ANYWHERE ELSE: Essays on Florida

A memoir of growing up in Florida interwoven with cultural reflections of the state from The X-Files to Emerson—revealing the complex truths of life as a Floridian

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Florida and pop culture are a magnetic, viral match. From true crimes on social media to spring break movies to Miami Vice, the state has been served up for the rest of the world as a place of swamp things, serial killers, beach bums, teen girls, and dead poets. In Anywhere Else, Rachel Knox weaves her own story around the media caricatures, digging deeper into what it’s like to be from a “wild” place—and who gets to decide what that means.

Knox writes from her own experiences of Florida as a child in Sunday school, a student on field trips to Everglades National Park, and a bartender making drinks for both out-of-state partiers and locals. She blends these memories with critical looks at touchstones from different cultural moments, such as Aileen Wuornos, America’s most famous female serial killer; Florida’s Highwaymen artists and Thomas Kinkade, the much-beloved religious “Painter of Light”; Ralph Waldo Emerson, the transcendentalist writer who spent time in St. Augustine; the gloriously trashy 90s neo-noir Wild Things; and the “Monster of the Week” episodes of The X-Files.

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Writing with clarity and searing honesty about real issues refracted through this prism of pop culture, Knox is both witty and vulnerable. In these essays, whether she’s bobbing in the warm waters of the Gulf or running through the trailer parks of her childhood, Knox portrays a Floridian struggling with a deep, complicated love of her home state. Anywhere Else is a book for anyone who resonates with the message that home may not be a perfect place, but that it is worth fighting for.

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Praise for ANYWHERE ELSE 

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“Anywhere Else is a wild ride of an essay collection, and Rachel Knox is the ideal guide, taking readers beyond the glossy postcard image of Florida to a deeper, truer, and far stranger place. Equal parts cultural critique and love letter, this book is a gift: smart, funny, and brimming with stories only a local can tell. Anywhere Else establishes Knox as one of Florida’s compelling new voices.”

—Edgar Gomez, author of Alligator Tears

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“With a distinctly Floridian sense of humor and the sharp, affectionate eye of a true native, Knox explores what it means to come from a place that’s part paradise and part cautionary tale. Anywhere Else captures the strange ache of loving somewhere everyone else loves to mock, and how that devotion alters the lens through which you understand the world around you.”

—Eleanor Kriseman, author of The Blurry Years

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“Raw, compelling, and informative. A fantastic, whirlwind voyage into Knox’s lifelong fascination with Florida. Knox’s stories are accessible and binge-readable, and I loved that I walked away learning something from each one.”

—Gabrielle Calise, editor of Florida! A Hyper-local Guide to the Flora, Fauna, and Fantasy of the Most Far-out State in America

“Rachel Knox is a knock-out writer. In Anywhere Else, the Florida woman writes prismatically about herself and her home state—its complicated history, media depiction, and humanity. Knox approaches her subjects in a way that’s both sharp and soft. This book is really, really good.”

—Tyler Gillespie, author of The Thing about Florida: Exploring a Misunderstood State

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