Florida Book Club

This big pink book with the puffy cover is better than any Florida travel guide or chamber of commerce video. Editor Gabrielle Calise returns to the Florida Book clubhouse to discuss the rewarding and sometimes-grueling process of making it all come together! https://www.floridabookclub.com

University of South Florida MFA graduate Courtney Clute's The Fermi Paradox features flash fiction — stories that are incredibly brief but substantive. We discuss the book and the genre more broadly with the author herself on this episode.

Learn the difference between a battle and a skirmish, along with the events surrounding Florida's secession and its role in the Civil War as we discuss Robert Redd's new book on these topics and others with the author himself!

We're joined today by poet and fiction author Enid Shomer to discuss her 2020 poetry collection Shoreless , which examines themes of nature and human frailty and has killer cover art!

Join us for a conversation with Owen Robertson of Tampa's LAB Theater, as he tells us about their playwright-centric focus and commitment to producing original works, the theater scene in Tampa, and the history and future of LAB. We'll also preview the next production, which opens on October 20!

Florida's "town without pity" and a variety of obscure Florida history, memoir, and true-crime books that border on pulp are the topics we discuss with Jason Vuic, author of The Swamp Peddlers, as he drops in to talk about the book he's currently working on. I also reference the exact same passage from Shelley Katz's Alligator for a second week straight.

"Come for the poetry, stay for the paranormal!" That is how Islandia Journal's founder and publisher, native Miamian Jason Katz, wants you to think of his passion project, which features accounts of cryptids, folklore, myth, and obscure history from Florida and the greater Caribbean region. Contemporary themes and issues are never far out of the picture, though, and the special issue of Islandia l...

No one would ever confuse Burt I. Gordon for a staunch environmentalist, and if you listen to the commentary on the DVD of his film "Empire of the Ants," even casual viewers might know more about the film than the auteur himself. Join me as I ruminate on this peculiar classic, which has a lot of insights to reveal about the Florida sugar industry both then and now.

Buffalo chicken sundaes, hospital restaurants, forest castles, why local news matters, and more await in this week's episode. 100 Things to Do in Tampa Bay Before You Die author Kristen Hare joins me to talk about the third edition of her book, obscure Tampa Bay gems, and her work with the Poynter Institute .

WLRN environmental reporter Jenny Staletovich talks about her career covering some of Florida's most pressing and urgent issues — and how python stories are, ideally, the "gateway drug" luring audiences in to learn about more mundane but much more important ecological and climate issues!

Python hunters, reptile traders, and people you might know from a meme or bizarre headline are who you might think of when you consider Florida's citizenry, but there's so much more to them and to this state, as you'll find out in this episode, where Tyler Gillespie and I discuss his 2021 book, The Thing About Florida .

The traumas endured by World War I vets during and after the conflict have mostly faded from public historical memory. Rebecca Johnston joins me to discuss her new novel, Not To Keep , which follows the lives of a tight group of North Florida friends from their rustic childhoods through their experiences war and its painful aftermath.

Craig Pittman has been called a Florida Institution, and you can see why when you read his work. He discusses his latest book, a collection of essays and columns culled from a 30-plus year career in journalism, with us on Florida Book Club.

John Davis Jr. explores a dark period in his home state's history in his Florida Book Award-winning poetry collection The Places That Hold , but there are some lighthearted and thoughtful ruminations on parenthood in there, too. He discusses his work with me on this episode of Florida Book Club.

Gianna Russo, Tampa's Wordsmith (yes, that's a real office) presents to us in the recently published book All I See is Your Glinting: "Nature and the collective human experience that we all went through" in the later months of 2020, accompanied by striking photos by Jenny Carey.

If you can survive Florida, you are the fittest. Season 5 of Florida Book Club is coming Wednesday, May 18!

Jane Austen and the Buddha are not thinkers one would normally consider together, right? Or, on the surface, we might not think they offer lenses to consider each others' works through. But Kathryn Duncan, a professor of English at St. Leo University and our guest today on Florida Book Club, has literally written the book on that very subject, and she'll discuss it with us on our final episode of...

Don't be fooled by the asinine title. Or the ludicrous plot. Or the fact that it stars Tiffany and Debbie Gibson. Or the dollar-store CGI effects. Instead, enjoy Mega-Python vs Gatoroid for its unintentional and accidentally poignant subtexts about Florida wildlife.

Florida film historian Lisa Bradberry joins me to talk about the rich history of Florida filmmaking, the years early in Oliver Hardy's career when he lived and worked in Jacksonville, and her favorite Florida movies! There's a link to an episode of Florida Crossroads on our website where Lisa appears in a segment beginning at about 12:45, also!

Harry Morgan of Ernest Hemingway's 1937 novel is probably the worst protagonist ever. But there's possibly more to this novel, which I'd rank as Hemingway's worst. Rebecca Johnston of the Florida Hemingway Society joins me to discuss the positives in this story of Depression-era Key West I may have overlooked.

Fans of Richard Linklater's Slacker or Harmony Korine's Gummo will find a lot to like in Errol Morris' 1981 documentary Vernon, Florida . I'm joined by Wanda Duncan to discuss this quirky little film, which she is really a fan of.

First story with a female narrator set in Florida! First story set in Key West written by a woman! Well, maybe. "The Storm" COULD be those things, but it sat unread in an archive for 150 years. I'll talk about its origins and significance with Keith Huneycutt of Florida Southern College in this episode.

Today we're revisiting "The Strange Country" of Ernest Hemingway (otherwise known as 1930s Florida), tracing the possible route Hemingway might have taken through the state and how it's reflected in the posthumously-published story. Alec Kissoondyal of University of Florida and Henry Johnston of the Rochester Institute of Technology join me to discuss their plans to discover and memorialize Heming...

You probably know Kristen Arnett from her bestselling 2019 novel Mostly Dead Things . But I first discovered her work in the pages of Felt in the Jaw , her 2017 collection of short stories documenting "the lives of queer women and their families in the light of the bleak Florida sun." There's so much more of the grotesque and ominous in these tales, though; they'd do Flannery O'Connor proud. I'll...

We're back from the beach! The new season of Florida Book Club is coming January 5.