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🗣️What are your questions about the recount?
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🗣️What are your questions about the recount?

The first year of the Miami Book Fair.
(📸: Miami Book Fair)

HOW THE MIAMI BOOK FAIR GOT ITS START

Celebrating its 35th anniversary this week, the Miami Book Fair is the largest literary event in the country. A few highlights:

In 1984, after a year of planning, Mitchell Kaplan, owner of Books & Books, and Eduardo J. Padrón, the president of Miami Dade College, worked alongside a few local independent book sellers and librarians to help start a book fair – then called Books By The Bay – in Miami’s downtown.

The programming of the book fair covers a wide range of fiction and non-fiction, both national and international, from politics to entertainment to poetry. The fair has a major focus on multilingual programming, hosting authors who write in English, Spanish, French, and Creole. Children’s books  and graphic novels are part of the mix, too.

“We work hard to bring people who provide some depth to the national conversation. These past couple of years have been very political in terms of the books being published nationally and locally. Who is writing about what is going on in the country in terms of politics? We bring them to the city so we can have a dialogue.” – Lissette Mendez, Miami Book Fair Programs Director

Our picks:

Today: Film screening: Becoming Astrid

Movie description: Astrid Lindgren is eager to break free from the confines of her religious upbringing, so she accepts an internship at a local newspaper. She becomes pregnant and later secretly gives birth to a son whom she leaves with a foster mother. The foster mother falls ill and Astrid uses her imagination and flair for storytelling to reconnect with her son.

Info: $10, 7 p.m.

Today on The Porch: BLCK Family, a Miami-based creative collective specializing in mobile performance-art shows, takes over The Porch programming for the evening. On stage is Shenzi, a multi-genre quintet that combines jazz roots, hip-hop grooves, and soul with a Latin flair.

Info: Free, 7 p.m.

Tomorrow: Special Event With Pete Souza

Chief Official White House Photographer Pete Souza discusses his new book Shade: A Tale of Two Presidents. In it he tells the contrasting tale of the Obama and Trump administrations through a series of visual juxtapositions. His images deliver new meaning when framed by the tweets and headlines that defined the first 500 days of the Trump White House.

Info: $40 (includes copy of the book), 6 p.m.

Saturday: The Baddest New Superheroes on the Block

Gabby Rivera (America Chavez series) and Kwanza Osajyefo (Black AF: America’s Sweetheart) chat about a vision for comic book stories featuring superheroes that represent a new breed of characters.

Info: Free, 11 a.m.

Full details for these and additional events can be found on MiamiBookFair.com. Share your favorite moments using #MiamiBookFair2018.

PRODUCED BY THE NEW TROPIC CREATIVE STUDIO WITH MIAMI BOOK FAIR

YOU CAN (RE)COUNT ON US

It’s been a week since Election Day, and things are still not settled in the Sunshine State. Three statewide races—for governor, U.S. Senate, and commissioner of agriculture—are in the middle of machine recounts because the races were too close to call. That means the difference between the number of votes for each candidate were so slim that it automatically triggered the recounts.

Sounds simple enough, right? But there’s actually a lot more to know about this process, like logic tests, county canvassing boards and more. So we want to know what questions you have about the Florida recount.

Submit your questions here.

And in case you need a quick refresher, head here for a breakdown of where things stand and how we got here.

WHAT'S NEW IN THE 305

Desperate times, illegal measures. The aftermath of Hurricane Michael left elections departments in the Panhandle scrambling to figure out how they’d recover from the storm and still provide a way for residents to vote. It turns out one county in the area might have gone a step too far by allowing people to vote via email, which is not allowed by state law. The Bay County supervisor of elections defended the move and said that his office verified the signatures on the emailed ballots. (Miami Herald)

And speaking of ballot problems… It looks like hundreds of thousands of absentee ballots that were sent out to voters weren’t returned to the elections departments in Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties. And a big reason for that was delays in sending out ballots to out-of-state voters, many who said they received their absentee ballot without enough time to mail them back before Election Day. In fact, data show that thousands of ballots weren’t mailed out until after Halloween. (Palm Beach Post)

Miami Beach or Bomont? Miami Beach has been trying for years to find new ways to keep the party on South Beach from becoming too unruly, and their latest effort is probably the ultimate finger-wagging move. The city’s police chief sent a letter to the leaders of major colleges and universities in Florida and Georgia and the national offices of every fraternity and sorority in the country warning that if spring breakers don’t follow the city’s laws they’ll be arrested. (Miami Herald)

Bite at the museum. The Burger Museum at the Magic City Casino has so many mouth-watering items on display that the owner decided to partner with a few local chefs to actually start serving dinner. The first dinner is happening next month and will include fast-food inspired courses–including a tribute to KFC’s roast beef sandwiches that were actually a thing in the late 1960s. (Miami.com)

The neverending season. In case you needed a solid reminder that hurricane season doesn’t end until Nov. 30, one started to emerge yesterday as a tropical depression formed out in the Atlantic. So far it looks like Florida won’t be impacted, but maybe don’t drink up all that bottled water just yet. (Miami Herald)

THAT’S ALL FOR TODAY.

We’ll catch you on Hump Day. ✌️

– The New Tropic

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