Boat Girl, Melanie Neal's Memoir, Sets Sail

Boat Girl: A Memoir of Youth, Love, and Fiberglass details the coming-of-age-experiences of Melanie Neale, a 2006 FIU MFA Creative Writing program graduate. The memoir began, in part, as her MFA thesis, based on her experiences when her family lived on a boat sailing along the U.S. east coast and the Bahamas in the 1980s and 1990s.

As those who were her classmates know, Neale lived aboard her own 28' sailboat while she was in the MFA program. Boat Girl is published by Orlando-based Beating Windward Press, which specializes in literary fiction and nonfiction.

 At Neale's website, you can learn more about the book as well as the many literary journals and magazines where her work has been published.  She'll be appearing at Miami Book Fair International in November.

Dennis Lehane's 10th Novel Published

FIU MFA program alumnus Dennis Lehane's tenth novel and eleventh book, Live By Night, has just been published.  A follow-up to Lehane's first historical novel The Given Day, Live By Night is set in the Prohibition era in locations ranging from Boston to Tampa.

In her New York Times review, Janet Maslin calls it "Crime Noir 101, as taught by the best of its current practitioners," and Tampa Times book critic Colette Bancroft says, "Live by Night takes on big subjects — race, class, money, religion, friendship, family, violence — by embedding them in irresistible storytelling about a compelling, conflicted and mordantly funny man."

More on the book and Lehane's book tour appearances can be found at his website.