Devon Rodriguez Brings "Work in Progress" to Books & Books Coral Gables — October 8

Growing up in the Bronx in a single cramped room, Devon Rodriguez learned early that a blank page was one of the few things he could control. That instinct — to draw, to observe, to render the world around him with precision — became the thread that pulled him out of poverty, abuse, and chaos and into something no one around him had mapped out before.

On Thursday, October 8 at 7:00 PM, Rodriguez comes to Books & Books Coral Gables for an evening celebrating Work in Progress: A Memoir — his debut book, published September 29 by One World. The event is free and open to the public.

Rodriguez is best known for his subway portrait series — realistic, deeply human drawings of strangers on the New York City subway, filmed and posted to TikTok, where he became the most-followed visual artist on the platform. But Work in Progress goes further back: to a ninth-grade art teacher who took him on the subway not to commute, but to draw. To a grandmother who held things together. To a father whose story ends in a way that sharpens every page before it.

The memoir is raw in the way that only a self-taught artist from the Bronx can be raw — no literary posturing, no distance. Rodriguez writes the way he draws: close up, specific, with an eye for the detail that makes a person real. Publishers Weekly called it a "comprehensive self-portrait" that "inspires." Mel Robbins called it proof that "your pain is not the end of your story."

A blank page in his sketchbook was something Rodriguez could control in an otherwise chaotic life.

Rodriguez is Puerto Rican and Honduran, Bronx-born, and self-made in the most literal sense. He was a finalist in the Outwin Boochever Portrait Competition. His work has appeared in The New Yorker and The New York Times. He was named a 2025 Time100 Creator and a Forbes Top Creator the same year. He has drawn former President Biden, Oprah, and thousands of strangers who never expected to be seen that clearly.

What makes Rodriguez's story resonate in Miami specifically is the city's own relationship with that kind of biography — the immigrant hustle, the creative reinvention, the refusal to let a difficult origin define a ceiling. The Bronx and Miami are different cities, but they share a grammar. Rodriguez speaks it fluently.

Books & Books Coral Gables is located at 265 Aragon Ave, Coral Gables, FL 33134. The Devon Rodriguez author event takes place on Thursday, October 8 at 7:00 PM. Admission is free. Copies of Work in Progress are available at all three Books & Books locations — Coral Gables, Bal Harbour Shops, and Coconut Grove — and in stock as of this morning. For full event details: shop.booksandbooks.com.