Fiction writer Jennifer Bannan will read from her new story collection, Tamiami Trail: Miami Stories (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2025), named for the road that connects Tampa to Miami. The Tamiami Trail cuts through the contradictions of Miami: a city shaped by swamps and skyscrapers, violence and desire. In her stories, Bannan brings us vivid portraits of women navigating this teeming, volatile landscape. Elaine Chiew of Foreward Reviews writes, “Clinging to their tangential morality by way of a mystical sense of place, the characters in Tamiami Trail are flawed and full of want. Their grasping opportunism contrasts with the ineffable honoring of place and myth, thus revealing their naked humanity.” Tamiami Trail: Miami Stories was included in the Best of October 2025 by the Southern Review of Books and was named a finalist in the Eyelands International Awards.

A Q&A and book signing will follow the reading.

This event is free and open to the Springfield College community and the public.

Jennifer Bannan’s latest short story collection, Tamiami Trail: Miami Stories (released in fall 2025), has received excellent reviews in The Library Journal, among other publications. Her first collection, Inventing Victor, was published in 2003 by Carnegie Mellon University Press. She has had stories in the Autumn House Press anthology, Keeping the Wolves at Bay, and in literary journals, including the Kenyon Review online, ACM, Passages North, Chicago Quarterly Review, Exposition Review, Eclectica Magazine, and more. Learn more about the author at jenniferbannan.com.