Literary Arts
Roben Farzad: Miami-Raised Broadcaster, Journalist, and Author
Introduction to Roben Farzad. 1:12 min. Camera: Lee Skye. Video Editor: John Persaud. Music: Mario Carvajal. Photo & Design: Raymond Elman. Roben Farzad hosts the weekly program Full Disclosure on NPR One and is a special correspondent on PBS NewsHour. He was previously a senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek, where he covered Wall Street, international finance, and Latin America. Farzad is a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard Business School. The videos below are organized by topic and run between...
read moreThe Angel Fenstermacher
By Neil Plakcy The night was alive with Jews. Everywhere Harris drove, it seemed that there were clusters of Jewish men on the street corners, walking home from Friday night services. It had been a cloudy, overcast day, unusual for Miami, and so it was a dark, velvety evening, full of the shine of street lamps and headlights, and the somber, dark-suited Jews. These were not the Jews of his boyhood on Long Island in the forties and fifties, those prosperous burghers and matrons who supported their synagogues and...
read moreTom Hudson, VP of News at WLRN
Introduction to Tom Hudson. 1:45 min. Camera: Angelika Rinnhofer. Editor: John Perez Music: Carmen Cicero. Photo & Design: Raymond Elman. In a journalism career covering news from high global finance to neighborhood infrastructure, Tom Hudson is the Vice President of News and Special Correspondent for WLRN. He hosts and produces the Sunshine Economy and anchors the Florida Roundup in addition to leading the organization’s news engagement strategy. Hudson was most recently the co-anchor and managing...
read morePoet Marie Howe: Always Worth Waiting For
Introduction to Marie Howe. 1:06 min. Photo & Design: Raymond Elman. Marie Howe (b.1950) is an American poet born in Rochester, New York. Howe is the author of four volumes of poetry: Magdalene: Poems (W.W. Norton, 2017); The Kingdom of Ordinary Time (W.W. Norton, 2009); What the Living Do (1997); and The Good Thief (1988). She is also the co-editor of a book of essays, In the Company of My Solitude: American Writing from the AIDS Pandemic (1994). Her poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Poetry,...
read moreMitchell Kaplan: A Man for All Seasons
Introduction to Mitchell Kaplan. 1:46 min. Edit: John Perez. Music: Carmen Cicero. Photo & design: Raymond Elman. Everybody who reads books in the Miami area knows that Mitchell Kaplan is the highly successful founder of the independent bookstore group, Books & Books, and co-founder of the Miami Book Fair, the largest book fair in the United States. A while back, Inspicio published a written interview with Kaplan, focused on Books & Books and the Miami Book Fair, both of which are over 30 years old. What...
read moreDaniel Okrent’s 2004 New York Times Column Even More Relevant Today
Editor’s Note: In October 2003, Daniel Okrent was named the first public editor for the New York Times (NYT) following the Jayson Blair scandal. Okrent served in that position until May 2005. In June 2004, he wrote the piece below about the overuse and misuse of ANONYMOUS SOURCES. Given the current howling about anonymous sources, the constant declarations about “fake news,” and calling the press the “enemy of the people” during the Trump era, I thought it would be worthwhile to reconsider Okrent’s 2004 column and a follow-up comment he...
read moreIOUs from Baghdad
The day Sergeant Cartwright’s Humvee rolled over an improvised explosive device (IED) and detonated on notorious Route Irish, we returned to the outpost to learn that Stinky, our goat, was inside bleeding, and screaming. The outpost was an abandoned school in the center of Bagdad. A large, concrete structure with echoing halls, two guard towers and a barbed wire perimeter. We lived in what was once the gym, our cots lined up like dominos; ammo, rifles, body armor and pads crowding the slim walkways between beds. I was in the...
read moreA Conversation with Author Debra Dean
Introduction to Debra Dean. 0:46 sec. Photo & Design: Raymond Elman. Music: Soul and Mind by E’s Jammy Jams Debra Dean is the bestselling author of four critically acclaimed books that have been published in twenty-one languages. Her debut, The Madonnas of Leningrad, was a New York Times Editors’ Choice novel, a #1 Booksense Pick, a Booklist Top Ten Novel, and an American Library Association Notable Book of the Year. It was long listed for the IMPAC International Dublin Literary Award. Confessions of a Falling...
read moreA Video Conversation with
Poet Campbell McGrath
Introduction to Campbell McGrath. 1:39 min. Video montage: Jade Cheek. Campbell McGrath grew up in Washington, D.C. where he attended Sidwell Friends School. He received his B.A. from the University of Chicago in 1984 and his MFA from Columbia University’s creative writing program in 1988. He currently lives in Miami Beach, Florida, and teaches creative writing at Florida International University. McGrath has been recognized by some of the most prestigious American poetry awards, including the Kingsley Tufts...
read moreKilling Griffin
By Anne Bernays
Excerpt from Killing Griffin, chapter one. “The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.” — Ernest Hemingway Union Square is to Somerville what Harvard Square is to Cambridge, that is, its very heart. There all similarities end. But that’s not quite accurate: there’s no store that sells underwear in either place. For an idea of the international character of Somerville, all you have to do is look at the range of places where you can sample the international cuisine — such as it is...
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