"Brighter than a digital print-out, 100% Pure Florida Fiction provides a full-featured map of Florida’s imaginative landscape at the stark turning of the millennial moment--with visions and aftershocks that linger in the mind long after reading."--Joe David Bellamy, former publisher and editor, Fiction International
From "Migration of the Love Bugs" by Jill McCorkle:
My husband and I live in a tin can. He calls it the streamline model, the top of the line, the cream of the crop when it comes to moveable homes. Ambulatory and proud of it. That's Frank's motto and I guess it makes sense in a way, since he is the only one of six siblings who's still alive and walking, not to even mention that he spent his whole adult life setting things in concrete--house foundations and driveways, sidewalks that will remain until the New England winters crack them once too often and that new cement outfit that just opened comes in to redo the job. We're in Florida now and the only concrete we own are the cinder blocks that keep our wheels from turning. "Can't we at least put our tin can up on a foundation like everybody else's?" I asked our first day here. "You know, pretend it's a real building rather than a souped-up vehicle?" He was in what he called his retirement clothes, pastel golfwear, though he has never touched a club. He was surveying the flat, swampy, treeless land as if this was the Exodus. Even that day, our belongings not even unpacked, I was thinking that if this was the Promised Land, Moses for sure dealt me a bad hand.
This anthology of modern Florida fiction showcases the work of 21 writers, including such literary lights as Frederick Barthelme, Alison Lurie, Jill McCorkle, Peter Meinke, and Joy Williams, as well as that of new and emerging writers. Sifting through over 600 stories in books, magazines, literary journals, and the internet, the editors selected the best Florida fiction of the century’s last decades. What these stories have in common, of course, is a Florida setting--but a Florida so strongly evoked that it is more character than place. In these stories Florida is sinister, full of alligators, creeping plants, heavy clouds, noir cops and con artists; it is the surreal spread of theme parks, condominiums, and strip malls; and it is a paradise--lost, regained, and remembered--of sea, sun, hammock, forest, and glade. 100% Pure Florida Fiction is the perfect literary companion for Florida travels, armchair and actual, from the Panhandle to Key West and a dozen places in between. And it is proof that Florida is the stuff good stories are made of.
Susan Hubbard is associate professor of English at the University of Central Florida in Orlando and the author of two collections of short fiction: Blue Money (1999) and Walking on Ice (1990).
Robley Wilson, professor of English at the University of Northern Iowa, has been editor of the North American Review since 1969. He has published a novel, four books of short fiction, and three books of poetry, including Everything Paid For (UPF, 1999).
Larroquette / Frederick Barthelme Foley's Confessions / Tom Chiarella Dangerously the Summer Burns / Philip Cioffari Me and Dr. Bob / Steve Cushman Wind and Rain / John Henry Fleming The Gossamer Girl / Archelis Gonzalez Asendorf The Blind Gambler / Jeffrey Greene Alligator Joe & Pancho Villa / William R. Kanouse Fauna in Florida / Karen Loeb The Pool People / Alison Lurie Jagged Tooth, Great Tooth / Wendell Mayo Migration of the Love Bugs / Jill Mccorkle The Cranes / Peter Meinke The Flower's Noiseless Hunger, the Tree's Clandestine Tide / Patrick J. Murphy In the House of Simple Sentences / Louis Phillips Shopping Expedition / Elisavietta Ritchie Taking Names / Enid Shomer The Ferdinand Magellan / William Snyder, Jr. Tension / Abraham Verghese Critterworld / Steve Watkins The Blue Men / Joy Williams
Susan Hubbard, born in upstate New York, is the author of two collections of short fiction, both winners of national prizes, and four novels. The Society of S was published in May 2007 by Simon & Schuster, and The Year of Disappearances, a sequel, was released in May 2008. The U.S. paperback edition of The Year of Disappearances was published in 2009. The third volume in the Ethical Vampire series, The Season of Risks, was published in July 2010. Hubbard's books have been translated and published in more than 15 countries. Her short stories have appeared in TriQuarterly, The Mississippi Review, The North American Review, America West, Kalliope, Ploughshares, and other journals. She is coeditor of 100% Pure Florida Fiction, an anthology. She has received teaching awards from Syracuse University, Cornell University, the University of Central Florida, and the South Atlantic Adminstrators of Departments of English. She has been awarded residencies at Yaddo, the Djerassi Resident Artists Project, the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, and Cill Rialaig. Hubbard has led writing workshops at universities and arts programs across the United States and the United Kingdom. A former president of Associated Writing Programs, she has served as an assessor and curriculum consultant to several colleges and universities. Hubbard currently is a Professor of English at the University of Central Florida. She is an advocate for animal rights, social justice, academic etiquette, and literacy. Her hobbies include running, salvaging, and collecting items of questionable taste.
Being a Floridaphile I really got a kick out of this book. These 21 short stories covered it all - heat and humidity, hurricanes, palmetto bugs aka cockroaches, alligators, the Venice Pier, love bugs, “tin cans”, the Atlantic, the Gulf and the Keys. What more could you ask for? ☀️🌈🏝⛱
PS - something I forgot - the couple seeing the Whooping Cranes in Florida were one in a million - there are only 14 left. As an avid birdwatcher I questioned this because I never seen one, let alone a pair (even if they mate for life’s). For accurate info go to Google.