Books
In Defense of the Slow Chapter, Read on a Porch in July
Why the reader who lingers with a paperback and a ceiling fan may be doing something more radical than the reader who finishes.
Continue reading →Vol. I · No. 24 · The Weekly Issue · From Key West to the Panhandle
The FloridianReporting, fiction, criticism, poetry, and cartoons — from the peninsula
Culture
Books, ideas, and the argument on the drive back over the Skyway.
Essays and criticism on what the peninsula is reading, watching, and arguing about at brunch.
Also in culture
Cultural Comment
The Return of the Long Nextdoor Post
Neighborhood apps are turning into essays. What that says about Sarasota.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
The Sarasota Theatre That Rehearses on the Bayfront
A company that considers the seagulls part of the script.
Personal History
My Father's Marine-Band Radio
A memoir, in three frequencies, from a childhood on Sanibel.
Books
Eating the Melon
A new collection of letters reveals the domestic friction behind Zora Neale Hurston’s Florida return.
Cultural Comment
The Curve and the Chandelier
Six decades of Morris Lapidus’s baroque modernism in the high humidity of Collins Avenue.
Personal History
Preservation and Decay
Lessons in permanence from a childhood spent near the St. Johns River.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
Art for the Angelfish
A sculptor’s attempt to mount an exhibition twenty feet below the Florida Straits.
A Critic at Large
The Speed of Sunset
How twenty-six self-taught Black artists painted their way into Florida’s mythos.
Books
Stevens under the Palms
A fresh look at Wallace Stevens’s annual escapes to the Casa Marina and their frosty influence.
Cultural Comment
Sub and Spirit
Finding the secular sublime among the pastel green tiles of the state’s favorite grocery chain.
Personal History
The Underwater Ballet
A former Weeki Wachee mermaid reflects on the art of keeping an air hose hidden from view.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
The Ringling Resonance
How an oil-stained coastal town became a winter sanctuary for world-class chamber music.
A Critic at Large
Shadows in the Sawgrass
How Hollywood’s fascination with our black water created a lasting Gothic nightmare.
Books
The Paper Paradise
A new history of the binders who sold underwater lots to Northern dreamers.
Cultural Comment
The Courtly Game
At the world’s largest shuffleboard club, old rituals are meeting a younger, nocturnal crowd.
Personal History
The House on Stilts
Remembering a Sanibel Island childhood spent in a house designed to escape the storm surge.
Onward and Upward with the Arts
The Readers of Ybor
In the historic mutual aid societies, the tradition of the lector continues to influence local actors.
A Critic at Large
Found on the Spit
How Robert Rauschenberg turned sixty acres of Gulf-front sand into a radical laboratory.
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