Florida Book Club

Ariel Francisco joins us today to discuss his bilingual volume of poems, A Sinking Ship Is Still a Ship, which features haikus, lots of poems about insomnia, and haunting imagery of the sea reclaiming Florida. He also talks a bit about his own translation work!

Printmaker and illustrator Russell Beans' work depicting cryptids, exotic animals, and rare endangered plants has graced the pages of Islandia Journal since its inception. He joins us to talk about his creative process, the inspiring wonder of the Everglades and south Florida, and where else you can see his work!

Michael Wheaton's Home Movies is hard to classify. It's basically a memoir-essay-treatise of novella length, I guess? And it covers the evolution of media consumption, whether art or creativity matter, land development in Florida, and the value of nostalgia. And the author talks about all that with us today on Florida Book Club!

Ryan Rivas is a regular at the Clubhouse; he joins us today to talk about his novella Lizard People , conspiratorial thinking, ideas of white identity, and the marketability of the short novel as a form (and those are all closely related topics here!).

Flash fiction, micro fiction, prose poems, and so-called "short-short stories" may all be technically different forms, but if you like tiny stories of any stripe, you will love Andrea Rinard's 2023 collection Murmurations. She joins the Florida Book Club to discuss her work in this genre, getting inspiration from her students, and her affinity for 1980s settings!

Mistie Watkins joins us to talk about her alluring and compelling work Hiraeth, a collection of poetic, often-surreal vignettes detailing her childhood and family life in Central Florida. There are fairly equal doses of pathos, determination, hope, and beauty in this book, and in our talk!

We kick off Season 9 of Florida Book Club with a wide-ranging conversation covering education in Florida, the Tampa death metal scene of the late 80s-early 90s, and what it was like growing up in the Bay Area during that time. Las Vegas-based author (and Florida native) Jarret Keene joins us for this episode.

After 60+ episodes (and over a dozen blog posts), my producer and I take a look back at three years of Florida Book Club and maybe offer some vague hints as to what's ahead for the podcast!

Shane Hinton's 2015 collection Pinkies is full of bizarre gems: surreal settings, ominous images, and an absolutely terrific title story where giant predatory pythons roam a suburban community attacking and devouring humans. He joins us today to discuss Pinkies, his work as an editor, what he's got coming up, and memories of his childhood pet.

On a week where a major hurricane is heading toward Florida, author Heather Sellers joins us to discuss her 2022 Florida Book Prize winning poetry collection Field Notes from the Flood Zone , a somber meditation on Florida's ecological fragility and the ghosts of the past.

We welcome back Alicia Thompson to discuss her new novel With Love, From Cold World , the romance genre more generally (again), how her life has changed since the publication of her previous novel ( Love in the Time of Serial Killers ), and the value of content warnings.

The Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, FL, went by several names in its 100-year history. Under any name, it represents a blighted, ugly chapter in Florida history. University of South Florida anthropologist Erin Kimmerle joins us today to discuss We Carry Their Bones , her compelling account of the work she and her team undertook to bring the atrocities committed there to wider public attention...

Plants that eat people, shout-outs to Zydrunas Ilgauskas, metaphors involving the NES version of Contra, meditations on classical composers, and much more feature in P. Scott Cunningham's 2018 poetry collection Ya Te Veo . He joins us to discuss it, his work with O, Miami, translating poetry from Spanish, and what else he's got going on.

You may have seen "Eerie Florida" author Mark Muncy discussing paranormal history on the Travel Channel or Discovery. Or you may have visited his Hellview Cemetery in St. Petersburg. Or listened to his podcast, Eerie Travels. He's passionate about his work. But today, he took some time to join Florida Book Club to discuss that work with us!

Generally we think of the "apocalypse" as a bad thing. But Erika Lance and Valerie Willis of 4 Horsemen Publications eagerly strive to bring it about! (in the publishing world, that is) They join us to talk about their business model, their press' unique focus and particular mission, and writing under pseudonyms!

Do you like autobiographies? Memoirs? Biopics? True crime? Reality TV? Or any "real-life" adjacent narratives? Then you'll love the works published by Orlando-based Autofocus Books. Founder and publisher Michael Wheaton joins us to talk about how Autofocus got off the ground, his interest in "artful autobiographical writing", and more!

Nextdoor.com (specifically the Colonialtown North forums of Nextdoor.com) serves as the raw material for Ryan Rivas' fascinating collage of neighborhood photos and excerpted, rearranged, and reassembled posts from the site. He joins us to discuss his creative process, among other things, in our season 7 finale.

If you like poetry adorned with robot voices, QR codes, webcam videos, and generous references to Britney Spears, Monica Geller, and climate change, join us on this episode as we welcome Tyler Gillespie back to the podcast to discuss his soon-to-be-released collection, the nature machine! .

Who doesn't love sandwiches? Join me and self-described "sandwich obsessives" Andy Huse, Barbara Cruz, and Jeff Houck, all with their own unique set of culinary and historical credentials, as we discuss their new, Florida Book Award Gold Medal winning book The Cuban Sandwich: A History in Layers !

Native Floridian Nichole Reed returns to the Florida Book Club to discuss Oxygen's deceptively trashy-looking true crime series from 2021, Florida Man Murders .

Author Jonathan Escoffery joins us today to discuss his amazing collection of interlinked short stories, If I Survive You , essential reading for anyone who enjoys indelible characters, skillful shifts in perspective and narration, and portraits of south Florida before, during, and after Hurricane Andrew.

According to Tim Gilmore, creator and author of JaxPsychoGeo , Jacksonville has always had a hard time telling its stories. Join us as we delve into some of those stories, a lot of which are unsavory and violent, but revelatory about larger cultural forces in not just Jacksonville, but the South in general!

We here at the Florida Book Club love a good storm story. So does Joey Hedger, author of the 2018 novella In the Line of a Hurricane, We Wait . He joins us today to talk about it and about storm narratives in general.

Tune in for the season seven premiere to hear Chris get schooled on the romance genre by Alicia Thompson, Florida native and author of the novel Love in the Time of Serial Killers , a surprising, true crime-steeped rom-com set in the doldrums of a Florida summer. Further Reading Buy Love in the Time of Serial Killers via Bookshop.org Visit Alicia Thompson's website

Fiction writer Laura van den Berg joins us to talk about her most recent collection, I Hold a Wolf By the Ears , midnight logic, and why Florida is a great setting for eerie and unsettling stories. We also get to meet her dog briefly!