Florida Book Club

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!

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!

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 looking back at Hurricane Andrew seems especially poignant as we wrap up the 2022 storm season. Join us for this conversation!

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.