Festival of the Arts Boca is proud to present “Amy Herman: How to Avoid Conflict” at Mizner Park Amphitheater on March 6, 2025!

An art historian and lawyer who uses works of art to teach clients from the FBI to Interpol, from the FBI to doctors and financiers, ways to hone their perceptions and visual intelligence, Amy Herman offers a paradigm-shattering twist on problem-solving that can help us find solutions to the problems we face every day.

For two decades, Herman, has taught US Navy Seals, doctors, trauma nurses, FBI officers, CIA intelligence analysts, and the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies how to enhance their powers of observation and communication through study of art. Visual intelligence, she says, can crack a case, save a life, stave off conflict.

In this Authors and Ideas event, Herman will share her lessons and ideas in an engaging, entertaining way, helping us all walk away with better perceptual and problem-solving skills.

Learn more and reserve your tickets here!

Festival of the Arts Boca is proud to present “Florida Man: Carl Hiaasen” at Mizner Park Amphitheater on March 5, 2025!

Called “America’s finest satirical novelist” (The London Observer), Carl Hiaasen has been compared to Preston Sturges, Woody Allen, and S.J. Perelman (The New York Times). His 13 novels have been published in 34 languages. And, most recently, his novel Bad Monkey has been turned into a series on Apple TV.

“You wait long enough in Florida and the other shoe drops,” Hiaasen said in a recent interview with GQ, talking about the absurdity of politics and social issues in the state. The journalist in that interview summarized things well when he said:

“In the world of American publishing, [Hiassen] is one-of-one. If there’s any living American writer funnier, then they lack his edge and his readership. No one more politically pointed can touch the sleekness of his prose. If you want to call Hiaasen the Mark Twain of post-Vietnam America, you’ll get no arguments here.”

Hiaasen will join us for an evening of storytelling and commentary, which could well involve considerable shoe-dropping…

Learn more and reserve your tickets here!

Festival of the Arts Boca is proud to present “An Evening with Doris Kearns Goodwin” at Mizner Park Amphitheater on March 3, 2025!

Festival favorite Doris Kearns Goodwin returns for a fascinating presentation about politics, history, and her new memoir, An Unfinished Love Story: A Personal History of the 1960s. The Pulitzer Prize-winning author, presidential historian, and television commentator’s most recent book artfully weaves together biography, memoir, and history in the emotional journey she and her husband, Richard (Dick) Goodwin embarked upon in the last years of his life.

The Goodwins’ last great adventure involved finally opening the more than three hundred boxes of letters, diaries, documents, and memorabilia that Dick (who had played key roles in Presidential administrations and campaigns in the 1960s)  had saved for more than fifty years. They soon realized they had before them an unparalleled personal time capsule of the 1960s, illuminating public and private moments of a decade when individuals were powered by the conviction they could make a difference; a time, like today, marked by struggles for racial and economic justice, a time when lines were drawn and loyalties tested.

Their expedition gave Dick’s last years renewed purpose and determination. It gave Doris the opportunity to connect and reconnect with participants and witnesses of pivotal moments of the 1960s. And it gave them both an opportunity to make fresh assessments of the central figures of the time – John F. Kennedy, Jacqueline Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Robert Kennedy, Eugene McCarthy, and especially Lyndon Johnson, who greatly impacted both their lives. The voyage of remembrance brought unexpected discoveries, forgiveness, and the renewal of old dreams, reviving the hope that the youth of today will carry forward this unfinished love story with America.

Learn more and reserve your tickets here!

Join Festival of the Arts Boca from Luis Alberto Urrea’s “From Tijuana to the World.”

NPR called Luis Alberto Urrea a literary "bad-ass." The author and passionate humanist will join us for a talk about life in a dual culture.

A 2005 Pulitzer Prize finalist for nonfiction and member of the Latino Literature Hall of Fame, Urrea is the critically acclaimed and best-selling author of 17 books, winning numerous awards for his poetry, fiction and essays. Born in Tijuana to a Mexican father and American mother, Urrea is most recognized as a border writer, though he says, “I am more interested in bridges, not borders.”

Learn more and reserve your tickets here!