Carl Hiaasen

Carl Hiaasen (born March 12, 1953) is an American journalist and novelist.

Hiaasen was born in 1953 and raised in Plantation, Florida, then a rural suburb of Fort Lauderdale.

He was the first of four children born to Odel and Patricia Hiaasen.

Hiaasen has Norwegian and Irish ancestry.

He started writing at age six when his father bought him a typewriter for Christmas.

He began his career as a newspaper reporter and by the late 1970s had begun writing novels in his spare time, both for adults and for middle grade readers.

Two of his novels have been made into feature films.

Hiaasen's adult novels are humorous crime thrillers set in Florida.

They feature casts of eccentric, sometimes grotesque characters and satirize aspects of American popular culture.

Many of the novels include themes related to environmentalism and political corruption in his native state.

After graduating from Plantation High School in 1970, he entered Emory University, where he contributed satirical humor columns to the student-run newspaper The Emory Wheel.

In 1972, he transferred to the University of Florida, where he wrote for The Independent Florida Alligator.

Hiaasen graduated in 1974 with a degree in journalism.

Hiaasen was a reporter at TODAY (Cocoa, Florida) for two years before being hired in 1976 by the Miami Herald, where he worked for the city desk, Sunday magazine and award-winning investigative team.

The first three were co-authored with his friend and fellow journalist William Montalbano: Powder Burn (1981), Trap Line (1982), and A Death in China (1984).

Hiaasen was a columnist for the newspaper from mid-1985 until he retired in March 2021.

His first solo novel, Tourist Season (1986), featured a group of ragged eco-warriors who kidnap the Orange Bowl Queen in Miami.

The book's main character was whimsically memorialized by Jimmy Buffett in a song called "The Ballad of Skip Wiley," which appeared on his Barometer Soup album.

In all, twenty-one of Hiaasen's novels and nonfiction books have been on the New York Times Best Seller lists.

His work has been translated into 34 languages.

Carl Hiaasen's 1991 novel Native Tongue carries the dedication "For my brother Rob."

After becoming a reporter, Hiaasen began writing novels in his spare time.

An earlier Hiaasen novel, Strip Tease, was adapted into the 1996 feature film Striptease starring Demi Moore and Burt Reynolds.

Another book, Bad Monkey, is being adapted for a series on Apple TV.

It will star Vince Vaughn and is being written and executive produced by Bill Lawrence, who co-created Ted Lasso.

The series is tentatively scheduled to begin airing in the summer of 2024.

His columns have been collected in three published volumes, Kick Ass (1999), Paradise Screwed (2001) and Dance of the Reptiles (2014), all edited by Diane Stevenson.

Hiaasen's first venture into writing for younger readers was the 2002 novel Hoot, which was named a Newbery Medal honor book.

It was adapted as a 2006 film of the same name (starring Logan Lerman, Brie Larson and Luke Wilson).

The movie was written and directed by Wil Shriner.

Jimmy Buffett provided songs for the soundtrack, and appeared in the role of Mr. Ryan, a middle school teacher.

Hiaasen's subsequent children's novels are Flush, Scat; Chomp, Skink-- No Surrender, which introduces one of his most popular adult characters to younger readers, Squirm, and the latest, Wrecker.

In 2014, Skink was long-listed for a National Book Award in Young People's Literature.

All of Hiaasen's books for young readers feature environmental themes, eccentric casts and adventure-filled plots.

In 2016, his novel Razor Girl was short-listed for the Bollinger Everyman Wodehouse award for comic fiction in England.

His only brother was Rob Hiaasen, an editor and columnist at The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Maryland, who was killed in the mass shooting at the newspaper's office on June 28, 2018.

Squirm, which is set in Florida and Montana, was published in the fall of 2018 and opened at #4 on the New York Times bestseller list for middle-grade novels.

Released on September 26, 2023, Wrecker is set in Key West during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Kirkus Reviews called it, "A batten-down-the-hatches thriller anchored by critical real-life themes".

Booklist wrote: "Wielding his writing talents and wit, Hiaasen seamlessly incorporates...disparate elements into one heck of a ride".