Adam Fitzgerald Talks About The Miami Book Fair International

[Editor's Note: The Miami Book Fair International opens this weekend. This year the Fair is partnering with the Poetry Foundation to present a generous gathering of contemporary American poets. Adam Fitzgerald, one of this year's organizers, sat down with Sara Wintz and talked about what he's excited about at this year's Fair, the new poetry programming, and why contemporary poetry is more relevant and risky than ever.]

Sara Wintz: What's exciting about the Miami Book Fair this year?

Adam Fitzgerald: The Miami International Book Fair, arguably the largest literary festival in the country, is over 30 years old and began by inviting down greats like James Baldwin, Ken Kesey and Susan Sontag to read. It has since blossomed thanks to the tireless effort of a close-knit, dedicated team into one of the most diverse and varied gatherings of its kind for literature in the world. So you see the legacy itself is quite immense, and then of course there’s Miami in November, when the Fair takes place every year. What Northerner, anyone really, doesn’t want to get some sun just then? Polar Vortex be damned.

Meanwhile, this year: Fairgoers will get to hear from Cornel West, Richard Blanco, Ira Glass, Joyce Carol Oates, Richard Dawkins, Anne Rice, John Waters, Norman Lear, Ann Patchett, Francine Prose. There will be a panel in tribute to VIDA (it turns 5 this year!) organized by Erin Belieu featuring Carl Phillips, Lynn Melnick and Poetry’s own Don Share. There will be a panel in tribute to James Baldwin, upon his 90th anniversary entitled The Fire This Time, organized by Claudia Rankine and Elizabeth Alexander. But in addition to these awesome names and events, there are over four hundred other authors present, to say nothing of the many editors, journalists, and booksellers who also will be present. Awesome, no?

As a poet, I’m used to hearing all about AWP, its panels and book fair. People shell out hundreds of dollars in airfare, hotel, entry fees, steep costs for small press tables and the like. Don’t get me wrong. AWP is an opportunity for writers to see one another. But just to put things in contrast: Miami Book Fair costs under 10 dollars to attend, and the overall conversation, the dialogue about contemporary literature is just so much larger in scope—small presses, large houses, novelists, essayists, poets but also tons of debut authors. Its Street Fair takes over several blocks downtown on Miami Dade College’s campus, the cultures, the languages represented—so refreshing.

SW: How have you been involved in making that happen?

AF: This year I worked with the incoming director Tom Healy and countless others, to primarily focus on how we could extend the poetry programming. We’re celebrating the publication of Mark Strand’s Collected Poems with readings by Mark as well as two of his dearest friends, Poet Laureate Charles Wright and Jorie Graham. But that’s really only the beginning of it. Over 40 poets will present, including Claudia Rankine, Fanny Howe, Jennifer Moxley, CAConrad, Ed Hirsch, Carolyn Forché, Duncan Wu, Kimiko Hahn, Denise Duhamel, Roger Reeves, Bob Holman, Mark Bibbins, Barbara Hamby. But that’s not all. We also present poets who have just published awesome first full-length collections: Andrew Durbin, Saeed Jones, Danniel Schoonebeek. We’re also partnering with the Poetry Foundation to bring down the Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship winners: Solmaz Sharif, Danez Smith, Wendy Xu, Ocean Vuong, Hannah Gamble. Additionally, Robert Polito will introduce this year’s Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winner Nathaniel Mackey, one of our greatest living poets.

The diversity of talent, ethnicity and gender, aesthetic and creed, even geography, could not be more thrilling. I like to think this year’s poets, only some of whom I’ve mentioned here, will make Miami Book Fair the most convincing portrait of why American poetry is at its fulcrum right now, its apogee, zenith, utmost. Editors keep publishing shitty articles about the decline of our art, but anyone familiar with even a few of the above names sees how grossly untrue that is. You know that runaway children’s book title, Go the F*ck to Sleep? Well, I really want to publish an op-ed with the New York Times or NPR called Wake the F*ck Up. Poetry, in fact, is both more relevant and risky than it’s ever been in this country.

SW: What specific events are you looking forward to?

AF: There are some really new fascinating programs that Tom Healy has really made happen, including partnerships with the Poetry Foundation as well as the Ford, Knight and Rockefeller Foundations. It’s allowing us new opportunities—like the Baldwin tribute panel, but also another panel I’m psyched for. We’re bringing down over a dozen writers who primarily work with literary criticism in the digital environment. To my knowledge, the “Critics in the Cloud: The State of Literary Criticism in the Age of the Internet” panel is the first of its kind for a festival, and it couldn’t be a more timely or important conversation to be having.

Most of us rely more on social media to alert ourselves to what conversations are happening about new books—sharp, smart, controversial conversations with audiences larger than any single subscription service. Accordingly, the panel’s line-up is wide-sweeping and killer: Maddie Crum, Huffington Post; Jessa Crispin, Bookslut; Stephen Elliott, The Rumpus; Ron Hogan, Beatrice; William Johnson, Lambda Literary; Laura Miller, Salon; Bob Minzesheimer, book reviewer and reporter; Adam Plunkett, New Republic; Jenn Risko, Shelf-Awareness; Michael Slosek, Poetry Foundation’s Harriet; and Sarah Weinman, Publisher’s Lunch. All moderated by Doree Shafrir, executive editor of BuzzFeed. This is the future of literary discourse, and we’re all plugged in, so hopefully the gathering will celebrate these voices as well as let us slow down a bit and think things through. (PBS, NPR and C-SPAN will be covering this and many other events, so even if you can’t be in Miami, you can follow these exchanges in real time and afterwards.)

SW: What do you hope for in the coming years for the Fair?

AF: My voice is only a small voice in helping to envision how the Fair develops. Still, it’s really an honor to collaborate and support the necessary conversations we can foreground every November. The Fair already offers a tremendous amount of bilingual programming, but I think future programming will reflect a greater interest and support toward literature in translation. I think Knausgaard’s My Struggle turned a corner for many publishers or editors who might otherwise be concerned about the market for translation in the US. As a community of readers, we’re becoming more global, more fluid with the boundaries of where and when and who, and I say thank god. At the end of the day, festivals have their place to reflect upon current trends, publications, and so much else. But I think the real ambition is not to just report but actually shape the discourse around contemporary literature. The Fair’s audience is a hundred thousand goers, but there’s a chance to engage readers year round through weekend workshops, citywide book groups, and yet other forums. It’d also be amazing to increase the Street Fair’s representation of small presses, underground literary magazines and chapbooks, the whole book as objet d’art. The physicality of the book, reading on the page, has a long history left.