Cecilia Rodriguez Milanes will present a reading of fiction and poetry on Monday, April 7^th at 6 p.m. at the Southeast Branch of the Orange County Library. Cecilia is a fiction and poetry writer who teaches at the University of Central Florida. Her work reflects the lives of Latinos in the US including themes such as immigration, assimilation and race and gender issues. For more information, visit the Orange County Public Library’s website.

Seminole State College of Florida will host a talk on Florida’s ecology by nature writer and documentary filmmaker Bill Belleville on Friday, April 11 at 12:30 p.m. Belleville, of Sanford, will read from his work and show photographs illustrating the diverse landscape of natural Florida, and describing how writers and artists have been influenced by it over time.

Belleville’s presentation, “Celebrating the Wild Side of Florida: Portals into Nature, Culture, and Sense of Place,” takes place at Seminole State’s Sanford/Lake Mary campus in Room G-118.  Belleville will use colorful photographs of culturally and historically significant images to show how writers and artists have been inspired through time by Florida’s natural places.

For more information on the event, visit http://www.seminolestate.edu/newsroom/articles/996/College-to-host-environmental-writer-filmmaker-Bill-Belleville.

Spend an evening with Debbie Viguié, a New York Times bestselling author, on Wednesday, April 2, 2014 at 6:30 p.m. at the University Club in Winter Park and learn the ins and outs of the writing business from an author with over 30 books. Debbie will show you how to craft a memorable pitch and show you what questions to ask yourself to improve your story. The meeting is free and open to the public. Contact: Rik Feeney at usabookcoach@gmail.com.