Orlando Literature, Orlando Writers (and Orlando Alumni):

Great art isn’t always born spontaneously. It doesn’t just appear out of nowhere. Great art, I think, is often a reaction to something: a current event, perhaps, or (as I detail in other sections of my site) a previous generation’s successes or failings.

I’ve lived in the city of Orlando for more than a decade now (with just a little time off, here and there), and I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a city that is more corporatized and manufactured: we are the home of both Disney World, a monumental achievement in “fake,” and Darden Restaurants, the parent company of such mass-produced ethnic/cultural eateries as Olive Garden and Red Lobster. We are a city of big-box stores and sprawling look-alike neighborhoods and high-revenue megachurches. Want a more detailed characterization of the city of Orlando? Check out this great profile from National Geographic. When it comes to McDonaldized, mass-produced culture, there’s Las Vegas and there’s Orlando…nobody can touch these two cities.

But on the other hand, I also believe that Orlando is home to a thriving cultural scene that exists as a reaction to the above artificiality, much like the Seattle-based grunge rock movement was seen as a reaction to the artificiality of the glam rock era of Los Angeles. I’m not going to make grand pronouncements about “changing the world” or anything, and I hope that I don’t have to live through some poor Orlando writer becoming the next Kurt Cobain…but I will say that we’ve got some extremely interesting artists in our community.

As editor of the 15 Views of Orlando anthology, it’s become not only my mission, but also my privilege, to truly immerse myself in the community of Orlando writers and editors that I live amongst, and to share those authors with the world. While this page can never be as comprehensive as it should, I hope that it offers you just a glimpse of the genuine talent that lives and writes in the shadows of the artificial empire of Theme Park. Below, I tried to assemble not just the author sites for some of our best writers, but also links to some of their work. Check. Them. Out.

Literary Publications and Publishers

• The Florida Review (University of Central Florida)
• The Cypress Dome (University of Central Florida)
• Specs (Rollins College)
• Animal: A Beast of a Literary Magazine (Full Sail University)
• Burrow Press (independent publisher of prose)
• Beating Windward Press (independent publisher)
• The Drunken Odyssey (podcast series with Orlando author John King)

Orlando-Area Literary Events

• Functionally Literate
• Zora Fest
• Rollins College: Winter With the Writers
• There Will Be Words (Orlando’s first prose reading series)
• Culture & Cocktails (monthly reading series at Maitland Art Center)

Orlando Prose Writers

• Jocelyn Bartkevicius
• Karen Best
• Vanessa Blakeslee, Train Shots
• Teege Braune, author of In Boozos Veritas
• Ed Bull
  • “Seed,” Redivider
• Tod Cavines
• Hunter Choate
• Philip F. Deaver, author of Silent Retreats and How Men Pray
• James Fleming
• Susan Hubbard, The Society of S
• John King, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame
• David James Poissant, The Heaven of Animals (and “The Disappearing Boy,” from The Good Men Project)
• Sarah Prevatt-Harris (“The Arrowhead,” Necessary Fiction)
• Rachel Leona Kapitan
• Jonathan Kosik (“Pensacola,” from Bartleby Snopes)
• Alejandro Mujica
• Matt Peters
• Mark Pursell
• Ryan Rivas (“South Beach,” Annalemma)
• Lisa Roney
• Jesse Ross
• Pat Rushin, Puzzling Through the News and scriptwriter of The Zero Theorem
• Leslie Salas
• J Christopher Silvia
• Peter Telep
• Laurie Uttich, “It’s Cool to be a Mammal” from This I Believe
• Chris Wiewiora

Orlando YA Novelists

• Jenny Torres Sanchez, The Downside of Being Charlie and Death, Dickinson, and the Demented Life of Frenchie Garcia
• Lauren Gibaldi, The Night We Said Yes
• Edward Bloor, Tangerine
• Danette Haworth, Violet Raines Almost Got Struck By Lightning

Orlando Poets

• Billy Collins (yeah, he lives in Winter Park.)
• J Bradley, Dodging Traffic and The Bones of Us
• Terry Ann Thaxton, Getaway Girl and The Terrible Wife
• Ashley Inguanta, author of The Way Home (and “It’s End of the World Karaoke” at PANK)
  
• Susan Lilley, Satellite Beach
• Don Stap, Birdsong
• Russ Kessler

Orlando “Alumni” We Will Continue to Claim (they’re ours, damn it! hands off!):

• Lindsay Hunter
• Laura van den Berg
• Chris Heavener, editor of Annalemma
• Gene Albamonte, author of Huckster
• Dan Sinclair, scriptwriter Chemical Peel