MOMENTS THAT SHAPE A LIFE: NEW FICTION

ELLEN BOOK began her career as a public librarian in 1987 in the business and science department of the downtown main library in Miami. After four years assisting inventors and investors, she advanced into management, later leading the Coconut Grove, South Miami, Miami Lakes, and Country Walk libraries in Florida. She now serves as branch manager of the Pinecrest library in Pinecrest, Florida. Her accomplishments include distributing 27,000 dictionaries to schools across the county, receiving the League of Women Voters’ Community Activist Award, and being honored with a City of South Miami Day recognizing her decade of dedicated service. A master gardener with University of Florida IFAS Extension, she has educated thousands on home composting and upcycling plastic bags into mats for the homeless – both nationally recognized programs. A past president of the Rotary Club of South Miami and the Dade County Library Association, she remains passionate about inspiring others to pursue librarianship.

LARRY BAKER is the author of six novels. His first, The Flamingo Rising: A Novel, became a Hallmark movie in 2001. He began publishing short stories at the age of 15 and his first novel was published when he was 50. Baker currently lives in Iowa City, Iowa, but is not a graduate of the Writers’ Workshop. Tell It Slant: A Novel by Nobody (Ice Cube Press) is his final novel.

ROBERT OLEN BUTLER has published 16 novels, including The Alleys of Eden, The Star of Istanbul, The Empire of Night, and Perfume River, as well as six volumes of short fiction, including A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, which won the 1993 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. He has also published From Where You Dream, a volume of his lectures on the creative process. In 2013, he became the 17th recipient of the F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He also won the Richard and Hinda Rosenthal Foundation Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters and was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in fiction and has received two Pushcart Prizes. He has also received both a Guggenheim fellowship in fiction and a National Endowment for the Arts grant. His works have been translated into 21 languages. His stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Esquire, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, GQ, Zoetrope, The Paris Review, Granta, and other publications. He is a Krafft Distinguished Professor holding the Michael Shaara Chair in Creative Writing at Florida State University.