Skip to content
  • Search All Online Programs
  • How to Use This Website
  • Bookshop
  • Authors A-Z
  • Browse
    • Children’s Alley Online
      • Healthy Bodies, Happy Kids!
      • Maker Faire Miami: Invent and Experiment!
      • One World, Many Stories
      • Picnic de libros
      • TapTap Krik? Krak!
      • The Paintbox
      • The Rhythm Factory
      • Tinker, Make, Innovate!
      • Mr. Wembly Wordsmith: Storytorium
    • Children’s + Teens
      • Picture Books
      • Middle Grade Books
      • Young Adult Books
    • Comics
    • Fiction
    • Here In Florida
    • IberoAmerican
    • Live from MDC
    • Live Streams
    • Nonfiction
    • On Demand
    • Panel
    • Poetry
    • Q&A
    • ReadCaribbean
    • The Big Read
    • Year Round
  • Buy Tickets
Menu
  • Search All Online Programs
  • How to Use This Website
  • Bookshop
  • Authors A-Z
  • Browse
    • Children’s Alley Online
      • Healthy Bodies, Happy Kids!
      • Maker Faire Miami: Invent and Experiment!
      • One World, Many Stories
      • Picnic de libros
      • TapTap Krik? Krak!
      • The Paintbox
      • The Rhythm Factory
      • Tinker, Make, Innovate!
      • Mr. Wembly Wordsmith: Storytorium
    • Children’s + Teens
      • Picture Books
      • Middle Grade Books
      • Young Adult Books
    • Comics
    • Fiction
    • Here In Florida
    • IberoAmerican
    • Live from MDC
    • Live Streams
    • Nonfiction
    • On Demand
    • Panel
    • Poetry
    • Q&A
    • ReadCaribbean
    • The Big Read
    • Year Round
  • Buy Tickets
LOGIN | REGISTER

In Conversation: Contemplating a Paradise Lost

In Conversation: Contemplating a Paradise Lost

Author:
{authors}
Add to my watchlist

Through a series of short memoirs, Laura Valeri’s After Life as a Human visits Dog Island, a remote, amenity-deprived, hurricane-prone islet where pelicans rule, residents are resourceful, and human ambition is suspect. With uncanny observation and lyrical reflection, these essays explore the persistence, fragility, and connectedness of life on the island and off. Valeri masterfully links local history, environmental research, and spiritual meditations to reflect on the island’s wild beauty, while coming to terms with the heartbreaking destruction of its fragile ecology. Sandra Beasley, author of four poetry collections, including the forthcoming Made to Explode, joins her in her musings.

Sponsored by

DONATE NOW

Sandra Beasley

Sandra Beasley is the author of Made to Explode (forthcoming 2021); Count the Waves; I Was the Jukebox, winner of the Barnard Women Poets Prize; Theories of Falling, winner of the New Issues Poetry Prize; and Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl: Tales from an Allergic Life, a disability memoir. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Virginia Quarterly Review, and several anthologies. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Laura Valeri

Buy Book
Laura Valeri is a writer, journal editor, teacher, writing consultant, translator, and educator. She is the author of four books, which include two short story collections, a book of essays, and a story cycle (a novel in stories). Her short stories, essays, and translations have appeared online and in print in journals such as Conjunctions, South85 Journal, and Fiction SoutheEast; while her critical essays and reviews have been published in Writing & Pedagogy, The Journal of College Composition & Communications, and Creative Writing Pedagogy. She is a professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University. The seven essays in Valeri’s After Life as a Human (Rain Chain Press) braid local history, environmental research, and spiritual meditations to reflect on the island’s wild beauty and the heartbreaking destruction of its fragile ecology. It’s the story of Dog Island, located off of Florida’s Forgotten Coast, and a wild twin of St. George Island, a popular resort destination. Dog Island hosts less than 100 residents and a large nature preserve. Accessible only by boat or airplane, the island’s pristine state attracts those who seek reprieve from the noise of modern life and those drawn to an ancient paradise untouched by commercial enterprises. Yet, with sea-level rising, industrial spills poisoning the wildlife, and climate change increasing the frequency of hurricanes, Dog Island is swiftly becoming a paradise lost, another casualty of humanity’s reluctance to acknowledge its interconnectedness to all living things.

Miami Book Fair

Marketplace

ENTER HERE

MBF Downtown

Become a Friend

Tickets

  • Bookshop
  • Sponsors
  • FAQ
  • Contact Us
  • Creating Cultural Miami = Priceless

Support the Miami Book Fair and be part of Miami’s commitment to expanding and strengthening Miami’s literary culture.

DONATE NOW

Miami Dade College is an equal access/equal opportunity institution which does not discriminate on the basis of sex, race, color, marital status, age, religion, national origin, disability, veteran’s status, ethnicity, pregnancy, sexual orientation or genetic information. To obtain more information about the College’s equal access and equal opportunity policies, procedures and practices, please contact the College’s Civil Rights Compliance Officer: Cindy Lau Evans, Director, Equal Opportunity Programs/ ADA Coordinator/ Title IX Coordinator, at (305) 237-2577(Voice) or 711 (Relay Service). 11011 SW 104 St., Room 1102-01; Miami, FL 33176. CRCTitleIXADA@mdc.edu.

300 N.E. Second Avenue, Miami, Florida 33132 • 305-237-3258
Copyright © 2021 All rights reserved

Unlock this event by entering your event access password:

Purchase the book by this author to receive your event password.

GET EVENT PASSWORD