About the writer

Jeff Klinkenberg writes about Florida culture and the people, places and wildlife that makes our state unique. In work that has taken him from Pensacola to Key West, he has written about Florida panthers, key lime pies, grits, worm grunters, smoked mullet, skinny-dippers, fish camps, the Corkscrew Swamp, manatees, ghost orchids, barefooted swamp boys, shark attacks, landscape painters, landscape photographers, orange juice, and Florida icons who include Carl Hiaasen, Bob Graham, Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, William Bartram, the Coppertone Girl and the Creature from the Black Lagoon.

Klinkenberg's interest in Florida began when he was a small boy growing up in Miami on the edge of the Everglades. He jokes he was a charter member of "the boys without dates" club because of hobbies that included catching snakes. He started working at the Miami News when he was 16, became a journalism graduate at the University of Florida, and has worked at the St. Petersburg Times since 1977. His latest book, which collects favorite columns, is Pilgrim in the Land of Alligators, published by University Press of Florida. A previous anthology, Seasons of Real Florida, recently was issued in paperback. The books are available at retail stores and through Amazon.com.

In 2007 and 2009, collections of his stories finished first in the American Association of Sunday Features Editors annual national contest. He is the only two-time winner of the Paul Hansell Distinguished Journalism Award, the highest honor in state journalism, given annually to the writer with the best body of work by the Florida Society of Newspaper Editors. An adjunct instructor in the University of Florida's College of Journalism, he has written for magazines that include Esquire, Outside, Travel and Leisure, and Audubon. His spoken essays are broadcast frequently on public radio, and he tours the state on behalf of the Florida Humanities Council to talk about Florida literature and other matters.

Says the author Carl Hiaasen: "If Jeff Klinkenberg isn't careful, he might give journalism a good name. He has a rare eye for marvelous detail, and an affectionate ear for those small, wise, bittersweet voices that tell the true story of Florida."