Tammy Powley is an associate professor of English and teaches composition and technical communications at Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, Florida. She lives in Port Saint Lucie, Florida. April Van Camp is a professor of English at Indian River State College in Fort Pierce, Florida, where she teaches composition and literature. She lives in Fort Pierce.

• Table of ContentsPreface (Tammy Powley)Introduction (April Van Camp)1. Karen Russell• Gators, Goggles and Giant Shells: Fantasy and Florida in the Short Stories (Tammy Powley)• Into the Swamp: An Examination of Folk Narrative Structures and Storylines in Karen Russell’s Swamplandia! (Lori Cornelius)2. Elizabeth ­Stuckey-French• A Laughing Matter: Smiling Through the Pain in Elizabeth ­Stuckey-French’s Novels (April Van Camp)3. Lynne Barrett• ’Canes, Critters and Criminals in Lynne Barrett’s Storytelling (Claudia S. Slate)4. Jennine Capó Crucet• On Haunted Shores: Restriction and Resistance in Jennine Capó Crucet’s How to Leave Hialeah (Camila Alvarez)5. Connie May Fowler• Cracker Redemption: Life, Death and Homecoming in The Problem with Murmur Lee (Jill C. Jones)6. Janis Owen­s• A Summer to Pardon: Southern Gothic and the Family in Janis Owens’s Myra Sims (Sarah M. Mallonee)• American Ghosts and American Realities: Past and Present of Race Relations in Janis Owens’s American Ghost (Beate Rodewald)7. Heidi Boehringer• Walk on the Wild Side: Heidi Boehringer’s Fiction and a ­Post-Feminist Landscape (Maxine Lavon Montgomery)8. Angela Hunt• Romance Fiction in Florida: The Crisscross of Jane Austen and Angela Hunt (Tammy Powley)• Angela Hunt’s Uncanny Florida (Lisa K. Perdigao)9. Edna Buchanan• Florida’s Femme Fatale (Wendy Dwyer)10. Ana Menéndez• Entrapment and Escape (Jane Anderson Jones)11. Vicki Hendricks• The Spectacle of the Body in Florida Gothic Stories (Angela Tenga)12. Mary Jane Ryals• Racial Progress, Not Movement, Is Evident as the Trees Slowly Walk in Mary Jane Ryals’s Cookie and Me (Valerie E. Kasper)Appendix: Interviews (Lynne Barrett, Jennine Capó Crucet, Vicki Hendricks, Angela Hunt)About the ContributorsIndex