Esther Martinez, Lip Service co-founder

Collagen injections. Corrupt politicians' promises. Back-room strip club blowjobs. When it comes to lip service, Miamians have an array of temporarily thrilling options to choose.

But these widely available "services" all have one sad characteristic in common: They eventually leave you feeling... deflated.

Thank goodness for Andrea Askowitz and Esther Martinez, a pair of sexy storytellers who keep serving Miami audiences their own home-spun brand of Lip Service, in the form of substantial and guilt-free helpings of word candy.
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Courtesy of Kathleen Warnock

Writer, editor, and playwright, Kathleen Warnock.

​The highly anticipated anthology Best Lesbian Erotica 2012 was just released a few weeks ago. We're pretty sure you think you have lesbians all figured out. Then again, right now some of you may be thinking, 'What's erotica?" Heck, some of you may even be wondering what an anthology is.

Do not fret. As always, Cultist is here to edu-ma-cate you - not only about erotica, but as it turns out, lesbians as well. Unless you are a lesbian, there may be a few facts about your Sapphic sisters that would surprise you. We had a little chat with Kathleen Warnock, the editor of the annual Best Lesbian Erotica series, and came up with a list of interesting facts that you may not know about lesbians.
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​There's nothing worse than having a holiday dinner -- or a funeral, or a wedding -- to force you to spend an extended and unnecessary amount of time with your family. Unless you happen to be forced to do that by a hurricane, which, in turn, forces you to confront some ugly truths about your peeps. Such is the plight that befalls three siblings and their parents in Captiva, 2011 Carbonell Award winning playwright (Best New Work) Christopher Demos-Brown's latest work that opens Thursday at the Arsht Center.

We spoke to Demos-Brown about the process of writing, creating characters, and dealing with the inevitable creeping fear that every writer faces: the feeling that your work is turning out to be a piece of shit.
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As part of the University of Wynwood reading series, poet Roger Reeves is appearing at Lester's Bar this Friday. UW founder P. Scott Cunningham recently spotted Reeves at a writers' conference. He was impressed by the poet's intellect and charisma, noting "His work combines formal rigor and contemporary speech that reminds me of Robert Lowell, Gwendolyn Brooks (who people don't remember was as good a formalist as Frost, if not better), and Elizabeth Bishop. I think he has a very bright future."

He has a pretty bright present as well. He's been published in Poetry, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, Tin House, Gulf Coast, and Indian Review. And he's been awarded a Ruth Lilly Fellowship by the Poetry Foundation in 2008, two Bread Loaf Scholarships, an Alberta H. Walker Scholarship from the Provincetown Fine Arts Work Center, and two Cave Canem Fellowships. We spoke to Reeves about why he thinks of his poems as animals with four legs and a wicked hunger.More >>

Photo by Michael Lionstar

Karen Russell

​When we interviewed Karen Russell about her debut novel Swamplandia!, we characterized her fiction as swamp gothic - equal parts adventure and macabre. But when Hollywood types got a hold of this story set in South Florida, they saw comedy.

HBO has picked up Swamplandia, a half-hour comedy series based on Russell's book. It's difficult to imagine how such a story -- a young girl being abandoned by her father and left to search for a delusional sister in the swamp with only a possible pedophile as an escort -- could inspire steady laughs.
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​Can you haiku? Join local journalist and former Miami New Times food critic Jen Karetnick, in conjunction with Next@19th, as they host Rooftop Chaiku ("chai" is a Hebrew word meaning "life" or "living," for all you gentiles. It's also the name of a damn fine spice milk tea, but that's another story.). The event will take place this Saturday night at 9 p.m. on the rooftop of Temple Israel (137 NE 19th Street, Miami). It is free and open to the public, though donations are welcome.

Karetnick will kick things off by reading some culinary-themed poetry from her 2007 book Necessary Salt and her upcoming Landscaping for Wildlife, but writers, poets, and creative types are being invited to join by throwing a haiku or two the audience's way.

Here's one Karetnick created about BLT as an example:
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Camille Lamb

The storytellers, performers, and producers of the latest installment of Lip Service

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Milwaukee, WI Organizer Doctori Sadisco

​One Hundred Thousand Poets for Change is a worldwide poetry gathering -- basically the largest organized poetry event in history. Sound like a grandiose statement? It is.

This Saturday, there will be 650 events in 95 countries, including 13 events in South Florida alone. Expect a poetic dialogue promoting environmental, social, and political change. If you're expecting glitz and glamor, think twice.

Unfortunately, there will not be Knight Foundation meat parties, cruises in Ferrari's, celebrity readings where the speaker arrives four hours late, and misses the reading altogether, or recycled poems dropped from helicopters onto groups of teen hipsters. That's all for another local poetry festival.More >>

Diana Abu-Jaber

​On the second page of Birds of Paradise, Diana Abu-Jaber evokes local carpet salesman Don Bailey as that "thirty-foot naked man reclining, selling God-knows-what." The novel, which is steeped in the visual cues of Miami life, flips back and forth between a wayward daughter's street life on the pink sidewalks of Miami Beach and the tense domestic terrain of her parents' Coral Gables home. Abu-Jaber masters poetic nuances of modern life in South Florida -- a place where mothers know that I was up all night watching manatees in the canal is code for I was up all night with this guy doing MDMA.

As the family's relationships become increasingly fractured, the novel peaks with the arrival of Hurricane Katrina. And only in its aftermath does the family -- and the community at large -- pull together again. Hear from Abu-Jaber -- frequent NPR contributor and finalist of PEN/Hemingway and winner of American Book awards -- when she reads at Bookstore in the Grove tonight. Click on for Q&A with the author. More >>

​Perez Hilton: Celebrity ass-kisser. MS Paint pro. Children's book author. Yes, the former Miamian and Belen Jesuit grad thinks he can appeal to kids. The result? The Boy With Pink Hair. The plot goes something like this: a little boy is different because he has pink hair and gets bullied or something but doesn't care 'cause he's fabulous and knows it -- to be honest, we don't care.

Look Perez, stick to what you know -- drawing cum stains on celebutards. Oh wait, he doesn't do that anymore. That's because it has been Perez's mission for the last few years to soften his image. But we all know he will always be a mean girl. (We are all mean girls here at Cultist, so it takes one to know one.)

Still, that's doesn't seem to be stopping him. In fact, he'll be at the Eden Roc Renaissance Miami Beach tonight for a book signing from 7 to 10 p.m. The kicker? The children's book signing is sponsored by Martini Moscato d'Asti wine, which will be serving cocktails -- at a children's book signing. What? Juicy Juice wasn't available? But there could be far worse children's book authors than Perez. Let's take a gander:More >>