Carl hiaasen biography

Newspaper columnist, environmentalist, streak author

Born Carl Andrew Hiaasen, Hoof it 12, 1953, in Plantation, FL; son of Odel (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 University, 1970–72; gentle from the University of Florida (journalism), 1974.

Addresses:Contact—The Lavin Agency, 222 Third St., Ste. 1130, Metropolis, MA 02142. Home—Islamo-rada, FL. Office—Miami Herald, One Herald Plaza, Algonquian, FL 33132. Website—

Career

Began career sort a reporter for Cocoa Today, 1974–76; joined the Miami Herald, 1976; worked as investigative journo with the Herald, 1979–85; publicized first book, as co-author, 1981; weekly columnist for the Herald, 1985–.

Awards: Newbery Honor for Hoot, 2003; Damon Runyon Award storage space service to journalism, Denver Measure Club, 2003–04.

Sidelights

Author Carl Hiaasen grew up in Southern Florida limit spent his childhood romping tradition the mangrove swamps and freshwater lagoons surrounding his home.

Queen childhood coincided with a interval of rampant development in wreath environmentally sensitive state, home be in total the Everglades. Year after period, Hiaasen witnessed large tracts hook swampland disappearing as they were filled in by developers fervent to build houses, strip malls, and resorts. Angered at illustriousness transformation, Hiaasen became a journal columnist for the Miami Herald and used his fiery give reasons for to rail against the expeditious transformation of the landscape.

highly popular columns became brainchild outlet for his rage. Perform has written more than 1,000 columns, with frequent topics questionnaire dirty development deals, corruption, ground political scandals. Well-known in circlet home state, Hiaasen expanded fulfil readership when he began chirography novels in the 1980s.

Tiara books, like many of fulfil columns, often deal with environmental issues. Hiaasen's books, however, have a go at not all gloom and vocation. Humorous—and satirical in nature—they frequently land atop best-seller lists. Pull 2002, Hiaasen published Hoot, which quickly became a favorite mid the young adult crowd, amassment a Newbery Honor.

The eldest type four, Hiaasen was born serration March 12, 1953, in Agricultural estate, Florida, a suburb of Go on Lauderdale.

His Norwegian grandfather difficult to understand settled in the area bring 1922 after struggling as keen North Dakota farmer. This granddaddy founded a law firm, which Hiaasen's father, Odel, later connubial. Ironically, a large share addict the money earned by ethics firm came through representing paraphernalia developers—a recurrent target in patronize of Hiaasen's books.

Hiaasen formed a love for literature bring forth his teacher mother, Patricia, who encouraged an appreciation for dignity written word. At one let down during his childhood, Hiaasen pictured himself playing professional baseball nevertheless instead of taking to high-mindedness field like most youngsters, interpretation book-loving Hiaasen entertained the hallucination by reading biographies of fillet favorite players.

Growing up, Hiaasen enjoyed the freedom to run contract in the swamps and scrub that surrounded the area.

Excellence wetlands and waterways became Hiaasen's playground for childhood adventures lecturer he soaked up the evident beauty around him, developing type early fascination and appreciation condemn nature. "Growing up on primacy edge of Florida's Everglades, disheartened friends and I spent profuse hours in the swamp contagious snakes, lizards, and other critters that we brought home current hid in our bedrooms (until they inevitably escaped to squeeze our mothers)," Hiaasen recounted improvement an article for the Daily Telegraph.

These days, Hiaasen laments, nigh of those quiet places criticize gone.

He watched them imbibe. The dirt paths he pedaled on have been replaced coarse concrete motorways and malls. What area developers call progress, Hiaasen calls destruction and he uses his columns and books term paper air his objections. Speaking prove the Guardian's Hadley Freeman, Hiaasen put it this way: "It is a very difficult likable for a kid to perspective that unfettered part of your childhood being paved before your eyes."

Early on, Hiaasen dreamed have power over becoming a journalist.

"My parents thought it was a minor weird for a six-year-old fit in want a typewriter," he avid Jessica Rae Patton of Teaching PreK-8. "But my dad put into words, 'Get him a typewriter.' Funny was very lucky." Hiaasen got the typewriter and spent nearly of his time writing balls stories. At times, however, glimpses of the scrappy columnist-to-be would shine through—such as when realm parents would tell him negation.

Instead of stewing or argument, Hiaasen went to his typewriter and banged out well-argued discord pieces recounting all the grounds his parents were wrong submit he was right.

In high kindergarten, Hiaasen shared his rants second-hand goods classmates in a satirical paper he started, titled More Trash. Putting out the paper gave Hiaasen an opportunity to upgrade his writing style and type discovered that injecting humor drink his rants improved readership.

Settle down has been using humor injure his work ever since. Dilemma 17, Hiaasen married his buzz school sweetheart, Connie Lyford, mushroom headed to Georgia-based Emory School, where he spent two mature before transferring to the Routine of Florida to study journalism. Hiaasen graduated in 1974 attend to landed a job as orderly reporter at Cocoa Today, clean newspaper located in Cocoa, Florida.

Two years later, Hiaasen exchanged to Plantation and commuted show consideration for his new job as precise cub reporter at the Miami Herald.

In no time, Hiaasen touched his way up to greatness investigations team after proving recognized was thorough in collecting minutiae and dazzling at telling them. "It was clear from justness start that Carl had exceptional very fine sense in judicious a story," his former collector, James Savage, told the Guardian's Freeman.

"He can build unadorned story, like a craftsman builds a house. He could contemplate from the start what put off quote, what illustrative anecdote magnanimity story would need, whereas righteousness rest of us would amend gassing about for weeks."

Though Hiaasen earned early praise as graceful reporter, he yearned to draw up longer pieces.

As a lush adult, he had wanted comparable with become a writer but chose journalism figuring it was spiffy tidy up practical way to write ray pay the bills. When Hiaasen was in his late 20s, another reporter, William Montalbano, non-compulsory they write a book mount. The book, 1981's Powder Burn, expounded on an investigative break into pieces Hiaasen wrote for the daily concerning violence and cocaine wars in Miami.

Together, they co-wrote three thrillers, which were snatch different from Hiaasen's later scribble voice. Their writing partnership gone when Montalbano took an exercise as a foreign correspondent pavement China.

In 1985, Hiaasen swept bottom another writing opportunity when ethics Herald asked him to energy a columnist.

Hiaasen's bold-spirited organized and liberal politics quickly attained him legions of fans—and enemies. Over the years, Hiaasen has not shied away from winning on the tough issues. Earth has written columns about drug-smuggling rings, bureaucracy, land-corruption scams, abide corrupt doctors, politicians, and shop inspectors.

According to the Guardian, following the destruction of Whirlwind Andrew, Hiaasen wrote a bite lambasting his own paper chaste running ads—and accepting ad money—from a construction company that set up homes so shoddy they "splintered like popsicle sticks" in significance storm. The paper backed Hiaasen and lost a key advertiser.

In 1986, Hiaasen released his cardinal solo book, Tourist Season, straighten up seriocomic mystery set in southern Florida.

The book centers vaccination a murder and the thrust of char-acters includes reporters, cops, politicians, and a columnist who gets so riled up apply for development issues he launches monarch own terror campaign. Over loftiness next few years, Hiaasen fountain pen more books, including 1987's Double Whammy, a treatise on picture professional bass-fishing circuit, and 1989's Skin Tight, another South Florida thriller.

In 1993, Hiaasen available Strip Tease, which focuses chunky a woman who is flashing as a stripper to submit money to regain custody drawing her daughter. The book was made into a movie endlessly the same title, which was released in 1996 and asterisked Demi Moore.

As his books became more popular, Hiaasen cut rush back on his column-writing for justness Herald.

He began spending dull time at his newspaper control and more time writing affluence home. During the peak wink his newspaper career, Hiaasen wrote three columns a week, however by the mid-2000s was chirography only one. Just like fence in his columns, Hiaasen uses empress books to shed light version what he sees as interpretation peculiarities of modern culture.

Obtainable in 1997, Lucky You was sparked by the Oklahoma Give bombing. Though the book decay about a lottery winner, rendering pages articulate the passions succeed the white supremacy movement ground propose that it is unembellished result of our nation's brushoff to acknowledge the unrest by nature. Skinny Dip, published in 2004, landed on the New Dynasty Times' bestseller list.

This precise takes readers on another miss through the South Florida swamps and involves a crooked seafaring biologist who manipulates water samples so an agribusiness corporation stool continue poisoning the endangered Swampland unnoticed.

In 1996, Hiaasen divorced fulfil wife and moved south goslow the Keys, where he reduction restaurant manager Fenia Clizer.

Clizer noticed Hiaasen because he frequented the restaurant, but always came alone to eat and read; they married in 1999. Hiaasen enjoys living in the Keys. He writes all morning, proof spends his late afternoons squeeze up solitude poling his skiff by virtue of the shallow-water flats of ethics Everglades looking for herons squeeze manatees.

Hiaasen takes pleasure in chirography fiction because he gets authenticate decide what happens when to such a degree accord often over his lifetime closure has felt helpless.

In Hiaasen's books, crooks get eaten descendant alligators. Speaking to CBS News correspondent Steve Kroft, Hiaasen averred the cathartic nature of novel-writing. "Actually, with the novels, boss around have this wonderful opportunity act upon write your own endings—to possess the bad guys get quite a distance only exactly what they be worthy of, but in some poetic, restore confidence know, miserable way." In reschedule Hiaasen novel, a litterbug gets his due when his open-top BMW is buried under trim pile of trash.

In in the opposite direction book, a cruise ship gets blasted with rattlesnake-filled shopping bags.

Hiaasen populates his fiction with freakish yet wonderful characters and scandalous plots, though he takes pollex all thumbs butte credit for dreaming them smash into. Hiaasen says most characters pivotal storylines are stolen from headlines or contemporary situations.

He keeps a folder of clippings escape South Florida newspapers. In defer of his novels, a wife survives being thrown into authority ocean by clinging to on the rocks bale of floating pot. Option book features a U.S. advocate who bites a stripper by means of a performance. Another plot toss involves a South Florida politician who tries to hire eliminate hall workers to kill quota husband.

Each of these plotlines came from a headline. Giving out to the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Colleen Kelly, Hiaasen described monarch home state as "crowded, aslant, crime-ridden" and "run by drooling nitwits." Its citizens provide Hiaasen with plenty of writing counsel. "There's no place weirder amaze Florida, and no place repair bountiful for a novelist buy a newspaper reporter." Though government books are set in Southbound Florida, the issues they tools resound with people everywhere.

Hiaasen ventured into young adult fiction climb on 2002's Hoot, a best-seller give it some thought earned a Newbery Honor final was made into a fog produced by Jimmy Buffett gift directed by Wil Shriner.

Get on your nerves in Coconut Cove, Florida, ethics book follows the efforts presentation a teen threesome working tell the difference keep a bulldozer from destroying a lot filled with infant burrowing owls. The owl abode is slated to become neat as a pin Mother Paula's Pancake House. Acceptable like in many of tiara adult books, Hoot pokes badinage at developers, though the dramatic art are toned down from sovereign adult fiction.

Since the promulgation of Hoot, Hiaasen's mailbox has been overflowing with letters. "I've gotten thousands of them break schools where Hoot is actuality taught," he told Los Angeles Times reporter Margaret Wappler. "Kids have this incredible clarity take in what's right and wrong. It's not about the Endangered Nature Act or property laws.

It's just 'Wait a minute, pointed don't have to build turn this way here on top of these little birds.'"

In Hoot, one homework the teen protagonists fiddles pick survey stakes to slow interpretation down. Hiaasen admits to almost identical behavior as a kid. Pure turning point for Hiaasen came around the age of wake up, when he got really put off to find bulldozers filling explain a favorite fishing hole run into make a waterfront development.

"It was then that I twig realized greed is the appliance running Florida, where any piece of waterfront property exists peak be carved up by expert Klondike mentality," he told influence Denver Post's J. Sebastian Sinisi. "Seeing a place you beloved cut up and parceled prefabricated me cynical at an apparent age."

While it is his rage over the changing landscape sponsor his Florida home that stokes the fire of his text, Hiaasen tries not to appear bitter or use his books and columns simply as unornamented forum to vent his fury.

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Instead, he chooses caprice and satire to get king point across. "I try whine to stand on a dais and scream," he told greatness Los Angeles Times' Wappler. "That's boring. You've got to reproduction funny sometimes. All my clowning comes from anger. Satire psychiatry terrific therapy. Making people snigger is a joy, but fabrication them think about something abysmal is the ultimate reward."

Selected writings

Novels

Powder Burn (with William Montalbano), Vintage/Black Lizard, 1981.
Trap Line (with Montalbano), Vintage/Black Lizard, 1982.
A Death meticulous China (with Montalbano), Vintage/Black Gigolo, 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: Extravaganza Disney Devours the World, Ballantine Books, 1998.
Paradise Screwed (a amassment of columns), Putnam Adult, 2001.

Sources

Periodicals

Daily Telegraph (London, England), October 9, 2004, sec.

Books, p. 10.

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

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

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

Online

"Carl Hiaasen," Carl Hiaasen's Wellfounded Web Site, (October 20, 2006).

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

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

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

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