Marina Brown

Marina Brown has written for newspapers and magazines for the last twenty years, including The St. Petersburg Times, the Tallahassee Democrat, Florida Design, Dance, and Sailing Magazine, She is the recipient of numerous awards and medals for her short stories, poetry, and novels, including First Places in the Porter Fleming Short Story Contest, the Red Hills Review, the Lorian Hemmingway Short Story Awards, and Gold and Silver Medals for her novels awarded by the Florida Writers Association and the Florida Authors and Publishers Association. Brown released her eighth book, The Gentlemen of Verona: 20 Stories for Grownups in 2024. In this her second volume of short stories, the tales, like the first Gold Medal-winning collection, are sometimes hilarious and naughty, sometimes wrenchingly sad. With a “touch of Kafka her characters dance across the page, making up laugh or weep when life turns on a dime.” In 2020, Brown added her third Gold Medal-winning novel, The Orphan of Pitigliano, to her published library. The book went on to be named Book of the Year by the Florida Writers Association. Set in Italy just before the outbreak of WWII, three young cousins seeking to hide their Jewish identities in a 13th century Tuscan hill town, find dangers in the looming Nazi menace. This is a passionate love story that sweeps across the panorama of Italy—and space and time—always followed by a jealous “evil eye” that will not ‘look away.’ In 2021, adding to her literary scope, Brown released her first book of short stories, When Women Danced With Trees: 35 Unexpected Stories, which won the Gold Medal from FAPA for anthology collections. Land Without Mirrors, Brown’s first novel won the 2013 Gold Medal for Literary Fiction from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association (FAPA). Her second novel, Lisbeth, won the President's Gold Medal from FAPA in 2017 and the Silver Medal at the Royal Palm Literary Awards from the Florida Writers Association. Her debut volume of poetry, The Leaf Does Not Believe It Will Fall, won a Silver Medal from FAPA in 2019. Two other books, Walking Alone Together, an Anthem to Caregivers (2013), Brown, a former hospice nurse, presents 12 stories that touch on the grace that comes at the end of life, and in Airport Sketches, A Week of Lives at the Tallahassee Regional Airport (2014), she offers humorous and touching insights into the magical space between leaving and arriving. Marina Brown is a former professional ballet dancer with Ballet Russe de Monte Carlo, a deep-water sailor, an exhibiting watercolorist, an RN, a cellist, and a traveler who loves setting her novels in exotic locations to which she’s traveled—including the Deep South! Marina Brown lives in Tallahassee, Florida and is available for signings and presentations via Marina Brown, Author on Facebook.