Florida Book Club

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 and to bring the remains of those who never left back to their families.

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!