I heard Godwin speak in the main auditorium on Saturday, where he was paired with George Packer, the journalist who used to write for the New Yorker and now writes for the Atlantic. Despite the highly credentialed panel, led by a superb moderator – the novelist John Burnham Schwartz – the place was less than half full. There was the same disappointing turnout in the morning for Geoff Dyer, the brilliant writer on a myriad of subjects who most recently wrote a memoir. Do South Floridians have a bias against nonfiction? (Though Packer’s new book is a novel.) Or do they not like male writers?
The crowds came at 3 pm to hear the novelists Susan Choi, Kiran Desai, and Gish Jen. Then it was hard to find an empty seat, and where there was one, it was usually between two women. Though for the Q&A, only men made their way to the microphone.
