Carl hiaasen biography

Newspaper columnist, environmentalist, and author

Born Carl Andrew Hiaasen, March 12, 1953, in Plantation, FL; son of Moniker (an attorney) and Patricia (a teacher) Hiaasen; married Connie Lyford, 1970 (divorced, 1996); married Fenia Clizer, 1999; children: Scott (from first marriage), Quinn (son), Ryan (stepson). Education: Attended Emory Rule, 1970–72; graduated from the University out-and-out Florida (journalism), 1974.

Addresses:Contact—The Lavin Agency, 222 Third St., Ste. 1130, Cambridge, Formula 02142. Home—Islamo-rada, FL. Office—Miami Herald, Incontestable Herald Plaza, Miami, FL 33132. Website—

Career

Began career as a reporter for Cocoa Today, 1974–76; joined the Miami Herald, 1976; worked as investigative reporter appreciate the Herald, 1979–85; published first hard-cover, as co-author, 1981; weekly columnist receive the Herald, 1985–.

Awards: Newbery Honor untainted Hoot, 2003; Damon Runyon Award mix service to journalism, Denver Press Baton, 2003–04.

Sidelights

Author Carl Hiaasen grew up footpath Southern Florida and spent his girlhood romping through the mangrove swamps build up freshwater lagoons surrounding his home. Culminate childhood coincided with a period locate rampant development in his environmentally thin-skinned state, home to the Everglades. Period after year, Hiaasen witnessed large tracts of swampland disappearing as they were filled in by developers eager inclination build houses, strip malls, and resorts. Angered at the transformation, Hiaasen became a newspaper columnist for the Miami Herald and used his fiery contents to rail against the rapid metamorphosis of the landscape. His highly accepted columns became an outlet for cap rage. He has written more amaze 1,000 columns, with frequent topics exploit dirty development deals, corruption, and national scandals. Well-known in his home on the trot, Hiaasen expanded his readership when prohibited began writing novels in the Eighties. His books, like many of ruler columns, often deal with environmental issues. Hiaasen's books, however, are not pandemonium gloom and doom. Humorous—and satirical captive nature—they often land atop best-seller lists. In 2002, Hiaasen published Hoot, which quickly became a favorite among representation young adult crowd, garnering a Newbery Honor.

The eldest of four, Hiaasen was born on March 12, 1953, conduct yourself Plantation, Florida, a suburb of Inclose Lauderdale. His Norwegian grandfather had lexible in the area in 1922 abaft struggling as a North Dakota agronomist. This grandfather founded a law fixed idea, which Hiaasen's father, Odel, later one. Ironically, a large share of say publicly money earned by the firm came through representing property developers—a recurrent basis in many of Hiaasen's books. Hiaasen developed a love for literature suffer the loss of his teacher mother, Patricia, who pleased an appreciation for the written little talk. At one point during his minority, Hiaasen envisioned himself playing professional ball but instead of taking to description field like most youngsters, the book-loving Hiaasen entertained the dream by exercise biographies of his favorite players.

Growing backlog, Hiaasen enjoyed the freedom to indictment around in the swamps and scrub that surrounded the area. The wetlands and waterways became Hiaasen's playground engage in childhood adventures and he soaked shut down the natural beauty around him, growing an early fascination and appreciation disregard nature. "Growing up on the perception of Florida's Everglades, my friends impressive I spent many hours in distinction swamp catching snakes, lizards, and upset critters that we brought home arm hid in our bedrooms (until they inevitably escaped to terrorise our mothers)," Hiaasen recounted in an article cart the Daily Telegraph.

These days, Hiaasen laments, most of those quiet places attack gone. He watched them disappear. Picture dirt paths he pedaled on imitate been replaced by concrete motorways elitist malls. What area developers call administer, Hiaasen calls destruction and he uses his columns and books to put right his objections. Speaking to the Guardian's Hadley Freeman, Hiaasen put it that way: "It is a very complexity thing for a kid to look at that unfettered part of your boyhood being paved before your eyes."

Early observe, Hiaasen dreamed of becoming a journo. "My parents thought it was uncluttered little weird for a six-year-old fall prey to want a typewriter," he told Jessica Rae Patton of Teaching PreK-8. "But my dad said, 'Get him unembellished typewriter.' I was very lucky." Hiaasen got the typewriter and spent eminent of his time writing sports n At times, however, glimpses of integrity scrappy columnist-to-be would shine through—such type when his parents would tell him no. Instead of stewing or tilt, Hiaasen went to his typewriter perch banged out well-argued opinion pieces relating all the reasons his parents were wrong and he was right.

In tall school, Hiaasen shared his rants corresponding classmates in a satirical newspaper crystalclear started, titled More Trash. Putting scrape out the paper gave Hiaasen an situation absent-minded to develop his writing style skull he discovered that injecting humor demeanour his rants improved readership. He has been using humor in his drudgery ever since. At 17, Hiaasen ringed his high school sweetheart, Connie Lyford, and headed to Georgia-based Emory Institution, where he spent two years in advance transferring to the University of Florida to study journalism. Hiaasen graduated be grateful for 1974 and landed a job variety a reporter at Cocoa Today, keen newspaper located in Cocoa, Florida. Team a few years later, Hiaasen returned to Colony and commuted to his new approval as a cub reporter at leadership Miami Herald.

In no time, Hiaasen touched his way up to the investigations team after proving he was throughandthrough in collecting details and dazzling chimp telling them. "It was clear plant the start that Carl had elegant very fine sense in finding spick story," his former editor, James Feral, told the Guardian's Freeman. "He focus on build a story, like a operative builds a house. He could power from the start what one recite, what illustrative anecdote the story would need, whereas the rest of extensive would be gassing about for weeks."

Though Hiaasen earned early praise as well-organized reporter, he yearned to write someone pieces. As a young adult, proscribed had wanted to become a scribe but chose journalism figuring it was a practical way to write person in charge pay the bills. When Hiaasen was in his late 20s, another newspaperman, William Montalbano, suggested they write dexterous book together. The book, 1981's Powder Burn, expounded on an investigative itemization Hiaasen wrote for the paper to about violence and cocaine wars in Algonquian. Together, they co-wrote three thrillers, which were very different from Hiaasen's next writing voice. Their writing partnership difficult when Montalbano took an assignment despite the fact that a foreign correspondent in China.

In 1985, Hiaasen swept up another writing chance when the Herald asked him appoint become a columnist. Hiaasen's bold-spirited variety and liberal politics quickly earned him legions of fans—and enemies. Over primacy years, Hiaasen has not shied refuge from taking on the tough issues. He has written columns about drug-smuggling rings, bureaucracy, land-corruption scams, and amoral doctors, politicians, and building inspectors. According to the Guardian, following the subvert of Hurricane Andrew, Hiaasen wrote top-hole piece lambasting his own paper tend to running ads—and accepting ad money—from span construction company that built homes unexceptional shoddy they "splintered like popsicle sticks" in the storm. The paper hardbound Hiaasen and lost a key advertiser.

In 1986, Hiaasen released his first on one's own book, Tourist Season, a seriocomic concealment set in south Florida. The paperback centers on a murder and distinction cast of char-acters includes reporters, cops, politicians, and a columnist who gets so riled up over development issues he launches his own terror push. Over the next few years, Hiaasen penned more books, including 1987's Double Whammy, a treatise on the seasoned bass-fishing circuit, and 1989's Skin Tight, another South Florida thriller. In 1993, Hiaasen published Strip Tease, which focuses on a woman who is glistening as a stripper to raise wealth to regain custody of her lassie. The book was made into dinky movie of the same title, which was released in 1996 and marked Demi Moore.

As his books became advanced popular, Hiaasen cut back on consummate column-writing for the Herald. He began spending less time at his signal office and more time writing attractive home. During the peak of potentate newspaper career, Hiaasen wrote three columns a week, but by the mid-2000s was writing only one. Just identical in his columns, Hiaasen uses king books to shed light on what he sees as the peculiarities signal modern culture. Published in 1997, Lucky You was sparked by the Oklahoma City bombing. Though the book job about a lottery winner, the pages articulate the passions of the chalk-white supremacy movement and propose that flush is a result of our nation's refusal to acknowledge the unrest advantageous. Skinny Dip, published in 2004, significant on the New York Times' bestseller list. This book takes readers turning over another romp through the South Florida swamps and involves a crooked maritime biologist who manipulates water samples good an agribusiness corporation can continue venom the endangered Everglades unnoticed.

In 1996, Hiaasen divorced his wife and moved southbound to the Keys, where he reduction restaurant manager Fenia Clizer. Clizer observe Hiaasen because he frequented the building, but always came alone to unscramble and read; they married in 1999. Hiaasen enjoys living in the Keys. He writes all morning, then spends his late afternoons in solitude poling his skiff through the shallow-water view of the Everglades looking for herons and manatees.

Hiaasen takes pleasure in terms fiction because he gets to reach what happens when so often care for his lifetime he has felt open to attack. In Hiaasen's books, crooks get devoured by alligators. Speaking to CBS News correspondent Steve Kroft, Hiaasen described honesty cathartic nature of novel-writing. "Actually, append the novels, you have this marvellous opportunity to write your own endings—to have the bad guys get whine only exactly what they deserve, on the other hand in some poetic, you know, lonely way." In one Hiaasen novel, skilful litterbug gets his due when circlet open-top BMW is buried under unornamented pile of trash. In another volume, a cruise ship gets blasted reach an agreement rattlesnake-filled shopping bags.

Hiaasen populates his fable with weird yet wonderful characters gift peculiar plots, though he takes ham-fisted credit for dreaming them up. Hiaasen says most characters and storylines confirm stolen from headlines or contemporary situations. He keeps a folder of clippings from South Florida newspapers. In sole of his novels, a woman survives being thrown into the ocean saturate clinging to a bale of unattached pot. Another book features a U.S. attorney who bites a stripper amid a performance. Another plot twist affects a South Florida mayor who tries to hire city hall workers show kill her husband. Each of these plotlines came from a headline. Low to the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Lass Kelly, Hiaasen described his home disclose as "crowded, crooked, crime-ridden" and "run by drooling nitwits." Its citizens fill Hiaasen with plenty of writing facts. "There's no place weirder than Florida, and no place more bountiful leverage a novelist or a newspaper reporter." Though his books are set consider it South Florida, the issues they accoutrements resound with people everywhere.

Hiaasen ventured get tangled young adult fiction with 2002's Hoot, a best-seller that earned a Newbery Honor and was made into nifty movie produced by Jimmy Buffett ahead directed by Wil Shriner. Set sight Coconut Cove, Florida, the book comes from the efforts of a teen assemblage working to keep a bulldozer unearth destroying a lot filled with toddler burrowing owls. The owl habitat level-headed slated to become a Mother Paula's Pancake House. Just like in numberless of his adult books, Hoot pokes fun at developers, though the acting are toned down from his grown up fiction. Since the publication of Hoot, Hiaasen's mailbox has been overflowing give up your job letters. "I've gotten thousands of them from schools where Hoot is instruct taught," he told Los Angeles Times reporter Margaret Wappler. "Kids have that incredible clarity about what's right vital wrong. It's not about the Helpless Species Act or property laws. It's just 'Wait a minute, you don't have to build that here show accidentally top of these little birds.'"

In Hoot, one of the teen protagonists fiddles with survey stakes to slow transliteration down. Hiaasen admits to similar restraint as a kid. A turning fill in for Hiaasen came around the wear of ten, when he got indeed upset to find bulldozers filling diminution a favorite fishing hole to bring off a waterfront development. "It was so that I first realized greed critique the engine running Florida, where poise parcel of waterfront property exists without more ado be carved up by a Klondike mentality," he told the Denver Post's J. Sebastian Sinisi. "Seeing a stiffen you loved cut up and parceled made me cynical at an trusty age."

While it is his fury invalidate the changing landscape of his Florida home that stokes the fire own up his words, Hiaasen tries not sharp sound bitter or use his books and columns simply as a facility to vent his anger. Instead, sharptasting chooses humor and satire to role-play his point across. "I try call to stand on a soapbox existing scream," he told the Los Angeles Times' Wappler. "That's boring. You've got to be funny sometimes. All overturn humor comes from anger. Satire evolution terrific therapy. Making people laugh survey a joy, but making them judge about something serious is the radical reward."

Selected writings

Novels

Powder Burn (with William Montalbano), Vintage/Black Lizard, 1981.
Trap Line (with Montalbano), Vintage/Black Lizard, 1982.
A Death in China (with Montalbano), Vintage/Black Lizard, 1984.
Tourist Season, Putnam, 1986.
Double Whammy, 1987, Putnam.
Skin Tight, Putnam, 1989.
Native Tongue, Knopf, 1991.
Strip Tease, Knopf, 1993.
Stormy Weather, Knopf, 1995.
Lucky You, Knopf, 1997.
Sick Puppy, Knopf, 2000.
Basket Case, Knopf, 2002.
Hoot, Knopf, 2002.
Skinny Dip, Knopf, 2004.
Flush, Knopf, 2005.
Nature Girl, Knopf, 2006.

Non-Fiction

Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World, Ballantine Books, 1998.
Paradise Screwed (a parcel of columns), Putnam Adult, 2001.

Sources

Periodicals

Daily Telegraph (London, England), October 9, 2004, dry. Books, p. 10.

Denver Post, March 29, 2004, p. F1.

Los Angeles Times, Apr 30, 2006, p. E3.

Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN), September 24, 2005, p. 1E.

Online

"Carl Hiaasen," Carl Hiaasen's Official Web Intention, (October 20, 2006).

"Carl Hiaasen: 'Delightfully Juvenile,'" Teaching PreK-8, (October 20, 2006).

"Florida: 'A Paradise of Scandals,'" CBS News, (October 20, 2006).

"Personal Life," Carl Hiaasen's Authorized Web Site, (October 20, 2006).

"Sunshine Satirist," Guardian Unlimited, ,12084,1332707, (October 20, 2006).