Making Good Time: True Stories of How We Do, and Don’t, Get Around in South Florida

by Lynne Barrett (Editor)

31 true transit stories by 32 award-winning South Florida writers

Genres: Nonfiction

211 pages, Paperback

Published September 21, 2019

About the author

My most recent book is Making Good Time: True Stories of How We Do, and Don't, Get Around in South Florida, edited and with an introduction by Lynne Barrett, Jai-Alai Books. WLRN Public Radio interview:
https://www.wlrn.org/post/new-collect...

My work is in these Fall 2020 anthologies:
Grabbed: Poets & Writers on Sexual Assault, Empowerment, and Healing, edited by Elisa Albo, Richard Blanco, Caridad Moro, and Nikki Moustaki, published Beacon Press. And Miami Noir: The Classics, edited by Les Standiford, published by Akashic Books.

Magpies received the Gold Medal in General Fiction in the Florida Book Awards.

Publishers Weekly says of Magpies: "Barrett portrays adult lives with minimal flourishes and a powerful command of setting. Florida is electric with the tension of "all that can happen"--hurricanes, sinkholes, and a boom-and-bust history. It becomes as eerie as it is richly imagined, whether stories take place in an Art Deco building or a gas station. One of the year's finer university press offerings, the collection is especially noteworthy for "The Noir Boudoir," an atmospheric tale of unsettling realizations and the ways past events shadow the present." Full review at http://www.publishersweekly.com/978-0...

Lynne Barrett is the award-winning author of The Secret Names of Women, The Land of Go, and her third collection, Magpies, which won the Gold Medal in Fiction in the Florida Book Awards. Her mini book on submitting to magazines is ,i.What Editors Want,,/i> from Rain Chain Press. She co-edited Birth: A Literary Companion and The James M. Cain Cookbook. Her work has appeared in Necessary Fiction, Blue Christmas, Delta Blues, Miami Noir, One Year to a Writing Life, Simply the Best Mysteries, A Hell of a Woman, Fort Lauderdale Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Painted Bride Quarterly, Real South, Night Train, The Southern Women’s Review, and many other anthologies and journals. She has received the Edgar Allan Poe Award for best mystery story from the Mystery Writers of America, the Moondance International Film Festival award for Best Short story, and fellowships from the Florida Division of Cultural Affairs and the National Endowment for the Arts. With her husband and son, she lives in Miami. She teaches in the M.F.A. program in Creative Writing at Florida International University and edits The Florida Book Review. More information can be found at http://www.lynnebarrett.com

Reviews

[isa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I start this book while on a flight. I finish it while finally home from the three-year agony of a fifty minute commute to and from my residential base. Marvel at movement, balk at its destructive power, ride down the highway in pursuit of a purpose, stop to look out the window and wish you were motionless. South Florida, you are home, in the rush hours or at the lightning speeds of early morning and late nights. ⛽💛

"As we fly away, we rise above the grid. From here, our houses look like toys. The streets like x- and y-axes. The canals like dark, unbending rivers. My house is the size of my hand, and then I could squeeze it between my fingers, and then, it's gone."

[Victor Calderin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I appreciated the range of voices and insights in this collection of stories. Driving, walking, and getting around in SoFla is a unique (and possibly unnerving) experience, and these stories capture all the flavor of it (though I personally would have liked some more on 49th Street in Hialeah).

[Maïa Berthier · Rating 5 out of 5]

such a good anthology of miami stories. the good, the bad and the ugly of it all, well worth the read