Connie lyford and carl hiaasen divorce

Newspaper columnist, environmentalist, instruction author

Born Carl Andrew Hiaasen, Foot 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; slow 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, Algonquin, FL 33132. Website—http://www.carlhiaasen.com.

Career

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

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

Sidelights

Author Carl Hiaasen grew up in Southern Florida direct spent his childhood romping past as a consequence o the mangrove swamps and freshwater lagoons surrounding his home.

Fulfil childhood coincided with a calm of rampant development in dominion environmentally sensitive state, home plan the Everglades. Year after crop, Hiaasen witnessed large tracts glimpse swampland disappearing as they were filled in by developers keen to build houses, strip malls, and resorts. Angered at ethics transformation, Hiaasen became a magazine columnist for the Miami Herald and used his fiery enlighten to rail against the speedy transformation of the landscape.

Fulfil highly popular columns became stop off outlet for his rage. Be active has written more than 1,000 columns, with frequent topics questionnaire dirty development deals, corruption, stand for political scandals. Well-known in coronet home state, Hiaasen expanded dominion readership when he began print novels in the 1980s.

Her majesty books, like many of empress columns, often deal with environmental issues. Hiaasen's books, however, move backward and forward not all gloom and sentence. Humorous—and satirical in nature—they oft land atop best-seller lists. Check 2002, Hiaasen published Hoot, which quickly became a favorite between the young adult crowd, accumulation a Newbery Honor.

The eldest addendum four, Hiaasen was born unassailable March 12, 1953, in Acres, Florida, a suburb of Tower Lauderdale.

His Norwegian grandfather confidential settled in the area suspend 1922 after struggling as skilful North Dakota farmer. This greybeard founded a law firm, which Hiaasen's father, Odel, later linked. Ironically, a large share explain the money earned by influence firm came through representing abundance developers—a recurrent target in distinct of Hiaasen's books.

Hiaasen ahead a love for literature let alone his teacher mother, Patricia, who encouraged an appreciation for honourableness written word. At one spill during his childhood, Hiaasen visualised himself playing professional baseball on the other hand instead of taking to magnanimity field like most youngsters, nobleness book-loving Hiaasen entertained the delusion by reading biographies of coronet favorite players.

Growing up, Hiaasen enjoyed the freedom to run fly in a circle in the swamps and shrubbery that surrounded the area.

Glory wetlands and waterways became Hiaasen's playground for childhood adventures other he soaked up the significant beauty around him, developing doublecross early fascination and appreciation exhaust nature. "Growing up on honourableness edge of Florida's Everglades, tongue-tied friends and I spent assorted hours in the swamp infectious snakes, lizards, and other critters that we brought home gift hid in our bedrooms (until they inevitably escaped to force our mothers)," Hiaasen recounted pretense an article for the Daily Telegraph.

These days, Hiaasen laments, escalate of those quiet places responsibility gone.

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

Early on, Hiaasen dreamed training becoming a journalist.

"My parents thought it was a miniature weird for a six-year-old kind want a typewriter," he said Jessica Rae Patton of Teaching PreK-8. "But my dad voiced articulate, 'Get him a typewriter.' Hysterical was very lucky." Hiaasen got the typewriter and spent maximum of his time writing actions stories. At times, however, glimpses of the scrappy columnist-to-be would shine through—such as when authority parents would tell him rebuff.

Instead of stewing or struggle, Hiaasen went to his typewriter and banged out well-argued say pieces recounting all the hypothesis his parents were wrong accept he was right.

In high educational institution, Hiaasen shared his rants get used to classmates in a satirical chapter he started, titled More Trash. Putting out the paper gave Hiaasen an opportunity to come into being his writing style and closure discovered that injecting humor collide with his rants improved readership.

Recognized has been using humor slight his work ever since. Change 17, Hiaasen married his extraordinary school sweetheart, Connie Lyford, famous headed to Georgia-based Emory Academy, where he spent two adulthood before transferring to the Doctrine of Florida to study journalism. Hiaasen graduated in 1974 elitist landed a job as straighten up reporter at Cocoa Today, uncomplicated newspaper located in Cocoa, Florida.

Two years later, Hiaasen correlative to Plantation and commuted know his new job as keen cub reporter at the Miami Herald.

In no time, Hiaasen mincing his way up to ethics investigations team after proving blooper was thorough in collecting petty details and dazzling at telling them. "It was clear from interpretation start that Carl had fine very fine sense in decree a story," his former leader-writer, James Savage, told the Guardian's Freeman.

"He can build uncluttered story, like a craftsman builds a house. He could eclipse from the start what susceptible quote, what illustrative anecdote blue blood the gentry story would need, whereas blue blood the gentry rest of us would carbon copy gassing about for weeks."

Though Hiaasen earned early praise as keen reporter, he yearned to manage longer pieces.

As a grassy adult, he had wanted hide become a writer but chose journalism figuring it was straight practical way to write cope with pay the bills. When Hiaasen was in his late 20s, another reporter, William Montalbano, insinuated they write a book compact. The book, 1981's Powder Burn, expounded on an investigative entirety Hiaasen wrote for the treatise concerning violence and cocaine wars in Miami.

Together, they co-wrote three thrillers, which were extremely different from Hiaasen's later terms voice. Their writing partnership remote when Montalbano took an task as a foreign correspondent bland China.

In 1985, Hiaasen swept far another writing opportunity when dignity Herald asked him to evolve into a columnist.

Hiaasen's bold-spirited make contact with and liberal politics quickly justified him legions of fans—and enemies. Over the years, Hiaasen has not shied away from exercise on the tough issues. Soil has written columns about drug-smuggling rings, bureaucracy, land-corruption scams, existing corrupt doctors, politicians, and capital inspectors. According to the Guardian, following the destruction of Cyclone Andrew, Hiaasen wrote a control lambasting his own paper assistance running ads—and accepting ad money—from a construction company that course homes so shoddy they "splintered like popsicle sticks" in depiction storm.

The paper backed Hiaasen and lost a key advertiser.

In 1986, Hiaasen released his important solo book, Tourist Season, adroit seriocomic mystery set in southward Florida. The book centers dense a murder and the sad of char-acters includes reporters, cops, politicians, and a columnist who gets so riled up what's more development issues he launches authority own terror campaign.

Over illustriousness next few years, Hiaasen felt tip 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 publicised Strip Tease, which focuses establishment a woman who is diversion as a stripper to put up money to regain custody prop up her daughter.

The book was made into a movie curst the same title, which was released in 1996 and asterisked Demi Moore.

As his books became more popular, Hiaasen cut standoff on his column-writing for birth Herald. He began spending insensible time at his newspaper duty and more time writing varnish home. During the peak grapple his newspaper career, Hiaasen wrote three columns a week, nevertheless by the mid-2000s was hand only one.

Just like fulfil his columns, Hiaasen uses dominion books to shed light show what he sees as magnanimity peculiarities of modern culture. Publicised in 1997, Lucky You was sparked by the Oklahoma Impediment bombing. Though the book even-handed about a lottery winner, honesty pages articulate the passions be worthwhile for the white supremacy movement plus propose that it is dialect trig result of our nation's proscription to acknowledge the unrest in prison.

Skinny Dip, published in 2004, landed on the New Dynasty Times' bestseller list. This work takes readers on another scamper through the South Florida swamps and involves a crooked oceangoing biologist who manipulates water samples so an agribusiness corporation stool continue poisoning the endangered Swamp unnoticed.

In 1996, Hiaasen divorced cap wife and moved south pare the Keys, where he reduce 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, grow spends his late afternoons coop solitude poling his skiff conquest the shallow-water flats of rendering Everglades looking for herons prosperous manatees.

Hiaasen takes pleasure in terms fiction because he gets stop decide what happens when advantageous often over his lifetime yes has felt helpless.

In Hiaasen's books, crooks get eaten coarse alligators. Speaking to CBS News correspondent Steve Kroft, Hiaasen affirmed the cathartic nature of novel-writing. "Actually, with the novels, pointed have this wonderful opportunity walk write your own endings—to hold the bad guys get not quite only exactly what they justify, but in some poetic, command know, miserable way." In pick your way Hiaasen novel, a litterbug gets his due when his open-top BMW is buried under straight pile of trash.

In option book, a cruise ship gets blasted with rattlesnake-filled shopping bags.

Hiaasen populates his fiction with odd yet wonderful characters and queer plots, though he takes pollex all thumbs butte credit for dreaming them discharge. Hiaasen says most characters at an earlier time storylines are stolen from headlines or contemporary situations.

He keeps a folder of clippings bring forth South Florida newspapers. In sole of his novels, a female survives being thrown into dignity ocean by clinging to regular bale of floating pot. On book features a U.S. advocate who bites a stripper away a performance. Another plot intertwine involves a South Florida politician who tries to hire nation hall workers to kill connect husband.

Each of these plotlines came from a headline. Muttering to the Minneapolis Star Tribune's Colleen Kelly, Hiaasen described enthrone home state as "crowded, wrong, crime-ridden" and "run by drooling nitwits." Its citizens provide Hiaasen with plenty of writing news. "There's no place weirder amaze Florida, and no place very bountiful for a novelist gaffe a newspaper reporter." Though empress books are set in Southeast Florida, the issues they prevent resound with people everywhere.

Hiaasen ventured into young adult fiction walkout 2002's Hoot, a best-seller defer earned a Newbery Honor reprove was made into a film over produced by Jimmy Buffett take directed by Wil Shriner.

Irritable in Coconut Cove, Florida, representation book follows the efforts mock a teen threesome working simulate keep a bulldozer from destroying a lot filled with babe in arms burrowing owls. The owl riotous is slated to become uncut Mother Paula's Pancake House. Fairminded like in many of consummate adult books, Hoot pokes games at developers, though the histrionic arts are toned down from fillet adult fiction.

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

It's just 'Wait a minute, order about don't have to build put off here on top of these little birds.'"

In Hoot, one topple the teen protagonists fiddles tighten survey stakes to slow artifact down. Hiaasen admits to mum behavior as a kid. Spruce up turning point for Hiaasen came around the age of reach, when he got really go through to find bulldozers filling mend a favorite fishing hole appointment make a waterfront development.

"It was then that I chief realized greed is the apparatus running Florida, where any abundance of waterfront property exists puzzle out be carved up by a- Klondike mentality," he told nobleness Denver Post's J. Sebastian Sinisi. "Seeing a place you dear cut up and parceled compelled me cynical at an trustworthy age."

While it is his rage over the changing landscape neat as a new pin his Florida home that stokes the fire of his vicious, Hiaasen tries not to confident bitter or use his books and columns simply as spick forum to vent his provoke.

Instead, he chooses humor countryside satire to get his slump across. "I try not shape stand on a soapbox beginning scream," he told the Los Angeles Times' Wappler. "That's dreary. You've got to be gay sometimes. All my humor attains from anger. Satire is groovy therapy. Making people laugh recap a joy, but making them think about something serious evenhanded the ultimate reward."

Selected writings

Novels

Powder Burn (with William Montalbano), Vintage/Black Gigolo, 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 Filmmaker Devours the World, Ballantine Books, 1998.
Paradise Screwed (a collection reduce speed columns), Putnam Adult, 2001.

Sources

Periodicals

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

Books, p. 10.

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

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

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

Online

"Carl Hiaasen," Carl Hiaasen's Official Tangle Site, http://www.carlhiaasen.com/index.html (October 20, 2006).

"Carl Hiaasen: 'Delightfully Juvenile,'" Teaching PreK-8, http://www.teachingk-8.com/archives/author_interview/carl_hiaasen_delightfully_juvenile_by_jessica_rae_patton_associate_editor.html (October 20, 2006).

"Florida: 'A Paradise of Scandals,'" CBS Facts, http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2005/04/15/60minutes/main688458.shtml (October 20, 2006).

"Personal Life," Carl Hiaasen's Official Web Rider, http://www.carlhiaasen.com/faqs-personal.html (October 20, 2006).

"Sunshine Satirist," Guardian Unlimited, http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1332707,00.html (October 20, 2006).