Travel Blog

 On the memoir panel Saturday morning, Mary Karr declared that there is no blurred line between fact and fiction. The blurred line, she said, is between memory and imagination. Her co-panelist, Sandra Cisneros, thanked all the book fair volunteers, who, she said, were unfailingly helpful and cheerful (something that, as an occasional speaker, I knew to be fact).

Over in the Gehryish Building 8, the New Yorker cartoonist Matthew Diffee wondered if other animals think that leopards look slutty. A short while later, on the memoir of place panel, Suki Kim expressed exasperation at being labeled a memoirist when her book about teaching in North Korea is a work of investigative journalism.

Sunday morning, Laura Lee Huttenbach talked about her book of conversations with a former Mau Mau general and then was criticized by a Mau Mau supporter in the audience who clearly hadn't read her book (or listened very closely to her talk).

In a session on Florida history, Lyn Millner read captivatingly from her book about the Koreshans.

Walking back into Building 1, I saw P.J. O'Rourke sheltering from the rain. I introduced myself and told him that, of the handful of famous writers I sent my last book to, he was the only one who was kind enough to respond.

Lauren Groff, Sloane Crosley, and Nell Zink failed, surprisingly, to fill the auditorium, which was a shame, as their free-flowing discussion produced one of the liveliest panels of the weekend, one that touched on marriage, family, and sex.

They were followed by Padgett Powell, Adam Johnson, and Kelly Link. Powell read first, noting that if he'd known the lectern was going to be transparent he would not have worn shorts. He was also a little out of sorts, he said, because Johnson had just won “a big award” and "it's hard to read in a room that all the air has been sucked out of by a better man." Johnson, when he took the lectern, also commented on its transparency (he was wearing baggy jeans), and graciously acknowledged Powell's influence on his work.

Monday morning I woke up early and turned on C-SPAN2, which was still showing panels from the Miami Book Fair. Campbell McGrath appeared, noting that poetry was no longer being written mostly by "boring white men in blazers." (His loose-fitting shirt saved him from inclusion in this dire group.)

Kay Ryan interrupted the reading of one of her poems to explain that some of the words in it were italicized, something that those in the audience had no way of knowing. To remedy this, she said, she would tilt her head to the side whenever she read something that was in italics. It was a brilliant solution, but, as she admitted, very distracting. "You have no idea what I just read, do you?" she asked after she'd finished. So she read the poem a second time.