One of the joys of hosting The Miami Book Hub is being reminded that Miami is not one story, one language, or one point of view. It is a city of layers, legends, reinventions, and strange little footnotes that somehow become central to who we are.
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My first guest on this episode, Pedro Medina León, understands that better than most. Pedro is an author, editor, publisher, and cultural observer who arrived in Miami from Peru in 2002 with, as he put it, “$120 in my pocket” and the dream of writing. “I write in Spanish,” he told me, and that matters because Pedro has done something surprisingly rare: he has helped tell Miami’s story in Spanish.
His latest book, Miami: mapa cultural (y pop), continues that work, exploring Miami through history, music, crime, pop culture, and memory. In our conversation, we moved from Henry Flagler to Bob Marley, from Miami Vice and the Mutiny Hotel to Scarface, Truman Capote, Ocean Drive, and Queen at Miami Marine Stadium. Pedro’s gift is that he sees the city both intimately and from a distance. “I have been living here for 24, 25 years,” he said, “but I think that I’m like an outsider observer. I have the distance.”
That distance gives him perspective. As Pedro noted, many people who live here do not know the stories under their feet. “Flagler is just an avenue for a lot of people,” he said. The same could be said of so much of Miami. We drive past history every day without always stopping to ask what happened there, who passed through, or why it matters.
Pedro also spoke about Varsovia, the novel that won him a Florida Book Award, and the recurring character Comanche, a retired private detective who lives between Little Havana and Miami Beach but somehow keeps getting pulled back into new cases. Like Miami itself, Pedro’s work refuses to sit neatly in one box. It is literary, historical, noir, funny, cultural, and deeply local all at once.
After my conversation with Pedro, we continued our monthly Reading with Rochelle segment with my second guest, bestselling author Rochelle Weinstein, who joined us with four book picks for June. Rochelle summed up the spirit of the segment perfectly: “I love reading. I love supporting authors.”
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Her first pick was Off the Record by Sara Goodman Confino, which Rochelle described as a story about an aspiring reporter who stumbles into a Cold War mystery that could change her career—and possibly put her life at risk. Next was Lee Goldberg’s Murder by Design, featuring Edison Bixby, a brilliant but wildly blunt insurance investigator paired with a struggling actor who tries to keep him from offending everyone around him.
Rochelle’s third pick was Whistler by Ann Patchett, the story of a 53-year-old woman who reunites with her estranged stepfather, a novel Rochelle expects to be “beautifully written” because, as she put it, “if it’s Ann Patchett, it’s going to be a beautifully written story.” Her final June recommendation was Behind White Picket Fences by Christine Gunderson, a modern motherhood and female friendship story in which a seemingly perfect neighborhood hides a much bigger secret.
“Support your local bookstore,” Rochelle reminded viewers. That is good advice—not just for these four books, but for the larger literary ecosystem we are trying to celebrate and strengthen through The Miami Book Hub. You can start with Books & Books by visiting BooksandBooks.com.
I encourage you to learn more about Pedro Medina León at PedroMedinaLeon.com and Rochelle Weinstein at RochelleWeinstein.com. To view this full interview and other episodes of The Miami Book Hub, visit my YouTube channel at https://www.youtube.com/@J.AdrianBetancourt. And, as always, keep reading, keep writing, and stay curious, Miami!
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