la dous ki vyen

Books, books, books….

“Lord! when you sell a man a book you don’t sell just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue – you sell him a whole new life.  There’s all heaven and earth in a book, a real book.”  ~Christopher Morley

For those who love books, November was an exciting month.  From the 14th to the 21st, the Miami International Book Fair hosted over 350 indoor author events at the Miami Dade College Wolfson Campus and then there were the colorful kiosks of the exhilarating street fair that snaked down Miami streets offering books, books,  and more books!  During these days, the campus was paradise for book lovers, for readers anxious to secure a seat to hear their favorite authors, and also for all those who just wanted to wander and browse through the book stalls while enjoying the wonderful weather.  The largest and finest literary gathering in America, Miami International Book Fair is the premier event of the Florida Center for the Literary Arts at Miami Dade College.  Each year, the Fair raises the bar of excellence by offering a fine roster of prize-winning authors and this year again was an exceptional year: 2010’s authors included such literary stars as Salman Rushdie, Carlos Fuentes, Patti Smith, Walter Mosley,  Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Eugene Robinson, Kenyan Ngugi Wa Thiongo (Dreams in a Time of War), Paul Farmer,  and Haitian writers Edwidge Danticat (recent recipient of the MacArthurFoundation “ Genius Award,”) who presented : “Create Dangerously: The Immigrant Artist at Work” and Michèle Voltaire Marcelin who read from her collection of poems  “Lost and Found” introduced by a newly written text about the alarming cholera epidemic in Haïti.

Writing about Haiti: Edwidge Danticat, Paul Farmer, Michèle Voltaire Marcelin

“This is how writers must think, this is how we must sit down with pen in hand. We were here; we are human beings; this is how we lived. Let it be known, the earth passed before us. Our details are important. Otherwise, if they are not, we can drop a bomb and it doesn’t matter.” ~ Natalie Goldberg,

“This nice and subtle happiness of reading, this joy not chilled by age, this polite and unpunished vice, this selfish, serene life-long intoxication.”  ~Logan Pearsall Smith

To see more photos, visit Michele’s Facebook album

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 5th, 2010 at 8:18 pm. It is filed under reviews and tagged with "lost and found", Edwidge Danticat, miami international book fair, paul farmer, salman rushdie, walter mosley. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.