Florida may lately be making headlines for alligators, hurricanes and culture wars, but we have another, more enduring claim to fame: great literature.
The pantheon of Florida authors includes Ernest Hemingway, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, John D. MacDonald, Zora Neale Hurston, Jack Kerouac, Elmore Leonard, Carl Hiaasen, Stephen King—and a new generation of gifted novelists, poets and nonfiction authors is expanding their legacy.
The Florida Book Awards were founded in 2006 to recognize the state’s literary tradition. This year’s awards recognize 33 authors in 11 categories, including Spanish-language books, visual stories, poetry and the recently added award for a developing writer.
While earlier writers tended to focus on the beauty—and menace—of the exotic Florida landscape and the colorful and sometimes seedy characters who inhabited it, today’s authors often contrast the state’s storied past with its present realities of runaway growth, strident politics and the antics of clueless citizens collectively known as “Florida Man.”
Keith Simmons, executive director of the awards, agrees the state is a never-ending source of creative inspiration. “Florida has a diverse environment, not just from nature, but other things like the space program, the presence of First Nations and peoples, and the varied aspects of our economy,” he says. “And so many people come from all over the world, increasing the chances of encountering a story you’ve never heard before.”
The awards, which are administered by the Florida State University Libraries and co-sponsored by Florida Humanities Center for the Book and several other organizations, recognize Florida authors or books about the state. This year, Simmons says, they received 170 nominations.
Here’s your guide to the winning titles, including a peek inside the pages of the books that won first-place gold. Helpful hint: Make sure you have your library card or credit card handy, because if you’re like us, you’ll be adding more than a few to your summer reading list.
Young Children’s Literature
Gold
Frizzy Haired Zuzu
by Medeia Sharif
This children’s picture book breaks new ground for Medeia Sharif, whose resumé includes a long list of young adult fiction. With bright illustrations by Bosma Hosam, it tells the story of a girl who loves to dance and ride bikes but despairs as her curly red hair grows bigger and bouncier the older she gets. After several hilarious failed attempts to control her hair, she works hard and saves money to have it straightened in a salon. But the new look brings unexpected questions, prompting Zuzu to consider the true nature of beauty.
Sharif is a high school English teacher with a master’s degree in psychology who was born in New York City and now lives in Miami. Florida Book Award jurors appreciated her use of Arabic words and called Frizzy Haired Zuzu a “beautifully illustrated book with a powerful message of self-acceptance and loving oneself.”
Silver
Armando’s Island
by Marsha Diana Arnold
Bronze
Our Roof Is Blue
by Sara E. Echenique
(A Florida Humanities selection for the National Book Festival.)
Older Children’s Literature
Gold
The Mystery of the Radcliffe Riddle
by Taryn Souders
Souders’ young adult novels have received many state book awards, and now her first Florida Book Award. The central characters are a middle-school boy, Grady, and his father, who learn the town eccentric has left them a 300-year-old piece of cloth with intricate needlework containing clues to the location of hidden riches. As Grady tries to decode the map, he discovers others are aware of the tapestry and trying to get it from him.
Souders has said she got her sense of humor from her days as a middle-school math teacher—her 2010 book Whole-Y Cow Fractions Are Fun features the antics of a patriotic, ice-cream-eating, cello-playing cow. This is her fifth book. Among other awards, it received the Kirkus Reviews’ “12 Must-Read Middle-Grade Mysteries.”
Silver
Wild Inventions
by Sandra Markle
Bronze
Tapping Feet
by Moira Rose Donohue
Honorable Mention
Bee Catastrophe
by Marta Magellan
Young Adult
Gold
A Tall Dark Trouble
by Vanessa Montalban
Vanessa Montalban draws on her life growing up in a Cuban-American community in Miami, surrounded by magic, spells and rituals. Montalban’s father came to Florida from Cuba as part of the Mariel boatlift. She has said she was inspired to write her debut novel after the fall of Fidel Castro. It’s a dual timeline story, moving between twin sisters Ofelia and Defli Sanchez in 2016 Miami and a young girl in 1980s Cuba whose mother is part of a secret cult that guards an infamous comandante.
Montalban has described the book as a blend of fantasy, romance, mystery and historical fiction. Jurors called it a gripping thriller that captivates from start to finish. “The author’s descriptions vividly bring the city of Miami and the clandestine meetings to life, creating a literary gem that resonates with readers,” they wrote.
Silver
My Heart is Hurting
by S.E. Reed
Bronze
The Rise
by David Towner
General Nonfiction
Gold
The Watchmaker’s Daughter
by Larry Loftis
This marks best-selling author Larry Loftis’s third Florida Book Award. In this book, he details the life of Corrie Ten Boom, a Dutch watchmaker’s daughter who survived time in a concentration camp after saving hundreds of Jews during World War II.
Letters, photos and notes offer insights into the design of a secret room in her family’s home that could hide as many as six people during Gestapo raids and also describe her arrest, along with her father and sister. Only Corrie survived. After her release from Ravensbrück Concentration Camp, she shared messages of love, forgiveness and God’s grace as a Christian missionary and on speaking tours worldwide.
Jurors said the characters were “described in enough detail that the reader begins to feel as if they know each one personally and they can be seen as real people with real motives (both good and bad).”
Silver
Broken: Transforming Child
Protective Services
by Jessica Pryce
Bronze
Crusade to Heal America
by Judith L. Pearson
Florida Nonfiction
Gold
Path of the Panther: New Hope for Wild Florida
by Carlton Ward, Jr.
The plight of the Florida panther has often been reported on, but native son Carlton Ward Jr. manages to make this book both fresh and engrossing, thanks to what jurors called a “combination of amazing photographs by the immensely talented Ward and essays by some of the most talented nature writers in the state.”
Although panthers have recovered from their near-extinction in the 1980s, their future is still at risk. Human encroachment on the cats’ historic territory is the biggest threat. Ward has led National Geographic-sponsored expeditions to explore what he calls the Florida Wildlife Corridor, made up of 17.7 million acres of adjacent public and private lands that allow the panthers to range throughout Florida. That corridor gives reason to hope these magnificent creatures will continue to roam the Florida wild.
Silver
From Death Row to Freedom: The Struggle for Racial Justice in the Pitts-Lee Case
by Philip Hubbart
Bronze
Ybor City: Crucible of the Latina South
by Sarah McNamara
Bronze
Once Upon a Time in Florida:
Stories of Life in the Land of Promises
by Jacki Levine
(This anthology of selections from decades
of FORUM stories is co-published by
Florida Humanities.)
General Fiction
Gold
The Vaster Wilds
by Lauren Groff
In this compelling novel, a servant girl escapes from the horrors of a settlement in colonial America and learns to survive in the wild on her own, an experience that makes her—and the reader—question the very constructs of civilization.
The book was an instant New York Times bestseller and one of Barack Obama’s favorite books of 2023. NPR described the book like this: “Part historical, part horror, part breathless thriller, part wilderness survival tale, The Vaster Wilds is a story about the lengths to which we will go to stay alive.”
Groff is a five-time National Book Award finalist. This is her second gold recognition from the Florida Book Awards.
Silver
The Beast and the Silent Blue
by David O’Connor
Bronze
Pocketful of Poseys
by Thomas Reid
Popular Fiction
Gold
A Clue in the Crumbs
by Lucy Burdette
Who knew? Culinary mystery writing is a thing, and no one does it better than Lucy Burdette, author of the best-selling Key West Food Critic series (and real-life Key West resident). In this new installment, indefatigable food critic Hayley Snow must determine if two Scottish sisters, in town for a special edition of a TV show called “The UK Bakes,” are stirring up murder and mayhem along with their famous scones.
Burdette, whose former career was as a clinical psychologist, has said that Key West constantly inspires new story ideas and colorful characters; and along with plot twists and eccentric personalities, the book serves up some of Burdette’s trademark tropical-flavored recipes
Jurors said, “Lucy Burdette’s Key West Food Critic’s mysteries are a joy to read. This book is no exception.”
Silver
Deep Fake
Ward Larsen
Bronze
Strange Timing
J.C. Bruce
Spanish Language
Gold
Neurosis Miami
by Gaston Virkel
Miami may be “the least literary city in the world,” as the jurors noted, but the diverse, vibrant and often chaotic city serves as the perfect backdrop for this “acidic and mocking novel.” The author, Argentinian-born novelist and screenwriter Gaston Virkel, moved to Miami in 2001 to work at MTV and was captivated by its dynamic mix of American and Latin culture.
The book centers around a Miami newcomer who has been commissioned to rewrite episodes of the popular 1980s series “Miami Vice.” The resulting script—and the book itself—take readers on a wild ride through drugs, sex and way too much mezcal.
Virkel is bilingual, but he has said this story demanded being written in Spanish, specifically the unique version of Spanish that has evolved in Miami.
“It has nothing to do with social class or education,” he says. “That’s how the Latino population of Miami speaks.”
Silver
Relaciones Imperfectas
by Hernán Vera Álvarez
Bronze
Fugaz
by Claudia Prengler Starosta
Honorable Mention
Generaciones
by Danilo Lopez-Roman
Visual Arts
Gold
Wild Florida
by Kirsten Hines
Hines, an award-winning nature photographer and co-author of several books on Florida’s nature and history, showcases the wide variety of wildlife that thrives in Florida. Her photographs are dramatic and compelling—and so is her narrative, with each photograph accompanied by a personal account of her experience and reflections as she waited for and took the shot.
The book’s subtitle is An Animal Odyssey, and it is exactly that, as we see and read about each creature’s unique biology, backdrop, and life-and-death struggles to survive.
Hines shows us a Florida black bear nuzzling her cub, a burrowing owl ready for its closeup, beavers busy constructing a dam, a python slithering through the Everglades—and much more.
“This cozy but elegant book encourages and motivates readers to engage with Florida’s natural world in a personal way,” jurors said.
Silver
Florida Sculptors and Their Work 1880-2020
by Deborah C. Pollack
Poetry
Gold
Saltwater Demands a Psalm
by Kweku Abimbola
This collection by Ghana-born Abimbola won the Academy of American Poets’ First Book award. The poems interweave African mythology and tradition with the modern Black experience, from the physical and spiritual effects of colonization and climate change in West Africa to growing up Black in American cities. A series of elegies for real-life victims of police violence probes their lives and imagined after lives, connecting brutal suffering with transcendent healing and hope.
Multilayered and moving, the poems show a mastery of both language and multiple cultures. The New York Times Book Review says Abimbola “blends Ghanaian culture and Black American experience in a cosmology of celebration and resistance.”
Silver
Buffalo Girl
by Jessica Q. Stark
Bronze
Everwhen
by Anne Barngrover
Poetry Chapbook
Gold
One Way to Listen
by Asa Drake
Drake, a Filipino American artist in Central Florida, employs imaginative and often surreal imagery to explore her relationships with herself, her family and communities. She also considers aggression and rising violence, including against the Filipino community in the recent shootings in Atlanta.
The collection has been called “urgent and unforgettable” by Taneum Bambrick, who chose it as the winner of Gold Line Press’s 2021 Poetry Chapbook Contest. Drake’s work has appeared in a number of literary publications, including The Paris Review Daily and Southern Humanities Review.
Ensley Developing Writer Award
The Ensley Award recognizes a Florida writer who has published one or at most two books and demonstrates great promise. This year’s winner, Gainesville’s Rebecca Renner, has already compiled an impressive resume as a journalist, with contributions to National Geographic, the New York Times, Paris Review and other major publications.Her first book, 1923’s Gator Country, is a true story of alligator poaching. Renner presents vivid portraits of both poachers and the undercover agent who seeks to pierce their hidden world. In a 2023 review, NPR called the book “a gripping narrative that’s also a beautiful love letter to the fauna and flora of the Everglades.” (The book is a Florida Humanities selection for the National Book Festival.)
