Miami Center to Celebrate Jamaican Authors

Union Institute & University alumni, students, faculty and staff: Mr. Franz Hall, Consulate General of Jamaica requests the pleasure of your company at a special book reading and signing in honor of the Miami Book Fair International’s Jamaican authors: Marlon James, Geoffrey Philp, Kellie Magnus, and Tanya Batson Savage. RSVP to info@jamaicacgmiami.org.

6-8:00 PM
November 24, 2014

Florida Academic Center
16853 N.E. 2nd Ave, Suite 102
North Miami Beach, FL 33162

Marlon James
Marlon James was born in Kingston, Jamaica. He is the author of The Book of Night Women, which earned the 2010 Dayton Literary Peace Prize, The Minnesota Book Award, and was a finalist for the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award in fiction, and an NAACP Image Award. His first novel, John Crow’s Devil, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Commonwealth Writers Prize, and was a New York Times Editor’s Choice. His short fiction and nonfiction have appeared widely including in Esquire, Granta, and the Caribbean Review of Books. In his third novel, A Brief History of Seven Killings: A Novel, James explores multiple genres: the political thriller, the oral biography, and the classic whodunit. This work confronts the untold history of Jamaica in the late 1970s; the assassination attempt on Bob Marley and the country’s battles of the cold war.

Geoffrey Philp
Geoffrey Philp is a writer and poet who was born in rural Jamaica. He has written two children’s books Marcus and the Amazons, and Grandpa Sydney’s Anancy Stories; two collections of short stories, Uncle Obadiah and the Alien and Who’s Your Daddy?; a novel, Benjamin, my son, and five poetry collections, Exodus and Other Poems, Florida Bound, Hurricane Center, Xango Music and Dub Wise. A graduate of the University of Miami, where he earned a Master of Arts in English, Philp teaches creative writing at Miami Dade College. Philp earned a James Michener Fellowship at the University of Miami.

Kellie Magnus
Kellie Magnus is a publishing advocate, a children’s book author, and editorial director of the children’s media company Jackmandora. Her Little Lion series is one of the most popular children’s series in Jamaica and she has contributed several books to the Literacy 123 series used in Jamaican primary schools. Jackmandora published Jamaica’s first board books for babies, used by the Government of Jamaica in its BookStart Jamaica pilot program in 2011, in which new mothers were given books to encourage reading to their children from birth. Most recently, Kellie collaborated with celebrated Jamaican poet Kwame Dawes to translate the popular American children’s parody, Go the F*** to Sleep into Jamaican patois, Go De R*** to Sleep.

Tanya Batson-Savage
Publisher and literary magazine editor, Tanya Batson Savage is the Publisher and Editor in Chief of independent publishing house Blue Moon Publishing and its imprint Blouse and Skirt Books. She is also the head cook and bottle washer of the Caribbean arts and culture online magazine susumba.com and the digital literary magazine Susumba’s Book Bag. Her career has spanned the gamut of cultural policy, teaching, cultural criticism, journalism, advertising, publicity, and creative writing. She has published extensively and her work has been included in BIM: Arts for the 21st Century, Skywritings, Riddim magazine, Caribbean Quarterly, Jamaica Journal, Small Axe, Moods of Jamaica, Exploring Caribbean Cinema and Caribbean Beat. She was also senior scriptwriter for the radio drama serial Outta Road. Tanya is the author of Pumpkin Belly and Other Stories.