By Jordan Melnick | February 4th, 2013 | No Comments
Gautier will read from her award-winning short-story collection At-Risk and lead a craft workshop at Miami Dade College on February 11.
This post is sponsored by the Center for Literature and Theater at Miami Dade College
Growing up in Brooklyn during the late ’80s and early ’90s, Amina Gautier witnessed poverty and the crack epidemic first hand. “As most people know,” she says, “that was a really rough time to be a New Yorker.” Gautier survived the experience and ultimately channeled it into her short-story collection, At-Risk, which won the Flannery O’Connor Short Fiction Award from the University Press of Georgia in 2010.
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By Jordan Melnick | January 23rd, 2013 | No Comments
Don’t get too close.
In the beginning of Beware of Mr. Baker, Ginger Baker smacks Jay Bulger in the face with his walking cane, sending blood streaming down the filmmaker’s nose. It’s a fittingly aggressive start to a film that chronicles a life spent hitting things: hitting joints, pummeling his veins with heroin, hitting the dusty road on an improbable musical excursion through the Sahara, even whacking polo balls from the backside of a galloping horse — and, of course, banging out drum beats that transformed rock and roll.
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By Jordan Melnick | January 21st, 2013 | No Comments
Dark stories over black coffee, anyone?
In support of Transportation, a collection of short stories released on the first day of 2013, author Nancy Rommelmann is visiting Panther Coffee on Tuesday for a talk, reading, and presumably a cup of coffee. Raised in Brooklyn and based in Portland, Rommelmann is a journalist, novelist, and short-story author whose latest work “dives into some strange pockets of the human soul and swims a line right on the blackest edge of fear, desire and despair,” according to the Oregonian. Here’s more from the paper’s review:
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By Jordan Melnick | January 9th, 2013 | No Comments
Richard Blanco, a son of Cuban exiles who grew up in Miami, will recite an original poem at Barack Obama’s second presidential inauguration, on January 21, according to the New York Times.
From the moment Barack Obama burst onto the political scene, the poet Richard Blanco, a son of Cuban exiles, says he felt “a spiritual connection” with the man who would become the nation’s 44th president.
Like Mr. Obama, who chronicled his multicultural upbringing in a best-selling autobiography, “Dreams From My Father,” Mr. Blanco has been on a quest for personal identity through the written word. He said his affinity for Mr. Obama springs from his own feeling of straddling different worlds; he is Latino and gay (and worked as a civil engineer while pursuing poetry). His poems are laden with longing for the sights and smells of the land his parents left behind.
Now Mr. Obama is about to pluck Mr. Blanco out of the relatively obscure and quiet world of poetry and put him on display before the entire world.
To learn more about Blanco, who honed his craft at FIU and writes about “negotiating the world” as a “mainstream gay” man who came out of a very conservative culture, read the NYT’s profile. On this recording, Blanco reads “América”, a poem from his first collection, City of a Hundred Fires.
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By Jordan Melnick | December 16th, 2012 | 14 Comments
Just one of many unforgettable Borscht 8 images.
On Saturday, the Borscht Film Festival presented its eighth quasi-annual short film program to a crowd of hundreds at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts. While Borscht will continue to host events through this coming Friday, the Arsht Center screening was the festival’s main event, the culmination of months of work on mostly Miami-centric films, many of which Borscht commissioned and produced itself.
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By Jordan Melnick | December 12th, 2012 | 2 Comments
With 59 chapters around the world, the Awesome Foundation is now in Miami to fund “flashes of micro-brilliance.” — photo via stickermule.com
Got an awesome idea that needs a bit of money to become reality? Lucky for you, the Awesome Foundation just opened a local chapter and is currently accepting applications for “micro-genius” grants of $1,000. To learn more about the foundation and exactly what kind of awesomeness it intends to fund in Miami, I traded emails with Natalia Martinez, AF’s Miami dean.
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By Jordan Melnick | December 11th, 2012 | No Comments
Fresh off of receiving a $500,000 vote of confidence from the Knight Foundation and landing two spots in the Sundance Film Festival’s 2013 Short Film Program, the Borscht Film Festival is getting ready to present its eighth edition of Miami-inspired independent cinema. (See ticket giveaway details at bottom of post.)
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By Jordan Melnick | December 11th, 2012 | 2 Comments
With sweet prizes and sweeter glory on the line, the Beached Miami community stepped up on Instagram and shared 1,500+ #beachedbasel photos from its collective Art Basel experience, posting everything from celebrity sightings (Will Ferrell, Beyoncé, Kanye, Iggy) and fabulously farcical fashionistas to flame-throwing graffiti artists and polka-dotted poodles.
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By Beached Miami | December 7th, 2012 | 1 Comment
With three full days of Art Basel Miami Beach left, there are already 500+ photos in the #beachedbasel feed. For those who don’t know, you can win a $499 Dutch bike courtesy of Grolsch and other sweet prizes just for sharing photos from your Art Basel experience via Instagram with the hashtag #beachedbasel. Visit beachedmiami.com/baselcontest for full details on the contest. First, check out this selection, featuring two celeb spottings, Thurston Moore rocking the Gusman, and this first photo of Metric frontwoman Emily Haines strutting at Scope. O, let’s not forget the Sex Machine.
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By Beached Miami | December 6th, 2012 | No Comments
Yes, it’s only Thursday, but Art Basel Miami Beach — the fair itself and the circus that comes with it — is well underway, as you can see in the 300+ photos that have already come through the #beachedbasel Instagram feed. For those who don’t know, you can win a $499 Dutch bike courtesy of Grolsch and other sweet prizes just for sharing photos from your Art Basel experience via Instagram with the hashtag #beachedbasel. Visit beachedmiami.com/baselcontest for full details on the contest, which runs through Sunday. But first, check out these shots for inspiration.
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