First Draft

June 10, 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. Simone Zapata, our Poetry Fellow for the Emerging Writer Fellowships, is a writer, editor, and educator from San José, California. Her recent work appears in Dilettante Army,…

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?…

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. Instructor: Tyriek WhiteTheme: Living Archives In developing We Are A Haunting, the process of writing involved searching my own family archive: obituaries, a documented family tree, photo albums, all to reflect the structure, idiosyncrasies of an actual family.…

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. Instructor: Raquel V. Reyes Theme: Humor as tone and tool. Keeping it light when the subject is heavy. Raquel V. Reyes writes Latina protagonists. Mango, Mambo, and Murder, the first in the Caribbean Kitchen Mystery series, won a LEFTY for Best Humorous Mystery.…

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. Instructor: Alejandro Nodarse Theme: “Who do they think they are?”: Building Characters through Revelation The novelist and playwright Cristina García describes characterization as information that “reveals what is essential to know about a character.” Characterization is an ongoing process that begins in the opening sentence of a story and ends only when the reader turns away from the final page.…

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. Instructor: Azure D. Osborne-Lee Theme: Five Senses Azure D. Osborne-Lee (he/they) is a multi-award-winning Black queer & trans theatre maker from south of the Mason-Dixon Line. He teaches at New York University and The New School. Azure holds an MA in Advanced Theatre Practice (2011) from Royal Central School of Speech &…

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. Instructor: Morgan Talty Morgan Talty, a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation, is the author of the national bestselling and critically acclaimed story collection Night of the Living Rez from Tin House Books, which won the New England Book Award,…

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. Instructor: Brontez Purnell Theme: Real Fiction / Fake Memoir Brontez Purnell is the author of several books, including 100 Boyfriends, which won the 2022 Lambda Literary Award for Gay Fiction and was named an Editor’s Choice by The New York Times Book Review.…

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. Instructor: Fabienne Josaphat Theme: Writing to the Homeland Fabienne Josaphat is the 2023 PEN Bellwether Prize for Socially Engaged Fiction, and the author of the forthcoming novel Kingdom of No Tomorrow (Algonquin). Her first novel, Dancing in the Baron’s Shadow, was published by Unnamed Press.…

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. Presented in partnership with Books & Books and the National Book Foundation Click here to RSVP Instructor: Ada Zhang Ada Zhang is a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 honoree and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Her short stories have appeared in A Public Space,…

Community, craft, and rapid-fire creativity meet at our First Draft workshop series, monthly virtual salons where writers get social, share their work, and leave with great stories. Instructor: Talia Lakshmi Kolluri Theme: The Magic of the Natural World Talia Lakshmi Kolluri is a mixed South Asian American writer from Northern California. Her debut collection of short stories, WHAT WE FED TO THE MANTICORE (Tin House 2022), is a finalist for the 2023 Carol Shields Prize for Fiction and was longlisted for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction,…

Community, craft, and rapid-fire creativity meet at our First Draft workshop series, monthly virtual salons where writers get social, share their work, and leave with great stories. Instructor: Ella Jacobson Theme: Writing the Childhood Home Ella Jacobson is a cultural critic and writer originally from Alaska, and is the recipient of the 2023 Miami Book Fair Emerging Fellowship in Nonfiction. Much of her work explores how people metabolize their exposures to violence and death. Her writing has appeared in SLATE, THE DRIFT,…

Community, craft, and rapid-fire creativity meet at our First Draft workshop series, monthly virtual salons where writers get social, share their work, and leave with great stories. Instructor: Soleil Garneau Theme: Ghosts Soleil Garneau was born and raised in New Jersey, on unceded Lenape land. She is a writer, educator & restaurant worker. She is a Miami Book Fair Emerging Writer Fellow, a Community of Writers alum, and holds an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Riverside. You can find her work in The Spectacle,…

Community, craft, and rapid-fire creativity meet at our First Draft workshop series, monthly virtual salons where writers get social, share their work, and leave with great stories. Up next: award-winning author Jonathan Escoffery, who’ll lead participants through “Object Lessons: Building Narrative From Props.” See you there! Jonathan Escoffery is the recipient of the 2020 Plimpton Prize for Fiction, a 2020 National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship, and the 2020 ASME Award for Fiction. His fiction has appeared in The Paris Review, …

A guided writing prompt with a twist. Because writing is thirsty work. Have a drink. Write a story. Have another drink. Write a better story. Miami Book Fair presents First Draft, a series of informal writing events that turn happy hours into great stories. You’re inspired. But you’re also thirsty. Bring your own drink and log in for a First Draft event and a guided writing prompt. Share your writing. You never know what you might knock out as you knock one back!…