The follow-up to Everything Is Broken has finally arrived! Everything’s Broken, Too is now available in both print and eBook formats from MidTown Publishing.

From the editor, John Dufresne:

We had so much fun with our first anthology that we thought we’d do it again. Everything’s Broken, Too is our second publishing venture, and the stories inside were chosen from the submissions of past and present participants in our Friday Night Writers group.

 

These are stories about what we’re afraid of, what we’re ashamed of, what we can’t forget about, and what we don’t want to know about ourselves. They are as compelling as they are unsettling: a boy on the verge of manhood, growing up in rural Alabama in the fifties, falls in love with a girl and with stories; a free-spirited entrepreneurial couple go to work for Hawaiian drug lords and find out they may have stepped into a world a bit more violent than they had bargained for; a man living out his dream retirement in Miami Beach gets devastating news from his physician and determines to face his fate with grace and dignity; a young man comes home to Miami Beach to find his destitute and homeless father and discovers an old sweetheart mired in a life of addiction and prostitution; a trip to the dentist is the pretext for a woman’s examination of the marital betrayal that has left her bereft and untethered; a young financial analyst who finds himself out of work, out of love, and out of luck is haunted by the childhood abduction and murder of his brother. In other words: something for everyone.

Get your copy of Everything’s Broken, Too now from Amazon (print and eBook), Barnes & Noble (eBook), Google Play (eBook), Apple iTunes (eBook), and Kobo (eBook).

You still have time to register for John Dufresne’s writing workshop that will take place October 22-24, 2015. Hurry, only a couple of spaces are left!

The short fiction workshop will meet from 9 a.m. to noon to discuss the stories you’ve written. Dufresne will address concerns about writing and storytelling and lecture on narrative techniques and the fiction writing process. Writing exercises designed to give imaginations opportunities will complement the workshop. Dufresne will also meet individually in conference with each student. In the late afternoon, students will gather for social time and informal discussions of the writing business. Dufresne says, “You’ll come to the conference with an agenda—what it is you hope to learn—and we’ll do our best to see that your agenda is met.”

Space is limited to 12 writers with short story manuscripts (no more than 25 pages), however, a reduced rate is offered to those who do not yet have a completed story, but would like to attend and experience a workshop.

For more information and to register for the workshop, please visit The Seaside Institute.

John Dufresne’s Friday Night Writers will be starting up again this coming Friday, September 4th, FIU building 2, Room 110 at 7 PM. All submissions must follow set guidelines. Please contact us for additional details.

The remaining 2015 meeting dates are as follows:

September 18
October 16 and 30
November 13 and 20
December 4

View all of the scheduled events on the FNW meeting calendar.

This talk was given at TEDxFIU 2014, produced independently of the TED Conferences. Take a journey inside a writer’s mind and learn his approach to creating a story.

John Dufresne is the author of five novels (two of which were New York Times Notable Books of the Year) two short story collections, and two books on writing and creativity: The Lie That Tells a Truth: a Guide to Writing Fiction and Is Life Like This?: a Guide to Writing Your First Novel in Six Months. The New York Times Book Review wrote of his latest novel, No Regrets, Coyote (available from the MidTown Publishing bookstore), “Dufresne is an original talent. His humor is frightfully dark, but also quite dazzling – even by the exacting standards of South Florida crime fiction.” Dufresne was a 2012-13 Guggenheim Fellow and teaches in FIU’s Creative Writing MFA program.

Please join us at 8pm on Friday, December 5, 2014, at Books & Books in Coral Gables as we discuss the posthumous publication of Anthony’s The Emperor’s Club, celebrate his life and career, and share excerpts from the new book, which Carl Hiaasen has called “Pure hard-boiled, hard-bitten fun,” and Paul Levine has predicted “Will earn a lofty place on the shelf of modern Florida noir.”

More information about the event can be found at the Books & Books event page.

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We ran out of chairs for the audience at our premier book signing of Everything Is Broken. Over 50 guests converged on Books & Books in Coral Gables on Sunday, February 16 2014, to listen to the Michael Creeden, Ingrid López, Louis K. Lowy, David Beaty, and Tim Curtis read passages from their short stories. From a bookselling standpoint, sales were very strong: a total of 26 books were sold that afternoon. Right on! This was the launch of the short story anthology by the Friday Night Writers. The accompanying videos recap the event.

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STONY BROOK, NY, January 6, 2014 – Imagine the challenge publishers face, pouring over thousands of manuscripts to determine if a book will be a hit. Stony Brook Department of Computer Science Assistant Professor Yejin Choi thinks she has a tool to bring some science to that art, and she is co-author of a paper, Success with Style: Using Writing Style to Predict the Success of Novels, which was unveiled at the conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP) 2013.

“Predicting the success of literary works poses a massive dilemma for publishers and aspiring writers alike,” Choi said. “We examined the quantitative connection between writing style and successful literature. Based on novels across different genres, we investigated the predictive power of statistical stylometry in discriminating successful literary works, and identified the stylistic elements that are more prominent in successful writings.”

See more at: http://sb.cc.stonybrook.edu/news/general/01062014CHOI.php?=marquee2#sthash.Z6Yvei0E.dp

Hi Writers!

Here’s an excellent opportunity to escape from your keyboard and mingle with like minds. Be sure to pencil in Sunday, February 16, 2014 at 6 p.m. on your social calendar. Join your peers to celebrate the debut of “Everything Is Broken” at Books & Books in Coral Gables. Bring your camera, smart phone, or anything that snaps up an image of the event. Selfies with the authors are encouraged. 

“Everything Is Broken” is the first anthology of John Dufresene’s Friday Night Writers. The book features stories by David Beaty, Louis K. Lowy, Lisbeth Solomon, Ingrid López, Tim Curtis, and Michael Creeden.  The six are active contributors with John Dufresene’s Friday Night Writers, which meets regularly during the academic year at Florida International University.

You can view the event on the FNW calendar here.

Books & Books Coral Gables
265 Aragon Avenue
Coral Gables, FL  33134
(305) 442-4408

Writing Groups Provide Support to South Florida Writers

“We have probably killed 200 people between us,” Bob Williamson said suggestively, a dark gleam in his eye. 

All fictional deaths, of course. Williamson is referring to the Florida chapter of Mystery Writers of America, where he serves as president. With over 3,000 members, 300 in Florida alone, MWA is one of the largest writing organizations in the country. The group sponsors writing symposiums, provides writing scholarships, and sponsors child literacy programs, as well as awarding Edgars® to deserving crime and mystery authors.

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