Award Winning Author Tina Brown Speaks At Miami Book Fair
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MIAMI (CBSMiami) – The Miami Book Fair is one of the most anticipated events in South Florida.
CBS4'S Lisa Petrillo sat down for both a public and a private backstage interview with Tina Brown at the sold out opening of the Miami Book Fair.
Tina is an award winning writer, author and former editor in chief of The Tatler, the New Yorker and Vanity Fair magazines.
Her book, "The Vanity Fair Diaries" is her personal journaling of what her busy life was like turning the then failing magazine into a hot seller from 1983-1992.
"Were you journaling your entire life?" Petrillo asked Brown in front of a large audience.
"I've always been a compulsive diary writer. There is something gratifying about unloading to the page all your hopes, fears and what you saw that day," she said.
It begins with Brown moving to New York from London to take over the magazine at the tender age of 30, a rare opportunity for a woman.
"What was interesting, I was the first editor to be pregnant on the job at Conde Naste Magazine, and I remember when I told the woman at Human Resources she said that's interesting we can test out our maternity policy. I was the guinea pig. When I look at the clips presenting the magazine to this table full of guys, all white guys- all of a sudden it looks like U.S. Senate," she said.
On stage, Petrillo asked Tina about her encounters back then with the current President of the United States.
"It's interesting, Donald Trump does run through these diaries as a sort of recurring virus," she said joking. "He was a much more of a pop culture guy really. He wasn't quite as angry or as vindictive as he is now. In the 80's he was just this aspiring noisy, vulgar but fun, self -made guy who was glitzy but he was enjoyable and I liked him when I first met him, actually."
And then there were those famous and infamous Vanity Fair covers. The Reagans dancing,
Daryl Hannah blindfolded with The Oscars, Princess Diana as the mouse that roared, all made headlines but there was nothting more controversial at the time then Annie Leibowitz's naked picture of a very pregnant Demi Moore. Stores were afraid to sell it.
"So we shrink wrapped it like a porn magazine and it flew off the newsstands! The wonderful thing about that cover is that it's became such an iconic cover for women who wanted to celebrate their fertility. It liberated women. I don't know what happened to maternity clothes after that they sort of disappeared after that," Brown said.
The Vanity Fair Diaries are out in stores now, as for Tina she starts a podcast at the end of this month.
Also, find out about her newest endeavor Women in the World: womenintheworld.com.