WLRN Culture

In the opening scene of this month’s Sundial Book Club pick, “Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther” by Craig Pittman, hunters in the Everglades chase down a panther shooting tranquilizer darts. They catch the animal. “I started with the most dramatic scene,” Pittman says. When he started working at the St. Petersburg Times (now the Tampa Bay Times) covering environmental issues, one of the first stories he wrote was about the Florida panther. This story was the launch of his fascination with the panther, the central character of his new book. "Cat Tale" tells of how Florida’s state animal was at the brink of extinction, through stories he gathered from ‘a group of oddball characters,” including a panther hunter, biologist and veterinarian, who were essential in saving it. “I say the schoolchildren are really the ones who saved [the panther],” Pittman says on Sundial. He joined the program from Books & Books in Coral Gables on Saturday, Feb. 8. This has been

It took some doing, but Miami City Ballet finally got an elusive bird to leave its nest in Manhattan and fly down south. “So this wonderful ballet with such rich history and extraordinary choreography really had never been seen outside of New York. And I thought, ‘How equitable is that?,’ “ Miami City Ballet Artistic Director Lourdes Lopez says. “Why should the Northeast have all the fun?"

Edgar Allen Poe’s famous short story “The Tell-Tale Heart” follows an unreliable narrator’s account of murdering his roommate, and then his distress over being able to hear the murdered man’s heart beating loudly, even after he’s dead. The dramatic, suspenseful story has spawned numerous adaptations for film, TV, radio,theater and ballet. Now, composer Gregg Kallor is bringing his operatic version to the Society of the Four Arts in Palm Beach for a Wednesday evening show. WLRN’s Madeline Fox spoke to Kallor about why he chose to use Poe’s story, and how his version subverts some assumptions about the original text. This conversation has been edited for clarity and length. WLRN: What was your first experience with "The Tell-Tale Heart?" Can you tell me about when you first read it? GREGG KALLOR: I think the first time I read "The Tell-Tale Heart" was maybe in middle school, maybe in high school. I don't remember much about it, except that the story itself struck me. I had very little to

When Fort Lauderdale author Dawn Davies moved to South Florida as a child, she wasn’t really a fan. “In Florida the outside is always trying to get in and dank Florida smells are everywhere you go,” Davies writes in her latest book, “Mothers of Sparta: A Memoir in Pieces, ” the Sundial Book Club pick for January.

Three baby dolls hang from a white canvas at the Lowe Art Museum in Coral Gables. The art installation has painted message written in Spanish that reads: " Tu odio no me mata. Soy human igual que tu." or "Your hate doesn’t kill me. I am human the same as you."