"Everybody wants to be at the fair."

Thirty years ago — before Art Basel became a snowbird, before Ultra Music Festival’s pulse throbbed across the Bay, before the Miami Heat proudly raised the banners in AmericanAirlines Arena — 60 or so authors gathered at Bayfront Park to talk books.

No doubt it was a big day, thrilling and fresh, a well-aimed literary blow to the city’s image as the crime-ridden, pastel-and-neon-saturated land of Miami Vice. But organizers couldn’t have had a clue as to what their baby would grow into.

Sunday, when Miami Book Fair International’s 30th anniversary edition began, more than 500 authors descended on downtown Miami for this year’s rendition of one of the biggest and most successful book fairs in the country.

Read more at the Miami Herald.