned the No. 1 records Club Lonely and Saved My Life, along with the flawless Do U Luv Me and Dancing in My Sleep, securing Cardwell’s place on the dance floor for the next 20-plus years. As a solo artist, she was the center of New York indie house label Eightball Records, where she created two albums, The World Is Full of Trouble and Joi Cardwell, each producing four singles, an additional two No. 1s, and six top tens.  Trouble, Jump for Joi, You Got to Pray, Run to You, Found Love, Love and Devotion, Soul to Bare, and Power showed the world that Cardwell could play with the big boys and make them shake it to her very own groove. With the demise of Eightball, she took control of her publishing and master catalogs and released the nu-soul gems Deliverance and The Plain Jane Project to let the world know that she had more than one trick up her sleeve. In the same vein, she hooked up with Towa Tei to create a “Luv Connection” and guest starred with the Brooklyn Funk Essentials on The Creator Has a Master Plan, performing at the world’s finest jazz festivals, including Montreux, North Sea, and Nice Jazz. Riding the worlds of dance and soul, Cardwell manifested more hits: What it Feels Like, Be Yourself, Only You, What’s Freedom, Change the World, and We Can Do Better, to name a few. As a brand, she has successfully aligned herself with powerhouse companies that include Reebok, Starbucks, Sony Pictures, Nestlé, AEI/DMX, NEC Computers, NY & Company, Target Stars on Ice, Audi, Levi’s, and many others. Her music has been featured at fashion week shows and in international commercials, film, and television, and has been recorded internationally by other artists such as Towa Tei and Toshi Kubota in Japan and by Czech idol Martika. Cardwell is the recipient of a 2013 IDMA Winner best house/garage track, multiple ASCAP Rhythm and Soul Awards, and two GLAMA best dance artist awards. She can also list platinum and gold records, 20-plus Billboard chart toppers, and a 2016 top 100 greatest dance artist of all time distinction from Billboard magazine. Cardwell recently completed a Juris Doctor degree and plans to practice law in the field of economic and social justice, including intellectual property rights management.

LEA CARPENTER is the author of two novels: Eleven Days: A Novel (Knopf) and Red, White, Blue: A Novel (Knopf). She is a lecturer in law at Columbia Law School and lives in New York.