Vol. I · No. 24 · The Weekly Issue · From Key West to the Panhandle
The FloridianReporting, fiction, criticism, poetry, and cartoons — from the peninsula
Table of Contents
A complete guide to what's inside — every story, every desk. Jump straight in.
The Talk of the Beach
Comment
The cone of uncertainty has become another opinion column — trusted, doubted, and screenshotted twice before the second cup of café con leche.
Dept. of Small Talk
A slicer of Boar's Head who has been keeping the peace on Bird Road since 1993.
Dept. of Mitigation
In Naples, an octogenarian’s preparation for storm season becomes a lesson in architectural stoicism and administrative resistance.
Shouts & Murmurs
A dispatch from the front lines of recreational discipline in a retirement enclave near Sarasota.
Postcard from Cedar Key
An aquaculture pioneer faces the shifting seasons and warming waters of a quiet coastal outpost.
Dept. of Gastronomy
Seeking the elusive perfect guava pastry amid the hum of air-conditioners on Calle Ocho.
A Reporter at Large
As the cold fronts move south, a volunteer warden observes the slow-motion gathering of marine giants.
The Financial Page
A fifth-generation Osceola county rancher negotiates the relentless expansion of the tourist corridor.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
A small gallery on the Treasure Coast celebrates the enduring light of Florida’s midcentury self-taught painters.
Dept. of Horticulture
In the leafy avenues of Coral Gables, the disappearance of delicate tree-clinging specimens points to an obsessive underworld.
Shouts & Murmurs
Translating the subtle, semiotic language of waterfront listings in South Florida’s master-planned labyrinth.
Postcard from St. Augustine
Navigating the historical phantoms and very real tourists who crowd the nation's oldest city at twilight.
Dept. of Public Infrastructure
For the landlocked motorists of Palm Beach County, the rising of the bridge is an exercise in maritime resentment.
Annals of Transit
A journey aboard the sleek new train reveals a changing landscape of concrete, citrus, and high-velocity ambition.
Dept. of Zoology
In Miami's greenest neighborhood, the resident birds polarize a community with their plumage and high-decibel screams.
Postcard from Apalachicola
In a quiet fishing village, a retired dredger laments the changing bay while holding fast to old rhythms.
Dept. of Small Talk
Finding a transcendent sense of southern community in the queue for a customized cold-cut sandwich.
Dept. of Corrections
A quiet correction from the wildlife desk, filed under 'not our finest hour on the intracoastal.'
Postcard From Cedar Key
Twelve stools, one chalkboard, and a philosophical objection to the concept of a website.
Shouts & Murmurs
A short humor piece about topiary, tribalism, and the passive voice.
A Reporter at Large
For eleven consecutive days, the water came up as if the Gulf were simply looking for a place to sit down.
Letter From Little Havana
Route 11 became the shortest argument in Miami's long conversation about who belongs on Calle Ocho.
Annals of Justice
How one paralegal's stubbornness undid a wrongful conviction that the panhandle had agreed to forget.
Dispatch From the Ten Thousand Islands
His waterproof notebooks now sit in a climate lab in Gainesville, quietly rewriting the Gulf.
Annals of Technology
Inside a company that convinced strip-mall offices to pay for what the library on Colonial has always given away.
Annals of Wildlife
Forty-two nights on Loop Road with a state contractor, a headlamp, and a well-thumbed paperback.
Letter from Apalachicola
As the Apalachicola Bay oyster industry faces closure, third-generation harvesters grapple with the shifting chemistry of the river and the encroaching tide of high-end developments.
Annals of Wildlife
In the shrinking pine flatwoods of Collier County, biologists and landowners trace the delicate, increasingly perilous highway of Florida’s most reclusive predator.
Annals of Justice
A quiet battle over beach nourishment in Broward County reveals the high-stakes legal and ecological skirmishes surrounding the state's most precious commodity.
A Reporter at Large
Exploring the subterranean labyrinth of Florida’s freshwater caves, where cave divers and geologists track the invisible pollution threatening the state’s drinking water.
Dispatch from Belle Glade
On the southern lip of Lake Okeechobee, the seasonal burning of sugarcane fields creates an annual harvest of ash, jobs, and long-simmering community divisions.
Annals of Technology
In the solar-rich suburbs of Fort Myers, local grid policies and utility lobbying complicate the transition to residential sun-powered energy.
Letter from Homestead
In the agricultural fields of Miami-Dade County, immigrant laborers and small growers navigate a changing labor climate and the sudden resurgence of root rot.
Annals of Government
On the low-lying canals of Cape Coral, city planners face a daunting infrastructure deficit as they attempt to refit a mid-century suburb for the modern high tide.
A Reporter at Large
Following the professional bounty hunters who brave the night-black marshes of the Everglades to pull invasive Burmese pythons from the sawgrass.
Annals of Justice
A trial in Polk County sheds light on the bizarre and lucrative black market for orange grove leases and clandestine fruit brokerage.
Dispatch from Yeehaw Junction
At a forgotten highway crossing in Osceola County, the remnants of Old Florida struggle to survive alongside proposed toll roads and mega-lot sub-developments.
Annals of Wildlife
At the discharge canals of a Tampa power plant, hundreds of West Indian manatees huddle for survival against the background of a failing Indian River Lagoon.
Annals of Science
Along the Gulf Coast, researchers race to understand the long-term health consequences of aerosolized toxins carried inland by recurring outbreaks of Karenia brevis.
Letter from Key West
As housing prices and sea levels rise in tandem, the historic working-class community of Key West finds itself squeezed out of the very island it built.
Annals of Infrastructure
Inside the decades-long, multi-billion-dollar effort to fortify the Herbert Hoover Dike, the massive earthen wall that stands between South Florida and catastrophe.
Profile
A Key West saxophonist who never learned to compromise, and the barroom on Whitehead that let him get away with it for forty years.
Profile
A café con leche counter with fewer than a dozen recipes and a two-year waitlist for the flan.
Profile
She's mapping every unpermitted mural in Pinellas County. She has three years to go.
Profile
He gave up the rockets for a Brevard middle school. He says the seventh-graders see farther.
Profile
In a converted citrus-packing shed off 441, a small press turns out books the algorithms can't find.
Profile
In the humid nurseries of Homestead, an amateur botanist races to cross-breed a long-lost swamp orchid before the developers arrive.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
An independent printer in Tampa’s historic cigar district preserves the heavy, mechanical art of wood type in a digital age.
Profile
On the shallow flats of Apalachicola Bay, a veteran fisherman defends the ancient and unfashionable craft of gill-netting from a small wooden skiff.
Profile
A scientist in Big Cypress National Preserve tracks the invasive Burmese python with an unusual tool: her own acute sense of smell.
Profile
In the oldest city in America, a horologist struggles to synchronize the historic public clocks, despite his own chronic lateness.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
A legendary organist keeps the classic sound of the Hammond B-3 alive in a shrinking circuit of North Florida blues clubs.
Profile
A retired geologist searches the shallow, tea-colored waters of the Peace River for the black teeth of ancient sharks.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
In a small shop on Calle Ocho, a master torcedor keeps the traditional craft of the Cuban cigar alive with a sharp knife and a wooden board.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
An artist in the Gulf Coast’s glassblowing hub wrestles with the volatile, liquid beauty of molten sand in a blistering studio.
Profile
An amateur seismologist in Ocala spends his retirement mapping the unpredictable limestone voids that threaten to swallow the town.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
A retired schoolteacher in Fort Pierce works to catalog and preserve the vibrant, fast-painted landscapes of Florida’s historic black artists.
Profile
An aquatic veterinarian in Crystal River spends her winters treating injured manatees while arguing against the tourists who love them.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
A neon craftsman in Miami Beach fights to preserve the glowing, gas-filled tubes that defined the city’s mid-century skyline.
Profile
In the historic Greek enclave of Tarpon Springs, a veteran sponge diver descends into the Gulf with a heavy copper helmet and a hand-made hook.
Profile
An astronomer in the dry flatwoods of Kissimmee Prairie Preserve defends the state’s last remaining dark sky from encroaching development.
Fiction
My mother kept a book that was not exactly a diary and not exactly a ledger.
Fiction
Three siblings, one rented cottage on 30A, and a will that no one wants to open before the shrimp boil.
Fiction (Translated From an Imagined Spanish)
Translated from an invented Cuban Spanish by Ines Kobayashi.
Flash Fiction
A quartet of very short stories, each under a page, each ending with a mosquito.
Fiction
A retired pool technician in Englewood finds himself watching an unfamiliar type of migration along the canals of Charlotte County.
Flash Fiction
Under the black water of the reef, two brothers search for something lost during the building of the overseas highway.
Fiction (Translated From an Imagined Yucatec)
A seasonal harvester in the tomato fields of Collier County recalls the limestone wells of his youth while waiting out a tropical depression.
Fiction
An assistant at a roadside fossil museum near Palatka comes to terms with her employer's shifting sense of prehistory.
Flash Fiction
During the demolition of an Art Deco hotel on Collins Avenue, an architect finds a collection of midcentury menus in the wall cavities.
Fiction (Translated From an Imagined Creole)
A grandfather in Little Haiti tends to his racing pigeons while the shadow of new condominiums creeps across his backyard.
Fiction
In a trailer park near Sarasota, a retired performer from the Ringling show watches the new acts practice on the beach.
Flash Fiction
A stonecutter on Anastasia Island reflects on the soft rock that built the oldest fort in Florida.
Fiction
A veteran fishing guide on Lake Okeechobee takes out a client who seems more interested in the depth finder than the fish.
Flash Fiction
A Greek diver in Tarpon Springs prepares his heavy canvas suit for his final descent of the spring season.
Fiction (Translated From an Imagined Spanish)
In the damp hold of an Ybor City brick building, an elderly woman remembers the Cuba she left behind while stripping the heavy veins from tobacco leaves.
Fiction
An actress playing a fairy princess at an Orlando theme park spends her lunch break behind the artificial mountain.
Flash Fiction
A grower in Lake County walks his groves after a sudden January freeze has threatened his family's livelihood.
Fiction (Translated From an Imagined French)
A young woman from Bordeaux finds herself sorting wild oysters in a timber-built shack on the Florida panhandle.
Fiction
An archaeologist digging on a remote island near Cedar Key uncovers a layer of prehistoric ash that challenges her timeline.
Books
Why the reader who lingers with a paperback and a ceiling fan may be doing something more radical than the reader who finishes.
Cultural Comment
Neighborhood apps are turning into essays. What that says about Sarasota.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
A company that considers the seagulls part of the script.
Personal History
A memoir, in three frequencies, from a childhood on Sanibel.
Books
A new collection of letters reveals the domestic friction behind Zora Neale Hurston’s Florida return.
Cultural Comment
Six decades of Morris Lapidus’s baroque modernism in the high humidity of Collins Avenue.
Personal History
Lessons in permanence from a childhood spent near the St. Johns River.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
A sculptor’s attempt to mount an exhibition twenty feet below the Florida Straits.
A Critic at Large
How twenty-six self-taught Black artists painted their way into Florida’s mythos.
Books
A fresh look at Wallace Stevens’s annual escapes to the Casa Marina and their frosty influence.
Cultural Comment
Finding the secular sublime among the pastel green tiles of the state’s favorite grocery chain.
Personal History
A former Weeki Wachee mermaid reflects on the art of keeping an air hose hidden from view.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
How an oil-stained coastal town became a winter sanctuary for world-class chamber music.
A Critic at Large
How Hollywood’s fascination with our black water created a lasting Gothic nightmare.
Books
A new history of the binders who sold underwater lots to Northern dreamers.
Cultural Comment
At the world’s largest shuffleboard club, old rituals are meeting a younger, nocturnal crowd.
Personal History
Remembering a Sanibel Island childhood spent in a house designed to escape the storm surge.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
In the historic mutual aid societies, the tradition of the lector continues to influence local actors.
A Critic at Large
How Robert Rauschenberg turned sixty acres of Gulf-front sand into a radical laboratory.
Poem
A short poem for the hour that is not quite an hour.
Poem
A short poem on kitchens, ceiling fans, and afternoon forecasts.
Poem (Translated From an Invented Korean)
Translated by Lily Bao from a Korean original that does not exist.
Poem
Twelve lines, one long apology, one ceiling fan still spinning.
Poem
A brief meditation on the closing of evening over Boca Ciega Bay.
Poem
Reflections on the brackish margins of the Indian River Lagoon.
Poem
An observation on the swift arrival of rain across the inland water.
Poem (Translated From an Invented Floridian-Timucuan)
An imagined survival of an early northern-interior landscape.
Poem
An appreciation of stillness on the Gulf Coast in late winter.
Poem
A lyric dealing with the intense humidity of the southern interior.
Poem (Translated From an Invented Gulf-Patois)
A short lyric on the southern-most harbor at dawn.
Poem
An exploration of concrete structures and salt water in Tampa Bay.
Poem
An account of the citrus groves of Polk County under a hard frost warning.
Poem
A view of the annual migration from a beachside bluff.
Poem (Translated From an Invented Calusa-Vernacular)
A voice from the shell-heaps of Estero Bay.
Poem
An examination of tourist monuments and true history in the oldest city.
Poem
A landscape observed through a rain-streaked windshield near Yeehaw Junction.
Poem
An observation on the gentle beasts seeking warmth in Volusia County.
Poem
An encounter with the invasive paperbark tree in a Broward County park.
The Critics
The Current Cinema
The rare follow-up that treats memory — and the smell of a Publix parking lot after rain — as a subject, not a shortcut.
On Television
A four-episode drama about a horse farm that mistrusts its own dialogue — and is better for it.
Pop Music
The singer's first record arrives already exhausted with its own SoundCloud myth.
The Art World
A Wynwood retrospective that dares you to look at what almost isn't there.
At the Theatre
A revival at the Asolo trims the set until only the argument remains.
Tables for Two
Nebraska Avenue's newest storefront hides an argument about time itself, and about lard.
The Current Cinema
A new historical noir turns the muck of Lake Okeechobee into a backdrop for an elegant, slow-burning study of post-war corruption and domestic ruin.
Tables for Two
In Sarasota, a daring new restaurant pairs the brackish air of the bay with a menu that elevates forgotten coastal ingredients into miniature works of modern art.
The Art World
An ambitious new exhibition at the Norton Museum of Art explores how contemporary Florida artists are confronting the slow, watery disappearance of their landscape.
On Television
A superb new dramatic comedy on FX finds its cold, hilarious heart in the swampy backwaters of Florida’s probate courts and municipal dynasties.
Pop Music
The latest album from an Orlando synthesizer artist captures the eerie, neon-lit loneliness of the flatwoods at night.
At the Theatre
A minimalist new drama in Fort Myers explores the quiet, generational friction between the retirees who bought the dream and the locals who survive it.
Books
A new biography of the eccentric naturalist who spent her life defending Florida’s rarest bird offers a rich, cautionary history of the state’s vanishing interior.
The Current Cinema
An intimate, gorgeous modern film about underwater salvage operators in Key West captures the heavy melancholy of a life lived on the edge of the continental shelf.
Tables for Two
Deep within Florida's horse country, an ambitious kitchen redefines regional cuisine with an obsessive focus on the wild game and forgotten plants of the scrub.
The Art World
A stunning new photographic exhibition in Fort Lauderdale documents the slow, concrete burial of the historic rivers that once defined the Everglades.
On Television
A quiet, atmospheric new mystery series on PBS captures the dark water and long memories of Florida’s panhandle with a rare, novelistic depth.
Pop Music
A gorgeous, Latin-infused jazz record from Miami captures the elegant, humid decadence of the city's historic suburbs with a wonderful, understated grace.
At the Theatre
In St. Augustine, a challenging and brilliant new experimental play uses the history of Florida's oldest city to explore the modern anxieties of survival.
Books
A sweeping and elegant new novel traces the decline of a Central Florida citrus empire through three generations of family secrets and changing soil.
The Current Cinema
A quiet, stunning new film set on Sanibel Island turns the obsessive pursuit of sea shells into a beautiful, delicate study of grief and preservation.
Puzzles & Games
Today's Puzzle
Edited by the games desk. Average solve time: 22 minutes, one iced coffee.
The Cryptic
British-style clues, Floridian-friendly grid. Solutions post Monday.
Name Drop
Guess who — in as few clues as you dare. (No, it's not the alligator.)
Spelling Nib
Seven letters, one required. Find every word you can before the storm rolls in.
Archive
Browse a year of Sunday grids, from beginner to brutal.
Today's Puzzle
In Coconut Grove, a veteran constructor contemplates the quiet geometry of the afternoon grid and the limits of the human solving mind.
The Cryptic
A master of double definitions finds inspiration among the slow tides of Sarasota and the habits of retired classics professors.
Spelling Nib
On the porch of a faded hotel in Apalachicola, the daily pursuit of seven letters reveals the limits of vocabulary and patience.
Sunday Acrostic
Deconstructing a passage from a forgotten Florida naturalist to build a grid that behaves like a slow-flowing river.
Rebus of the Week
When three letters must occupy the space of one, the solver of Key West undergoes a small crisis of spatial geometry.
Name Drop
A quiet examination of the proper nouns that dominate our grids and the odd immortality they afford standard historical figures.
Archive
A search through old filing cabinets in a Tampa library reveals how the puzzles of the past captured the anxieties of their era.
The Cryptic
Floating down the St. Johns River, a writer considers the strange pleasure of dismantling words only to rebuild them as something else.
Today's Puzzle
In the glaring heat of a Gainesville afternoon, a college sophomore hits the midweek barrier of grid difficulty and finds comfort in defeat.
Name Drop
How a tiny, obscure body of water in New York or a Finnish architect became permanent residents of the Florida solver's imagination.
Spelling Nib
Staring at a circle of seven yellow honeycombs on a screen in Pensacola, a retired lawyer finds the limits of regional slang.
Sunday Acrostic
A Sunday morning in Coral Gables spent translating a grid of numbers back into a passage of forgotten mid-century architecture.
Rebus of the Week
A puzzle constructor in Orlando explains why cramming a theme park into a single square of graph paper requires a certain degree of structural magic.
Archive
Reclaiming a box of water-damaged newspapers from a Key Largo basement reveals how the puzzles of the nineteen-seventies survived the damp.
Today's Puzzle
On a barrier island near Fort Myers, the formidable Saturday grid presents a challenge that demands all morning and several cups of coffee.
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