As you can see, there are plenty of people come and partake of im and we have wine and beer and music on the weekends but we just think that goes beautifully with books. How many book events you do d on a weekly basis . On a years basis we do 600 events. Often they could be kids events, adult events, other kind of things but we are a very active store. When did you open the store . I opened books books about 30 years ago. Why . I didnt want to give up the dream of being part of a literary culture and so one quick way of doing that was to get into the book business, bookstores and i always loved bookstores. I hung out in bookstores. It seemed like natural to me. Why coral gables . Im originally from miami beach, when i moved back from where i was going to school, coral gables was a community that i didnt know very well and i explored and right for independent book shop at the time. Seems to be a booming town, sounded by miami . What you think of miami is really 26 little cities, miami beach, miami, miami itself. Coral gables is one of the cities. It was built in the mediterranean style, in the 20s, published on his life by the university. Its a gorgeous little city that has become a cultural gem between the community as well. Who is your audience . Everybody, actually because of the uniqueness from the store. We get people coming from all over but the local audience is audience just a couple of blocks away is residential area. We are in a business district. But we like to think that we draw from everywhere actually. Youre involved in miami book fair. I was one of the founders. I was a young kid and had no idea of what the future would bring and eduardo and myself and a couple of book sellers said lets put on a book fair and we said, great. Mi it was in the early 08s. Miami paradise loss with a big question mark. What eduardo wanted to do is rights and we put together, a i whole Community Came together. Diverse community and still is and we decided to cater to the diversity of miami. Whats it like today . Today, you know, its become a very vibrant interesting city with so many different communities that are soco different from one another, yet, tied together by its diversity. And what is now happening which im love to go see is that the Cultural Community is becoming really very, much more sophisticated. We have incredible writers that live here. You will meet a couple in a minute. Movie moonlight was a miami original more or less. And so theres a lot happening here that wasnt happening when i was a kid growing up in miami beach back in the 60s and early 70s. What about the festival . Its growing remarkably, we started two days almost 34 years ago and now its a full week and we have now probably close to 600 authors that come over the week period of the book fair and it really has become something that miami is proud of because its a big tent. So its been something that i take a lot of pride and so does miamidade college. Why has miami has developed such a writers village . We can spend probably three to four programs in just that. As you know miami started probably throughout they would have told you the mystery writers that came, people likee charles who wrote miami blues, and then [inaudible] all those guys. That all happened because miami was so strange. W all of the strange murderers that took place here. The cocaine cowboys, you couldnt make up something that didnt appear in the news a few days or a few months later, but since that early, early thrust of miami, you then begin to find miami as a community becoming more rich allowing poets to live here, john, wonderful fiction writer living here. You have incredible diverse Latin American Community people writing in spanish, portugues. The diversity makes it interesting. A couple of the authors we are going to talk about me menendez. Welcome to miami, for the next two hours we are going to have a discussion about books and writing, what youre reading, what some of our guests are reading as well. Mitchell kaplan, founder and p owner of books books bookstore, they have this location in coral gables. They have a location at home airport as well. Where else . In south beach. We are in the shop and we are also in the performing art center, the Adrienne Art Center for performing arts. We have a store there as well. And then we have opened up a new store thats going to pop up books books and bikes. Where is that location . Wynwood. Our version of brooklyn. Good, well, we are going to be having the discussion and interactive discussion as always on cspan live programs, your chance to participate, we will put the phone numbers a little bit later. After we meet our other guests. Why dont we meet inside and join our other guests as well. We will let tom go in firstt because he has the camera. So Mitchell Kaplan can independent bookstore thrive and survive today . I think most definitely. Independent bookstores are coming into their own once again. I think last year there was Something Like 60 to 70 new book shops that have opened and theres something to be said for real spaces as opposed to what people do and find on the internet. There are certainly internet shopping that goes on but theres also something about a sense of community thats created with the real space like a book shop. Is this a Community Space . Go ahead and sit down. Thank you. It most definitely is. I think that we are really about faces. When you see the folks that have joined us r they familiarar faces in some ways . Na yes, they. Regular customers . We also want to introduce you to les stanford, author and ana menendez. You wrote a book called in cuba i was a German Shepherd. How you come up with a title like that and what does that mean . That mea [laughter] its a punch line to a joke that i heard when i was in a reporter. I used to cover Little Havana my first time at the harold and it was a joke that tony lopez, really wonderful sculptor told me. I didnt know how to do it. It stayed with me and when i left and began to write fiction, i said im going to write a whole story, you know, revolving around this joke. What is the master of fine arts and how do you get into your program at fiu . A master of fine arts is one of those degrees that i would hesitate to tell parents to send their daughters and sons to come to because the parents want them to learn how to sell bonds, do things that they can assure themselves will make their children a lot of money. You dont become a writer too become rich and famous, what we do is offer the opportunity for those people who cant do anything else to take that talent. Thank you. Take that talent and bring it to the max, to shape it into a way that we will find that audience that the person is looking for and its like all the arts, many, many are called and very few are chosen but the reason we are there, i think, is to give those applicants and students that are admitted professional tools so when they go out into the cold cruel world they really know whats required. Thats not a guaranty of succese. As we know, the arts are competitive. Our is a program thats not theoretical at all. Lets talk about how you can take that talent thats already there and i often liken it to a bunch of young men who have shown up, drafted by the nfl and show up at summer Training Camp and the coach says youretalent tremendously talented, lets talk about what it takes to operate at the professional level. Day one, all those fresh faces looking at you, what do you tell them . That youve got a lot of talent or you wouldnt be here. Now lets talk about how to shape that talent in a way that makes a connection. You know, everybody who comes in is very good at expression, i say babies are too. Nobody wants to hear what they have to say. Youre very good at expressing yourself, what we are going to talk about is making the connection with the audience, how does that happen, what doest it take. Ana me nend easy menendez when you sit down and write a book, whats the most difficult thing for you . Let me just say you wouldnt know it but useful usage but he was my professor at fiu many, many years ago. [laughter] hes not to blame for anything. It was the only class i took and it was undergraduate and encompassed everything. Im very grateful for him for o that and i have a book that i still carry which is a book that les combruised and, i think, still uses. Anyway, whats the hard itself thing when i sit down to write, well, right now is sitting down to write. I have a small child and time has gotten away from me, unfortunately. Were her showing this book, what is it about this book that works for you . Well, they are important throughout my life. Early moon which my uncle Joni Martinez which is a poet gave me as a child, i was 6 or 7 when he gave me the first one. I was 9 and it was a very beautiful book. So many of us are afraid of poetry and made it, you know, part of my language and theny there was this book that last introduced to me almost 30 years ago, i suppose it is now. [laughter] im dating all of us here, and another book was one that i picked up here at books and books when i was a columnist in miami harold and having a rough ride of it, i used to hang out here a lot specially among the poetry books for some reason. I picked up i think i have it. You will see it annotated heavily. These are trancations translations. Hes a comfort and, you know, why do you worry the infinite question and things that are comforting to read and thats one of the reasons i read it. Dn the obvious question that i have for you knowing your love of poetry but youre not a poet, how do you incorporate poetry into your writing . Im not sure it has although some people will say that my writing is lyrical but i think its just the love of the wordrd and sentence and a sense of the rhythm of the sentence and also what poetry strides for which is a sort of capturing of the inevitable in a for few words and i think its such a wonderful calling for the writer. You have written nonfiction and fiction books, but youre not a poet either, why do you teach poetry and why do you bring poetry in a class . The fact is that when i was in ffa program myself, we were forced even if we thought ourselves at fiction writers to take a class in the writing of poetry and i remember walking across the campus with henry taylor thinking this is up, after this class im out of here because my idea of poetry was by the shores of i had no idea what modern poetry was. An i went in there and i discovered a whole new world and the fact is that for the first three to four years after i graduated, the only things that i could publish were poems. I was for many years a practicing poet and enjoyed it and came to understand, i think, that poets are after the same central moment that fiction writers are at the end of the story of a novel. We writers want to have the reader put down the piece regardless of how long it is and say, yes, thats exactly right, thats what i was looking for. We want that moment and what i envied poets is that popular song writers, they can get that in a page, they can get that in such a short period of time and im working for 300 pages to get that hopefully at the end of a book. But we are all in it together and the other thing i learned is that the word are so important to me that the language of every sentence even if its nonfiction or fiction is just as important to me as was a line of poetry. Ce rent nonfiction last train to paradise. Who was Henry Flagler and whats his role in florida . I was going to call the book the man who invented florida. Thats who he is. [laughter] there were a couple of thousand people in tampa and if you drew a line from jacksonville up at the top of the state west, southwest to tampa about the middle of the state, that was as far as you could go, there was no palm beach, there was no boca raton, there was no miami. There was a key west. The most important naval installation you could only get there by vote. For a long time even after flagler came, it remained that way. But he did an amazing thing after extending his railroad down the eastern sea board of florida creating palm beach, creating miami. Fort dallas and then someone came in with the notion of extending the railroad of 350 miles of open water to key west and at the time he was 72 years old and had all the monet and he said, im going to do it, he prove that had the impossible could be done and doing so he stitched together the to the continent the last that little island, the last part of the main really closed the american frontier in 1912. So hes responsible for that traffic jam on 95 . [laughter] and no matter how many lanes they build to key west there will never be enough because people are fascinating to go to the end of the american road as he was. Mitchell kaplan, whats on your bedside, what are you reading today . Well, interesting ive been reading a book that many people know, there are two books that i have been reading. One is a book called being immortal and a book that you havent read, you ought to read. Its really kind of amazing. Im dealing with some sick innocence my own family and this has been very helpful in terms of understanding how one deals with an elderly parent and the kinds of things to look out for and the kind of conversations to have and that sort of thing. And then bill is always so remarkable in selections and essays about different books and he wrote a book called books for living and its a series of books that have inspired him over the years and so ive been reading this to get a little bit of the challenging times. Ana menendez, same question. Well, i just finished i rarely recommend books just because i feel its so personal and i dont want to impose my taste on people, but its a really beautiful book and i love everything about it and i its, chorus of voices about the end of the soviet union, it covers the gulac and she talks to ordinary people about their struggles with the end of the soviet union and i love it so io much because, well, the voices she collects are astonishing, what the stories they tell her are astonishing and the facte that they are ordinary people is something that we aspire to as fiction writers. This is what we aspire to is to illuminate the lives of ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances and how they rise to those occasions and this the election of, you know, maybe hundreds of these voices, i really loved this book, im reading right now, im notw finished wit. In fact, im only at number 9 small book. Its more like a long essay on tyranny, 20 lessons from the 20th century by Timothy Snyder, just came out. You were talking about the things you can get at bookstore that is you cant get on the internet, number 9 which is where i ended today is be kind to our language. Avoid pronouncing the phrases everybody else does, think of your own way of speaking and then hon and on, make an effort to separate yourself from the internet, read books. [laughter] i thought that i will end it there and i just finished reading, its kind of a obscure for most American Writer who is a writer and i finished reading a book about what books give you and its a corky book. Its not anything that would be published here today why not . Theres not real plot, a short book, a man who collects waste paper and when he see it is books that he wants, he takes them home. So theres no real plot pullingt you through. H. Pu its just this love of books and its a beautiful little book and i just finished reading that. Once again the authors name bohomio hrabel. Whats on your reading list . You know, let me preface my answer here with a couple of things. I want to second the idea of browsing in the bookstore, theres no such thing while the internet is wonderful and gets books out there and allows people to reach things that they might not have oars on and on, theres no such thing of pile of books on the table on theile ofb internet. You see the covers and pick them up and maybe you can learn on the internet but i have neverwe have. The second thing i want to say about what youre reading, reading my students manuscripts. Thousands of pages. They multiply like a mud slide in california in a rainy season. I also read many of the books of the people that i have come to know in this business and sort of like following on up on what ana said, i come to the point where i just cant bring in myself public to say you should read this one because what if some of my other friend is listening, they, thinking, why didnt you boost my book. M you have to recommend thingsr we havent even read. Im sneaking up on my answer. [laughter] my long friend who many knowy i wouldnt dream of missing a james w. Hall novel and i hope some of you feel the same, but a couple of books thattive that ive been reading this. I do not know these people. One a novel thats going to come out here in a couple of weeks called unreliable by a guy name lee irvy and he wrote a couple of almost unknown historical mysteries in the early part of the century and this book is real tour about a fellow who on the first page says, you cant trust a thing i say but i may have just killed my my exwife and im not so sure, perhaps my lover too. Thats how the novel begins. For me it was a dare that i couldnt pass up. He carries along, you do finally find out who had done it by thed end by that time you are laughing so hard you dont really care. I really enjoyed that book. A very different kind of book, nonfiction, a piece of nonfiction which, i think, is absolutely remarkable. I cant imagine anyone not reading this and not being swept away by it, its called rise by Cara Brookings and its the story of a woman whose family she was abused, her family her children abused and she walks out and gets it in her mind this the way that she will save this family and put it back together is to build a house from land up and she manges to do it and the record of it is absolutely astonishing. I cant recommend it highly enough. Ca well, before we go any further, i want to get our Television Audience involved, we are going to put the phone numbers up on the screen, we are talking about books, we are talking about reading, we are talking about what youre reading, so if you dial the number in please let us know what youre reading right now or what kind of books, you read we have three people very involved in the world of literature and books and here is your chance to ask them some questions as well. 202 is the area code 7488200 for those in east and central time zones. 2027488201 if you live in mountain and pacific time zones, you can contact us from socialco media as well at book tv twitter handle and make comment on Facebook Page, it should be right there at the top. Facebook. Com booktv and finally you can send an email to book tv at cspan. Org. Also, we have an audience here at books books, one of the 600 events happening at books book