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  If you think writers from all around the world have been descending upon Key West for 31 years to escape cruddy winter weather while knocking back a rum runner or two and discussing their work, you probably won’t get an argument from them.

The Key West Literary Seminar attracts some of the finest authors – and their fans – for two consecutive weekends.

This year’s four-day event started on Jan. 10 and the second session picks up on Jan. 17 and ends on the 20th, with a Writers’ Workshop Program sandwiched in between.

The Cuban-American Democrat. It is an unusual breed in Florida.

Since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 made the Democratic administration of John F. Kennedy look bad, and caused many Cubans to flee their homeland forever,  El Exilio community in South Florida especially has been strongly Republican.

But that's beginning to change. Some exit polling indicated Cubans nearly split their vote between President Obama and Mitt Romney this past election, something that has never happened.

Rocky credit history? A bill that would prevent potential employers from weighing a job applicant's credit history unanimously passed the Senate Commerce and Tourism Committee Tuesday.

Some say the bill (SB 100), sponsored by Sen. Nancy Detert, R-Venice, is an effort to ease the job search process for Floridians.

In an unusual case of pre-emptive historic designation, Miami Beach preservationists are trying to protect a decrepit Star Island mansion from being torn down by its new owner.

That would be plastic surgeon Leonard Hochstein, who bought the waterfront place at 42 Star Island Drive for $7.6 million and then found it too far gone to be renovated.

Gov. Rick Scott's hour-long sit-down with the Legislative Black Caucus on Tuesday was frostily correct and almost completely nonproductive for the black lawmakers, according to two accounts of Tuesday's session in Tallahassee.

The Tampa Bay Times and the Palm Beach Post described the governor as almost completely unyielding on voting rules, ex-felon rights and appointments to the judiciary and other state positions.

As to the 2011 voting law that many say turned the 2012 election into a Florida disaster, the governor said he should not be blamed for that.

Right now, it’s Amber Alerts for missing children and possible emergency messages from the president.

But the fact is -- as many South Floridians found out this weekend -- the government has found a way to co-opt your smart phone for its own purposes.

Deciding to put a loved on in a nursing home is hard enough, but as our partners at WUSF and Health News Florida in Tampa report, researching nursing home quality isn't easy in Florida.

And in a state where a fifth of all nursing homes are on a state watch list, some advocates are asking the Agency for Health Care Administration to take a more active role in distributing lists of facility violations.

Here at WLRN, we're big fans of interactive storytelling. 

Indications are growing that the gun lobby might face unusual difficulties in the Florida Legislature this year.  

In Tallahassee on Monday, the Republican chairman of the Senate Education Committee announced his opposition to arming Florida school teachers as a defense against school shooters and a Democratic senator filed a bill to repeal one of the National Rifle Association's trophy bills from 2011, the law forbidding doctors to ask patients whether they have guns at home.

The number of charter schools operating in the United States has surpassed 6,000 for the first time, according to the National Alliance for Public Charter Schools.

Charters are now serving a record 2.3 million students based on estimates from the current school year. But a pro-choice non-profit says Florida school districts are preventing more charters from opening.

Florida Senate President Don Gaetz (R-Niceville) is ready to toughen ethics laws, reform campaign finance, streamline the Florida ballot...just about every issue of timely significance, he told the Orlando Sentinel editorial board, except for gun control.

Welcome to the Key West Literary Seminar edition of Tweet Us A Story! 

Starting at 5:00, we'll be writing a story with KWLS author Geoff Dyer.

Dyer has graciously given us the first line of a tale. It's up to you to help us finish it.

You can join in on the storytelling in the space below. Check out the rules at the bottom of the page.

It's election year in the region's largest city and the race for Miami mayor has just become a little more interesting. City Commissioner Francis "Frank" Suarez, 35,  will officially announce a challenge to incumbent Mayor Tomas Regalado today.

As lawmakers decide how --- or whether --- to move forward with parts of the federal Affordable Care Act, House and Senate select committees plunged Monday into issues such as a potential expansion of the Medicaid program and the law's effects on Florida businesses.

In back-to-back meetings, lawmakers heard testimony from people with far-different perspectives about the controversial health overhaul, which Florida Republican leaders resisted for more than two years.

If Gov. Rick Scott didn't know this before, he sure knows it now: If you're in politics, your dog can make you or break you.

A hilarious  story in the Tampa Bay Times tells how the Scott family's photogenic but slightly psychotic Labrador, Reagan, failed to work out as a gubernatorial dog and was discreetly gotten rid of. 

Tony Bennett drove from Indiana over the weekend to start his first day as schools chief in Florida on Monday.

Last month the State Board of Education hired Bennett, a Republican who served as Indiana’s Superintendent of Public Instruction for one term.

He lost his re-election bid there after Democrat Glenda Ritz organized a grassroots campaign with help from the teachers union.

Bennett was viewed by some as being too aggressive towards teachers and not showing enough compassion when he pushed new policies, such as merit pay. 

The Miami Dolphins say they're willing to foot most of the bill for a badly needed facelift for Sun Life stadium -- and are hoping state and local funding will supply the rest.  But lingering taxpayer anger over another stadium deal could be hanging over the proposal like a dark cloud.

On the one month anniversary of the Newtown, CT school shooting, mayors across South Florida and the country called for stricter gun regulations on Monday. Among them was Miami Mayor Tomas Regalado.

I had set out to find a real cafè con leche during the half-hour break in the Key West Literary Seminar, and the task proved to be more difficult than anticipated. As I sat on the curb at the corner of Whitehead and Fleming, sweating and sipping my reward, I spotted a family walking my way.

They were obviously tourists, probably from the Midwest and looked fresh off the cruise ship.

The couple was about to pass me when the wife noticed the sign on the nearest pole, directly in front of me. "It read ‘Begin US1. Mile 0."

With an ailing Hugo Chavez still in Cuba, and perhaps on his deathbed, hundreds of thousands of Venezuelans now living in South Florida are anxiously awaiting word of what happens next.

El Arepazo 2 on N.W. 79th Avenue in Doral is their unofficial headquarters.

Inside the restaurant, the walls are covered with major league baseball cards, honoring players from Venezuela's most popular sport, such as reigning MVP Miguel Cabrera and Hall of Famer Luis Aparicio.

Holdouts against amnesty for millions of undocumented immigrants in the U. S. are bracing for the lobbying pressure they are certain to experience as President Obama, grassroots groups and converts in Congress prepare for the Big Immigration Bill.

Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross has an appointment with reporters today to discuss his plans to go after public funding to renovate Sun Life Stadium.

The cost estimate is $400 million, says the Miami Herald, some of which Ross apparently hopes to raise from state and local government sources.

As states start phasing in Common Core standards in public school classrooms, no Common Core textbooks have been written yet, and new assessments are still being developed.

So, teachers are creating their own lesson plans as they begin to implement the standards.

They’re not doing it alone.

Corals are not as visible as panthers, manatees or dolphins.  But scientists say they deserve just as much protection -- and respect -- as other animals beloved by Floridians. 

The National Marine Fisheries Service has proposed extending federal protection to 66 species of coral, including seven local species that scientists say are nearing extinction.

This post is featured thanks to our friends at the Key West Literary Seminar. Read more of their material here.

Affordable Care Act issues are expected to dominate discussions of insurance in the Legislature in the weeks ahead but lawmakers will also take swipes at workers compensation, hurricane preparations and Citizens Property Insurance Corp when they return.

The work of a biographer might seem straightforward enough.  Although the general public might consider the genre a sub-category of nonfiction writing, the best works transcend that title, and stand apart as a class of their own.  Biographies contain facts and historical documentation about the life of particular subject, and in this way meet the criteria for nonfiction.  In a talk at the Key West Literary Seminar on Saturday, however, acclaimed biographer Jay Parini declared, “All biography is a work of fiction.  It's an illusion of a life that may relate to reality.”

At the Shanker Blog researcher Matthew Di Carlo reviews the effectiveness of the suite of education policies often called the “Florida model.”

These ideas include assigning A through F grades to schools and school districts based in part on standardized test results, retaining low-performing third graders, expanding school choice, teacher evaluations and others.