Author
Carl Hiaasen
Notes from Evan Smith
"If you believe the hype about Carl Hiaasen, he’s one of the best and most original creative minds of our day — and, as it happens, the billing isn’t that far off. Read any of his dozen and a half books — the three thrillers he co-wrote, the ten or so fictional knee-slappers he’s penned on his own, the anthologies of his work as a big-city newspaper columnist lo these 24 years, the memoir of his return to golf after decades off the green, or the three young-adult works that have elevated him to the status of icon in the tween universe, and it’s clear that the 55-year-old is the real deal — the demonically funny, impossibly talented spawn of S.J. Perelman, Woody Allen, and John D. MacDonald, maybe with a little Dave Barry thrown in. Born in Plantation, Florida, Hiaasen has lived outside his home state for a total of two apostate years away at college in Georgia. He graduated from the University of Florida with a degree in journalism and briefly worked for a small-town daily before joining the staff of the Miami Herald in 1976. He spent much of the next decade as one of the paper’s big-brand investigative reporters, focusing on the peculiarities and perils of the out-of-control development that turned a former swamp into the fourth-largest state in the union, and in 1985 agreed to write a weekly column, leavening his muckraker’s sense of outrage with a wicked appreciation for the absurd. The following year he published his first novel, Tourist Season, and in the years since has followed up with a string of truly hilarious reads with easily identifiable two-word titles, including Skinny Dip, Strip Tease, and Sick Puppy. His first effort targeting a younger demographic was 2002’s Hoot, later made into a movie; Flush, in 2005, and the just-released Scat have cemented Hiassen’s reputation with a new generation of loyal fans." - Evan Smith, Texas Monthly Talks, Broadcast 2.12.09
