The Miami Herald has a nice piece on lawyer turned writer Gonzalo Barr. Barr does not have an agent or a publisher for his novel, and Leejay Kline, his mentor and creative-writing teacher, calls the move ''pretty ballsy.'' But what Barr does have is an impressive debut to his credit. His first book, the critically acclaimed short-story collection The Last Flight of Jose Luis Balboa (Houghton Mifflin, $12 in paper), won the coveted Bread Loaf Writers' Conference Bakeless Prize in 2005, garnering attention and admiration from several established writers. (Thanks to Jeffrey in Miami Beach.)

John Dufresne