Cops, family, career, the good life, longing: Miami Book Fair authors James Grippando, Rosa Lowinger, Nicole Tallman share their Miami stories

James Grippando: A brush with Miami-Dade Police changed my life

It was October 1992. My girlfriend (now my wife) and her family lost their home to Hurricane Andrew and were living with me in a two-bedroom townhouse with no electricity. Right around then, my literary agent called to tell me that he had knocked on every publisher’s door in New York and, “Sorry, James, no one wants to buy your book.” The manuscript I had written over the past four years, while practicing law full time at a major Miami law firm, had crashed and burned. But there was a glimmer of hope.

“You got the best rejection letters I’ve ever seen,” my agent said. “Try again.”

I was afraid. I couldn’t waste another four years going down the wrong path. I spent night after night staring at a blank computer screen. I had writer’s block. One night around 1 a.m., I needed a break from my computer, so I went for a walk. A Miami-Dade Police appeared out of nowhere.

“Can I see some identification?” the cop said.

I had none—no wallet, no driver’s license, nothing. I was dressed in jogging shorts and T-shirt, ready for bed.

“Someone reported a peeping-Tom in the neighborhood,” the officer explained.

I stood nervously beside the squad car as he called in on his radio. The dispatcher recited the physical description of the prowler, and I could almost see the cop him ticking off similarities on his mental check list.

“Under six feet,” the dispatcher said. Check.

“Mid-thirties.” Check.

“Brown hair, brown eyes.” Double check.

“Wearing blue shorts and white T-shirt.” Holy crap! I’m going to jail!

“And a mustache,” the dispatcher finally added.

The cop narrowed his eyes, trying to discern whether someone could have mistakenly thought I had a mustache. Finally, he said, “Go home.”

I walked quickly, thankful I wasn’t riding downtown in the back of a squad car. An arrest would have surely put me in the newspaper: “Prominent Miami Attorney Charged As A Peeping Tom.” Just being arrested could have ruined me.

My life had nearly changed forever. And in another way, it had. The feeling of being innocent and accused left my heart pounding. I took that feeling to the most dramatic extreme and wrote a scene about a death row inmate, hours away from execution for murder he may not have committed. That scene I wrote that night—all night—is the opening scene of “The Pardon,” my debut novel, published by HarperCollins in 1994.

I often wonder who that Miami-Dade officer was and where he is today. I’d like to thank him. He changed my life.

About James Grippando

James Grippando is the New York Times bestselling author of more than 30 novels and the winner of the Harper Lee Prize for legal fiction. His upcoming release, “Goodbye Girl (HarperCollins Jan. 2024) is the 19th in the popular series featuring Miami criminal defense lawyer Jack Swyteck. Grippando has lived in Miami and Coral Gables since 1984.

He’ll read from his new novel “Code 6,” along with fellow thriller/suspense writers Jeff Lindsay of the Dexter series with his new novel The Fourth Rule and Dwyer Murphy, author of “The Stolen Coast,” on Sunday, Nov. 19, 4 p.m. in Rom 3208-9.

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Rosa Lowinger: The material of home

I arrived in Miami when I was 4, the daughter of Cubans fleeing a country that had been upended by revolution. Like most Cuban Jews, my family settled in South Beach rather than the downtown neighborhood that would soon become known as Little Havana. My mother often tells me I was too small to remember those days.

But I recall everyone’s distress: the bristling worry about money and loss of everything we’d left behind; the adults talking only about how soon we could go back to Cuba.

As a 4-year-old whose friends and family from home were also here, I also remember feeling that we were better off in Miami Beach than in Havana.

The ocean, after all, was within walking distance. We spent every weekend at the beach with our friends — swimming, building sandcastles, and eating sandwiches filled with pasta rosada, a concoction made of tuna, mayonnaise and ketchup. After preschool in Flamingo Park, my mother would sometimes take me walking along Lincoln Road, where I would let my fingers dangle in the waters of the mall’s many fountains when she wasn’t looking. Though we had no money for shopping, we’d always stop at Saks Fifth Avenue to smell the perfume emanating from a valve next to the entrance.

I left Miami as soon as I graduated from high school. I longed to experience America away from the nostalgia of Cuban exiles, to study art and eventually materials conservation in a place of greater historic seriousness than my beachy hometown.

Becoming a specialist in conserving 20th century architecture and sculpture, who worked mainly in New York, Philadelphia, Charleston and Los Angeles, I never once made the connection between my interest in repair and the Ocean Drive motels with their terrazzo paved verandas that were a stone’s throw from my childhood apartment, or the domed Art Deco post office where I used to whisper so a friend could hear me loud and clear across the room.

In 2008, I was in town visiting my parents, when I was asked by the director of Vizcaya Museum and Gardens to submit a bid to conduct a survey of the historic mansion’s outdoor sculptures. Just like the preservation of Miami Beach’s Art Deco district was a gamechanger for this region’s cultural and economic future, my work on that Gilded Age mansion set my life’s course in a new direction.

Moving back to South Florida half-time (the other half of my time is spent in Los Angeles), I built a practice here whose focus is conserving items like the limestone walls of Coral Gables entrances and plazas, the bronze windows at Fisher Island’s Dupont mansion, painted outdoor sculptures by Roy Lichtenstein and Claes Oldenburg, cast stone friezes on the façade of the Wolfsonian, and the singularly exquisite concrete surface of Hilario Candela’s Miami Marine stadium. Nothing affords quite the intimacy with place than helping preserve its materials.

Through conservation, Miami has become part of my personal story. Helping repair its bountiful historic fabric has bound me to the area in ways that go far beyond how I got here in the first place.

About Rosa Lowinger

She is sharing her story, “Dwell Time: A Memoir of Art, Exile, and Repair,” on Sunday, Nov. 19, 1 p.m. in Room 8202.

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Nicole Tallman: I love that Miami is sexy and isn’t afraid to seduce you. (And more.)

If you ask a poet what she loves about Miami, she’s going to write you a poem.

Love Poem for Miami

I love that Miami is sexy and isn’t afraid to seduce you.

I love how Nochebuena is a bigger celebration here than Christmas Day.

I love how mango and avocado season encourage people to share.

I love sharing a colada with colleagues.

I love the joy people take in watching me try new local dishes for the first time.

I love watching the moon with M from our balcony.

I love The Standard Hotel and the fire pit there the most.

I love how I first met Gloria Estefan at The Freedom Tower.

I love that Sofía Vergara travels to Miami often and that one day I may meet her.

I love that I’ve slept in the same house as Madonna, Elton John, and Princess Di.

I love the pool at Casa Casuarina.

I love Le Chat Noir that unfortunately closed down.

I love the ritual of happy hour on Thursdays.

I love that I got to edit a Golden Girls zine from Miami.

I love that Blanche couldn’t have accepted Harry’s proposal at the actual Joe’s Stone Crab.

I love lobster and stone crab season, and especially the stone crab from Joe’s.

I love that I live where many vacation.

I love Miami Spice and Spa Month.

I love O, Miami, Miami Book Fair, Books & Books, and the Writer’s Room at The Betsy Hotel.

I love the Miami poets and think we need our own school.

I love the Main Library, and that there are 50 libraries in the County system.

I love the peacocks in Coconut Grove, and mostly because I don’t have to live next to them.

I love the cathedral of trees in Coconut Grove.

I love the Gesu Church and how it makes me feel pure for a few brief moments.

I love that I can swim in the ocean any month of the year.

I love Celia Cruz and “La vida es un carnival” especially.

I love the extravagant brunch at Zuma.

I love the Curtiss Mansion, Deering Estate, and Vizcaya.

I love that I saw Britney’s come back performance at Mansion.

I love The Savoy Hotel.

I love drinks at Dirty French.

I love the duck and the sommelier at Boulud Sud.

I love that there’s a restaurant here called Sexy Fish.

I love the doctor who once showed me his private Salvador Dalí collection.

I love that I can’t remember his name, but know I have his business card somewhere.

I love that I’ve lived (and traveled) enough places to forget some people’s names.

I love when people think I don’t understand Spanish, and the things I get to overhear as a result.

I love the few people who actually use turn signals and yield to incoming traffic.

I love everyone who adds to this poem.

Note to reader: This poem is actually a lot longer because there’s a lot I love about Miami, but you’ll have to buy FERSACE if you want to read the rest.

About Nicole Tallman

She is a poet, writer, and editor who serves as the official Poetry Ambassador for Miami-Dade County. “Poems for the People” and “Fersace” (ELJ Editions) are both described as a refreshing and honest Michigan- meets-Miami handling of hard topics that adjust to the changing world around her, seeking solace in conversations with the dead and living (including herself), and in new life experiences.

Tallman speaks at the Miami Book Fair on Sunday, Nov. 19, at 11 a.m., Room 8303. She and Denise Duhamel co-host a tribute to the poet Maureen Seaton at 4 p.m. that day, also in Building 8.

Miami Book Fair

The annual street fair and literary festival, organized by MDC, hosts hundreds of critically acclaimed authors talking politics, pop culture and all manner of impactful prose. Meet authors, buy books, and bring the kids too!

At Miami Dade College, 300 NE 2nd Ave., Nov. 12-19.

Upcoming speaker events include: On Nov. 12: “An Afternoon with Kerry Washington in Conversation with Eva Longoria”; “An Evening with Jada Pinkett Smith in conversation with Lena Waithe; “An Evening with Joan Baez in conversation with Justin Richmond.” Monday, Nov. 13: “An Evening with David Brooks.” Tuesday: “An Evening with Abrhama Verghese in Conversation with Leigh Haber.” Wednesday: “An Evening with Walter Mosley in conversation with Tochi Onyebuchi”; Thursday: “An Evening with Cassidy Hutchinson.” Friday: “An evening with Henry Winkler.”

More info at miamibookfair.com