​In almost every sense -- except the most extreme -- Tao Lin's for sale. Of course, there's his published output, including the poetry books You Are a Little Bit Happier Than I Am ($14) and Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy ($14.95), the short story collection Bed ($14.95), and a novel, Eeeee Eee Eeee ($14.95). Plus, now you can purchase the 26-year-old author's brand-new wordy blurb, Shoplifting From American Apparel ($13), a 103-page pseudo-autobiographical novella about sex and stealing among twenty-something hipster-nerds.  More >>

​Take a look at the biographical blurb and accompanying author photo on the back cover of David Hajdu's latest book, Heroes and Villains, and you'll discover that not only is Hadju a professor, but he looks like one. Smiling wryly behind frameless spectacles, the 54-year-old prof (and music critic for the New Republic) folds his arms across the front of his grey, long-sleeve, button-down sportshirt while his short, neat coif blows in the wind.  More >>

Ben Greenman

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Simon Bruty for HarperCollins

​Former Miami Herald scribe and current Sports Illustrated senior writer S.L. Price makes his living where sports and culture intersect. His 2000 book Pitching Around Fidel was an exploration of the crumbling Cuban sports machine, and the importance of play to a people deprived of basic freedoms. His newest non-fiction tome, Heart of the Game, gains the reader access to a culture that might just be as closed to outsiders and as arbitrarily ruled as Fidel's fiefdom: minor-league baseball.

In a July 2007 contest between two bush league ball-clubs, a first base coach named Mike Coolbaugh was killed almost instantly when a batted ball cometed into his neck. The ball had been hit by a player named Tino Sanchez. Both Coolbaugh and Sanchez were minor league "lifers", with a combined 28 years of pro ball between them. The tragic accident was national news for a moment, but with a merciful lack of video, the sports media quickly moved on.

Price starts with that fateful foul ball on a Sunday night in Little Rock, Arkansas, and unspools the tape of both men's lives--one which began in Binghampton, New York, the other in Puerto Rico--to impart on us an understanding of what life is like in the minor leagues. And it's bitter, mean, and unfair. Time and again, deserving and talented men are robbed of the chance to fulfill their dream because of circumstance, luck, or prejudice, and the real-life Moonlight Graham doesn't shrug off his thwarted big-league opportunity. "Fans look at baseball as this sort of 'Field of Dreams' environment of magic and romanticism," says Price. "Baseball players really don't. Everybody's got an 'I got screwed' story. I wanted to write an adult book about baseball, that told the truth about this very tough existence."

Coolbaugh's 'I got screwed' story has him being passed in the Toronto Blue Jay organization's third base hierarchy in favor of less-talented bonus-baby Chris Weinke, who would later quit the sport to become, at age 28, the oldest Heisman Trophy winner in history for Florida State University. Coolbaugh accumulated only 83 major league at-bats, although scouts insisted he had the talent to be at least a benchwarmer in the Bigs, before retiring from playing and being killed at age 35. Says Price: "I identify with Mike. I think most of us are more like Mike than we are like Alex Rodriguez."

Price will speak at 3 pm on Sunday, November 15, in a sports panel that also includes authors of new books on a female wrestler and baseball owner George Steinbrenner.

Photo by Jan Cobb

John Hodgman

​Minor television personality and big-time genius John Hodgeman is an expert on things that don't matter: Presidents who have hooks for hands. The perfect name for a Hobo. Monsters hunters.

He'll be in town for the Miami Book Fair International (November 8-15)and is one of those authors who could fly under the radar. (But shouldn't.) His new book, More Information Than You Require, reads like a gift sent from the God of attention deficit disorders. It's a trivia book full of fake facts, footnotes, and lists.  Think McSweeny's deadpan humor. "It's grab-bag nature wasn't a choice; more of a reflection of my adult brain," Hodgman explains, "And my hatred of long paragraphs or even complete sentences."

Did we mention that it's hilarious? Or that Hodgman is somehow able to make the subject, "Speaking of Parasites" funny? Perhaps best known as "That guy in the Mac commercials," Hodgeman began as a freelance writer in New York City. He then became a literary agent and humor editor for New York Times Magazine. Eventually, he says, he was able "to fool someone into thinking a collection of my insane obsessions might be worth publishing."
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The Miami International Film Festival concluded its 26th year last night, with a few scattered screenings at four different theaters, which is a pretty decent metaphor for the festival as a whole. After Art Basel and the Miami Book Fair, MIFF should be the third biggest cultural event in the city's calendar, but it's hard at this point to rank it anywhere near those other two. AB-Miami is the best art fair west of the Alps, while the Book Fair ranks only behind L.A.'s. Where does MIFF rank nationally, much less internationally, among film festivals? Somewhere between Fort Lauderdale and Rotterdam?

Most screenings were respectably full, but if you've ever been to Sundance and stood in a four-hundred person line in driving snow to see a short film made by a 19-year-old Sri Lankan, you realize how far MIFF has to go. (The only film that created "around the corner" lines was Jens Hoffmann's 9 to 5: Days in Porn, which had the unfair of advantage of cum-swapping.)

Part of MIFF's mixed performance is due to its transition in 2003 into the purview of Miami-Dade College, an potentially awkward marriage, and having its third director in three years doesn't help either. The festival currently seems trapped between being a Latin American Cultural Celebration (the cinematic Calle Ocho) and becoming a fledgling international player in the film industry. You can't accept every single Cuban-related feel-good story on nitrate and expect to compete with Tribeca.

Ironic as it may sound, MIFF needs to move past the "Gateway to the America's" PR schtick to become relevant to the America's. And I actually think Tiziana Finzi is the person to do it. She showed real promise in the degree of daring in her programming, and while I disagree with the choice of Abel Ferrara as worthy of a lifetime achievement award, at least she went out on a limb. (And Ferrara came packaged with Willem Dafoe, a legit celeb who attended, literally, every major event.) The question is: how far will Miami-Dade College, basically another city bureaucracy, let her go?
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The Miami Book Fair may be, uh, in the books, but it's also on the YouTubes. CSPAN, everyone's favorite must-watch cable channel, aired some sessions from the fair, and CSPAN Junkie collected them for your viewing pleasure.

• Scott McClellan: What Happened: Inside the Bush White House
• The Fight Over Presidential Power
• Dave Barry & Frank McCourt: Future of Education in America
• International Panel: Writers and Artists Against the Surveillance State
• Naomi Klein and Jeremy Scahill 2008 Miami Book Fair International

You can also view Riptide coverage of the book fair, including exclusive interviews and event reviews here.

--Kyle Munzenrieder

On its 25th anniversary, the Miami Book Fair International is just that -- drawing authors from around the world as varied and well respected as Salman Rushdie and Frank McCourt.

Saturday morning's marquee session, however, felt more like a hometown celebration, bringing together three of the most successful products of Florida International University's creative writing program.

Dennis Lehane -- author of Mystic River and Gone Baby Gone -- was the biggest star of the bunch, but FIU professors James W. Hall and John Dufresne are hardly slouches. Hall just published his fifteenth thriller -- Hell's Bay -- and Dufresne is promoting the roundly acclaimed Requiem, Mass.

Read on through the jump for more about their session and an interview with Sam Sarkar, author of the graphic novel -- and soon to be John Woo film -- "Caliber: First Canon of Justice."

-- Tim Elfrink

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Nikki Giovanni was once known as the princess of black poetry, but nowadays she shares the queendom with the likes of Maya Angelou. Bold, forthright and sharp, Giovanni has paved the way for new generations of young black poets, she celebrated hip hop and recognized its power before many of her peers did. Nikki Giovanni fought and won her battle with breast cancer and came out with an unabashedly blond hairdo for her struggles, and when her students and peers at Virginia Tech needed an unwavering voice in the face of unspeakable grief, she rose to the occasion.

The morning after a most auspicious election, New Times was lucky enough to speak with the acclaimed poet about politics, hair, and her latest book Hip Hop Speaks to Children: A Celebration of Poetry with a Beat, which features the lyrics of Kanye West, Mos Def, Queen Latifah, and The Sugar Hill Gang all presented with the kind of art we'd be proud to hang on our walls.

Click below to listen to a conversation with Nikki Giovanni. Visit www.miamibookfair.com for a complete schedule of authors appearing at this weekend's street fair.

-- Patrice Yursik

Mitchell Kaplan is one of Miami’s most beloved figures. As the owner of Books & Books, he already had established a headquarters for a then burgeoning literary scene. When he co-founded the Miami International Book Fair 25 years ago, Kaplan helped to further cement the city as a mecca for everyone who is anyone in the writing world.

This year, the Miami International Book Fair will offer a first foray into public book readings for many new authors, and quite a few frequent visitors will return, including Martha Stewart, Nikki Giovanni, Salman Rushdie, and -- appearing as a cowbell player in the literati band the Rock Bottom Remainders , not as an author -- Simpsons creator Matt Groening, who, according to Kaplan made his Book Fair debut a quarter century or so ago at the very first fair. Mitchell Kaplan shared some of his fondest Book Fair memories with me at the Café at Books & Books -- click the video above to hear the man himself wax nostalgic about the likes of James Baldwin and Gore Vidal.

The Miami International Book Fair began on Sunday but it goes through November 16. Click here for a complete schedule of events and authors.

-- Patrice Yursik