Florida Book Club

Florida before air-conditioning was still somehow considered paradise by a lot of people, including "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" author Harriet Beecher Stowe, who wrote a book on it! Join me as I discuss her 1873 travelogue "Palmetto Leaves" with Florida Institute of Technology professor Debbie Lelekis. Find further reading and a full transcript at FloridaBookClub.com

Ernest Hemingway’s association with Florida is most commonly defined by his time spent in Key West during the 1930s. However, in “The Strange Country,” published posthumously as part of “The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway,” the protagonist and his much younger girlfriend embark on a road trip odyssey from Miami to New Orleans, stopping in many distinct Florida locales along the way and catching up on news of the Spanish Civil War. In this episode, I’m joined by my brother, John Nank, an erstwhile Hemingway fanboy, to talk about “The Strange Country.” Find further reading and a full transcript at FloridaBookClub.com.

Hi, I'm Christopher Nank, and I'd like to introduce Florida Book Club, a new podcast focusing on the forgotten, undervalued, underrated, misrepresented, and weird literature, film, media, music, and assorted other pop cultural relics of the Sunshine State. In each episode, myself and occasional assorted guests—sometimes writers, sometimes egghead academics like myself, but mostly just ordinary book and film lovers and fans—will dish on and debate and discuss works we're passionate about. So if you saw book club in the title and were instantly turned off, don't be. We'll take frequent detours into other mediums. That no budget, eco-horror movie you saw when you were a kid? Some obscure death metal album recorded in Tampa in the late 1980s? Old Florida ruins inhabited by shadow people? Yeah, we'll likely get into that sort of stuff, too.

Of course, we'll also dig into the literary history of the state. Does Florida have a literary canon? If so, does a 1970s pulp novel about a giant alligator belong in it? Is it too soon to put Colson Whitehead's "Nickel Boys" in the Florida canon? Is there a definitive Florida novel, story, or poem? And so on. Our first season will launch in November 2020. Join me and these potential various guests for some intellectually stimulating and entertaining discussions. Hopefully you'll come out of it with a new reading list and an appreciation for Florida's wildly diverse artistic and cultural heritage.