Advertise on podcast: Florida Book Club

Jennifer Bannan joins us to discuss Tamiami Trail: Miami Stories, a collection of tales reflecting on the beauty of the Everglades, toxic South Florida machismo, corporate naming rights for hurricanes, and the more personal experience of leaving one's home state. This book has definite In Our Time vibes with short vignettes between the longer stories, too!

Poet and writing professor Heather Sellers joins us at the clubhouse to discuss her newly-published collection of poems, the final volume in a trilogy exploring natural spaces of Florida and their inhabitants.

If you plan to visit Daytona Beach, you might want to bring Robert Redd's handy guide to look beyond the area's traditional "Four Pillars" — but you'll have to read 100 Things To Do in Daytona Beach Before You Die and/or listen to our conversation with its author to find out what those pillars are! And you'll be surprised, like I was, to see what Daytona has to offer.

If you love the Doors (or specifically Jim Morrison), odysseys around the world, Thelma and Louise-style adventures without the killing, critiques of academia, and/or very distinctive narrative styles, you'll want to hear Rebecca J. Johnston discuss her new novel Finding Jim with us!

Vidge Floyd, the adolescent protagonist of Florida Book Award-winning author John Davis, Jr.'s debut novel Vidge Floyd and the Secret Frequencies, is "the neurodivergent hero we all need," according to the back cover. John Davis, Jr. makes a return trip to the clubhouse to talk about his first published work of fiction, which one critic likens to the Hardy Boys "with a touch of Stranger Things."

Saw Palm is the University of South Florida's Florida-themed art and literature journal. In this episode we welcome fiction and managing editor Benjamin Sperduto, poetry editor Tatiana Avdelas, and poetry, art, and comics editor Sarah-Joy Milner to the clubhouse to talk about their experiences helming Saw Palm this year. They're all writers themselves as well, so we talk a bit about their own work!

Shane Hinton's "Other Shane Hintons" might be called meta-fiction, a memoir in lies, autobiographical fantasy, or any other number of hybrid genre classifications. He joins us this episode to break it down and to get a bit more into the meat of the eight bizarre and enthralling pieces that comprise his newest book from Burrow Press.

Ever wonder what kind of things you learn working at a bookstore? I certainly have! And luckily, writer, college instructor, and bookseller Rachel Knox joined me for this episode to talk about the role bookstores fill in a community, how they can inspire you as a writer and reader, and to preview her book of essays, which drops in March 2026.

Resentments and petty jealousies build up to murder at a lush yoga retreat in Melbourne in Asha Elias' The Namaste Club! We're happy to have her at the clubhouse to talk about her new novel, invasive species, and how books are marketed to certain audiences. "Spicy margaritas," anyone?

If you love any of Scarface, orcas, Miami, dangerous family histories, Pitbull impersonators, and/or compelling stories about lost young men looking for narratives to believe in, you will love our conversation with Jennine Capo-Crucet on her novel Say Hello to My Little Friend, which features all of the above, and we are thrilled to have her for our Season 11 finale!

Ariel Francisco's new bilingual poetry collection (Spanish translations by the poet's father!) ruminates on subjects familiar to anyone who's worried at all about Florida's future: development, sea level rise, "resilience", et al. But it's also kind of hopeful, as we discuss with him today. And there are lots of ocean critters, a motif it shares with Ariel's previous collection A Sinking Ship Is Still a Ship, which we discussed with him in Season 9.

In this week's episode, we catch up with Shane Hinton, author of Pinkies and Radio Dark, and editor of We Can't Help It If We're From Florida, ahead of his keynote speech at the Florida College English Assocation conference later this month. He's got a new novel-in-stories (or is it a short story collection?) coming out later in 2025, which he'll preview for us!

A lot of Florida's boutique resorts, lodges, beach motels, and villas have some pretty intriguing stories to tell! Poynter Institute director of craft and local news Kristen Hare joins us to discuss her new book, the not-quite-history-not-quite-travel-guide Hotels, Motels, and Inns of Florida, which brings these stories to light and will definitely give Floridians some staycation ideas

Darcy Greco's novel of addiction, family dysfunction, and despair is saved from bleakness by her resilient and optimistic narrator. Darcy joins us today to discuss what it was like inhabiting this character's dark life during the composition of the novel, why fiction is preferable to memoir as a medium, and how being a northern transplant to Tampa inspired her, to a degree.

The Storm is an important literary document in Florida's history. It's also a compelling storm story (if anyone still wants to read one after 2024). Keith Huneycutt joins us again to talk about the newly-published edition from the University Press of Florida, how we can say with near-certainty who wrote it, and why author Ellen Brown Anderson's legacy matters historically.