Pineapple Anthology of Florida Writers

This is the first in a series of collections of fi ction and nonfi ction about Florida by legendary writers who came here—some to escape the chilly North, some to fi nd freedom, and some to investigate what the fuss was all about. From Audubon in 1834 to Dave Barry in 19 90, these writers reveal Florida’s natural beauty and her residents’ human foibles. In poetry, John Greenleaf Whittier exposes our shameful slave-holding past, and Elizabeth Bishop extols our turtles and sandbars and tropical rain. Jules Verne shoots a moon rocket off from Tampa, and Hunter Thompson delivers up his own gonzo brand of journalism in a story of marine salvage in the Keys. Hemingway rants about the government’s laxity in the face of tragedy, while Harriet Beecher Stowe off ers some advice on the time-honored practice of buying land in the Sunshine State. Florida has left its stamp on all of these authors:

John James Audubon

Ned Buntline

John Muir

Harriet Beecher Stowe

John Greenleaf Whittier

Frederick Remington

James Weldon Johnson

Jules Verne

Stephen Crane

Damon Runyon

Zora Neale Hurston

Ring Lardner

John Dos Passos

Wallace Stevens

Elizabeth Bishop

Ernest Hemingway

Tennessee Williams

John F. Kennedy

Patrick D. Smith

Isaac Bashevis Singer

Hunter Thompson

Russell Banks

Carl Hiaasen

Dave Barry