{"id":205687,"date":"2026-03-25T16:40:12","date_gmt":"2026-03-25T16:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/205687\/"},"modified":"2026-03-25T16:40:12","modified_gmt":"2026-03-25T16:40:12","slug":"rachel-knox-on-leaving-longing-and-reclaiming-florida-in-anywhere-else","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/205687\/","title":{"rendered":"Rachel Knox on Leaving, Longing, and Reclaiming Florida in Anywhere Else"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hiding behind the title of Rachel Knox<\/a>\u2019s debut, Anywhere Else: Essays on Florida<\/a>, is a braided set of reckonings, of leaving, longing, and return, asking not just what home is, but who gets to define a place so overdetermined in the national story. Knox\u2019s Anywhere Else resists the easy narratives that so often flatten Florida into caricature. What emerges instead is a place rendered through accumulation\u2014of memory, media, desire, contradiction\u2014where personal history and cultural myth are in constant negotiation. These essays trace not a single arc of departure and return, but a series of recursive encounters with \u201chome,\u201d each one reframing what it means to belong to a place so frequently misunderstood, dismissed, or reduced to spectacle.<\/p>\n

Knox writes with an attention that is both intimate and analytical, moving fluidly between lived experience and cultural critique. An anecdote opens outward; a fragment of pop culture refracts a deeper emotional truth; a landscape becomes charged with the weight of history. The essay form suits her precisely because it allows for this elasticity\u2014this capacity to hold multiple temporalities and meanings at once. Florida, in her hands, is neither simply refuge nor aberration, but something far more unstable and generative: a site where identity is shaped through tension, distortion, and reclamation.\u00a0<\/p>\n

What is especially striking is Knox\u2019s refusal to resolve these tensions. Instead, she lingers in them, attentive to the ways narratives about place are constructed and imposed, by outsiders, by institutions, and by those who call it home. In doing so, she restores texture to a landscape often stripped of it, insisting on its complexity without sentimentality.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The conversation that follows extends these concerns, offering insight into Knox\u2019s approach, her investment in the essay as a form, and her commitment to reimagining Florida not as an anomaly or as a meme, but as a lens through which broader American realities come into focus.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

AAA: Tell me about the choice to write a memoir-in-essays rather than a straight memoir. How much did your desire to examine \u201chome\u201d and redefine Florida shape the decision to keep the explorations more expansive?<\/p>\n

RK: I\u2019ve always been drawn to the essay form \u2013 I think it offers some narrative possibilities that straightforward memoir might not necessarily lend itself to. Especially fragmentation, like in \u2018Wild Things\u2019, where the timeline is all over the place and we jump from scene to criticism back to scene\u00a0 \u2013 that\u2019s how my own brain operates, and it reflects the kind of scattered connections I tend to make with the art and media I consume. I started really thinking about the art and media that have shaped how everyone else thinks about Florida, and how that stereotype has shaped my feelings about home, and then the braiding of the two things just felt natural. The thread of Florida and criticism was always in the early drafts. Essays give some more runway for meaning-making in a way that I really enjoy as a reader and as a writer. Also, kind of self-consciously, I felt like maybe just my life\u2019s events weren\u2019t enough to compel a reader! I know that\u2019s not true, I do think there is definitely still some stigma about personal essay, especially for women writers. Melissa Febos has some great writing in \u2018Body Work\u2019 about how writing that is focused on the self, for women and writers of color and other marginalized people, is actually an act of defiance. So I wanted to try to use my own story to humanize a place that I think is often stripped of a face and a real, lived identity.<\/p>\n

AAA: Also\u2026 can you say something about Florida\u2019s place in shaping our national narrative today, in this political moment?\u00a0<\/p>\n

RK: Absolutely. I write in the book that one of the dangers of dismissing Florida as just some whacked-out, nonsensical place, is assuming that what\u2019s happening here isn\u2019t directly connected to the rest of the nation. We\u2019ve been fighting our own book bans and the \u201cDon\u2019t Say Gay\u201d bill for years, with what felt like little outside support other than \u201cWell, that\u2019s just Florida for you\u201d. But just this past weekend a piece of legislation banning books with queer content from school libraries was introduced at the federal level \u2013 HR 7661. So, both the circumstances of our state and the reactions to it \u2013 that kind of stuff only happens there, those leopards would never eat my face \u2013 are dangerous to both Floridians themselves and to every American. Where we go, you go soon.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AAA: Since this is a memoir-in-essays, I\u2019m curious which essay came first. How did you decide on the framing of the book? Were there essays that were harder to write than others, and why?\u00a0<\/p>\n

RK: Funnily enough, the first essay I wrote in this book was the last to actually be included. I started \u201cMotel Art\u201d, which is an essay about Thomas Kinkade and The Highwaymen \u2013 a collective of Black Floridian landscape painters \u2013 about nine years ago in an undergraduate class at The New School. I\u2019d returned to college a decade after I\u2019d first dropped out of a state university in Florida and had no idea what kind of writer I was, just that I had a lot to say. That essay sat in a drawer for a long time. It was briefly revived as an idea for a whole book about Kinkade \u2013 I\u2019m kind of obsessed with him \u2013 before I abandoned it again. A professor told me it lacked love. It was just too critical, too cynical, with no other elements to grab onto for a reader.\u00a0 I just couldn\u2019t find the spark in it. After I\u2019d written the proposal for this book, where I knew Florida and identity would be the throughline, I started thinking about it through a different lens. I wanted to write about the art that I felt exemplified and really enshrined Florida\u2019s natural beauty, as opposed to this commercial, Disney-fied thing that Kinkade represented for me. I\u2019d always known about and loved the Highwaymen, but I hadn\u2019t realized how connected those paintings were to my own feelings about nature and the divine, whereas Kinkade\u2019s paintings represented something really essential to my Floridian childhood, something painful. *The framing of the book itself made it click, and opened up a different channel for me. I don\u2019t know if that counts \u2013 it\u2019s sort of a Ship of Theseus situation \u2013 but the bones of that essay have been rattling around inside of me for a decade. \u201cDeserter\u201d was the hardest for me to write, for sure, and is still the hardest for me to reckon with. I had a real desire for it to be perfect, which is of course impossible, but also a huge reluctance to include it in the book. Some of the reasons for that are kind of obvious, maybe \u2013 it\u2019s about abortion and motherhood and faith \u2013 all tricky subjects to navigate. But some are more personal. I was and am most afraid of *publishing* that essay. I know it\u2019s the one that will be read most subjectively, that will make people who know me think a bit differently of me \u2013 for better or worse, I don\u2019t know \u2013 and the one I still can\u2019t totally re-read without getting a little freaked out. As far as easiest \u2013 \u201cWild Things\u201d, definitely. It sounds corny, but it sort of possessed me. I wrote it in a week or two, I think, the initial draft, and then obsessed over it for a year, tinkering and editing and rearranging it. It had almost twice as many sections as it does in the book, originally. It just kind of bubbled up in my consciousness in a way nothing else I\u2019ve written has before or since \u2013 like I was a sort of conduit for my own subconscious. I wrote it during a really hot early spring and summer and thought about it constantly. It was kind of spooky. I hope it happens again, that kind of automatic whole-body writing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AAA: \u201cWild\u201d and \u201cwilderness\u201d echo throughout the book. By invoking wildness, I read a kind of defiant reclamation of the term\u2014not just in relation to Florida, but to youth, coming of age, and womanhood. Can you talk about how you wanted to reset or reclaim that word in relation to your own experiences growing up in Florida?\u00a0<\/p>\n

RK: I actually wanted to call the manuscript \u201cWild Things\u201d, but that presents a lot of SEO problems and copyright confusion. But it feels like the heart of the book to me. There are so many things that come up in association that feel linked \u2013 Where The Wild Things Are, Girls Gone Wild, Wild America, The Wild Heart of Florida (which is an incredible anthology of Florida nature writing). It was a word applied to me and my friends frequently, growing up. So the reclamation of it felt natural to me \u2013 I think there\u2019s such a loaded double meaning. There\u2019s a line in \u201cWild Things\u201d (the essay) about the difference between \u2018wild\u2019 and \u2018feral\u2019 being based on perception, not reality \u2013 I really wanted to dig in to that idea. Who gets to say something is wild, and who gets to impose upon that wildness? You might call a wild landscape \u2018unspoiled\u2019 or \u2018preserved\u2019 and technically mean the same thing \u2013 but the connotation depends on the definer, not the thing being defined. That\u2019s just too loaded of a metaphor to choose not to explore.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AAA: In Anywhere Else, you use one of my favorite essay techniques: pulling the reader into a broader, deeper story through seemingly small entry points. For example, a trip home to St. Petersburg leads to a reflection on the X-Files episode \u201cAgua Mala,\u201d which moves into a first crush (Mikey), leaving home, and the complicated ways people change or become unrecognizable to one another. It\u2019s masterfully done\u2014and one of many essays that works this way. Can you talk about your approach to structuring personal essays and weaving research into them? Do you know where an essay will land when you begin, or does the ending emerge along the way?\u00a0<\/p>\n

RK: I try to stay open to structure when I\u2019m drafting, even though my instincts always tend towards fragmentation or braided styles. Writing that way is easiest for me, but it isn\u2019t always the most satisfying reading experience when there\u2019s an action-driven or more plot-heavy story. So, I try to find a form that fits the function of the essay. It\u2019s funny you mention \u2018Agua Mala\u2019 as an example \u2013 that essay changed so many times before publication because the actual events and circumstances were changing in real time, even as I proposed and revised and edited and copyedited the book. Even now, things have happened related to that story that make me wish I\u2019d held onto it for longer, or changed the parallels in some ways. That\u2019s the thing I love and hate about nonfiction \u2013 an essay isn\u2019t ever really done. You just have to decide when to stop.\u00a0 You as the writer are always gaining perspective, or more information, or you go see a movie that reframes your whole idea about an event. But you could keep writing the same essay for 30 years that way, you know? I left the ending of that one a bit short of the current reality, because it felt like it fit the message of the piece more, which is really about sitting with the feeling of not-knowing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AAA: What surprised you in the writing and research of this book\u2014both about yourself as a writer and about your home state?\u00a0<\/p>\n

RK:I was surprised at how easily I found myself writing into extremes. I would write a passage and then think, am I being too apologetic about such a horrible place? And then I\u2019d re-read it a few days later and think, actually, I\u2019m being way too self-conscious about this gorgeous, amazing place.\u00a0 In a meta-way, that\u2019s so much of the Floridian experience \u2013 are they laughing with me, or laughing at me?\u00a0<\/p>\n

AAA: In the essay \u201cIt Is a Queer Place,\u201d you write, in the wake of the \u201cDon\u2019t Say Gay\u201d law, about the long history of queer writers who have made Florida home. What is it about the state, do you think, that can hold these contradictions?\u00a0<\/p>\n

RK: I think Florida is built on contradictions. The state\u2019s entire history is violent and complicated and messy \u2013 the land was stolen from Native people like the Calusa and the Tocabaga and the Seminole by the Spanish and French and Andrew Jackson, decades of war and slaughter slashing their numbers. But it was also a haven for newly freed, formerly enslaved people and abolitionists after the Civil War. Then came subsistence farming settlements and fish camps and anarchist cowboys and all kinds of people who had to navigate an incredibly dangerous landscape to survive. Now, after the mid-century boom of land development and citrus farming, it\u2019s totally different. It\u2019s a vacationer\u2019s paradise, which runs on the dollars of tourists, while also actively being derided by those same tourists. There are a million \u201cFlorida Man\u201d jokes, but I see a sunburnt \u201cCleveland Man\u201d acting a fool at a beach bar here every weekend. As far as Florida\u2019s queer history, that was something I always knew would be a cornerstone of the book. It\u2019s always been there, from Tennesee Williams to Doechii \u2013 and especially in my hometown of St. Pete, where I live, which is known for being a queer haven and home to the biggest Pride parade in Florida, our thriving Grand Central District gayborhood downtown, tons of queer artists and writers living here. Key West, Miami, Orlando, Tallahassee, even the tinier rural areas have thriving queer communities despite, or in pure spite of, constant targeted harassment, violence, and policies from our state leadership. There are Floridians with wildly different experiences \u2013 I can only speak from my own, but I tried to put as many different versions as I could into the book \u2013 but in some ways I do think Floridians are very alike, because of how being from such a singular place has shaped us. One of the main qualities, in my opinion, is resilience. Maybe that looks like defiance when people want you dead, maybe it\u2019s resourcefulness \u2013 making a way out of no way. Making art that no one will take seriously or understand, until they do. Deciding to stay put even after the tourists go home, after hurricanes and heatwaves and tragedies because it belongs to you, too. That\u2019s extremely Floridian to me.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AAA: You write a bit about Didion throughout the book, and I was wondering, aside from her, who else shapes your writing?\u00a0<\/p>\n

RK: Obviously the Florida greats past and present, who made me want to write about place \u2013 Zora Neale Hurston, the Marjories (Kinnan Rawlings and Stoneman Douglas). But also the kind of new guard of Florida writers \u2013 Lauren Groff, Karen Russell\u2019s brilliant \u2018Swamplandia!\u2019, \u2018Florida Palms\u2019 by Joe Pan. Edgar Gomez wrote a memoir called \u2018Alligator Tears\u2019 that came out last year that\u2019s exactly the kind of Florida book I\u2019d been waiting to read. Outside of that, I\u2019ve always been obsessed with the memoirs of Mary Karr and Annie Ernaux, totally different in place and style but real models of self-writing that feels universal and specific at the same time. I was reading Ernaux\u2019s \u2018Happening\u2019 and Melissa Febos\u2019 \u201cGirlhood\u201d and Jeanie Vanasco\u2019s \u2018Things We Didn\u2019t Talk About When I Was A Girl\u2019 while writing the first drafts of these essays, and they definitely imprinted on me and the book.\u00a0<\/p>\n

AAA: How do you feel after writing this book? And what are you working on now?\u00a0<\/p>\n

RK: I feel different every day! I\u2019m excited, but I\u2019m nervous. I have no idea how it will be received, or if it will at all, so I\u2019m anxious to see what happens when it starts to find readers. Hopefully, people will feel seen by it. Right now, I\u2019m working on a proposal for book two, which is looking like it\u2019s going to be about bars, drinking culture, and my many years of bartending and working in hospitality. I don\u2019t know exactly the shape it wants to take yet, but I have a lot of ideas. It\u2019s in that fun, \u2018this could still be anything\u2019 stage, which is my favorite. Plus \u2013 the research for this one sounds a lot more fun, if you ask me!\u00a0<\/p>\n

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Rachel Knox<\/a> is a writer, teacher, and bookseller born and raised in Tampa Bay. Her writing has been featured in several publications, including The New Delta Review, Counter Service, Saw Palm, Lumina Journal, and 12th Street. She teaches writing at the University of South Florida and is a bookseller at Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg. ANYWHERE ELSE: Essays on Florida is her first book.\u00a0<\/p>\n

ABOUT THE INTERVIEWER: Asale Angel-Ajani<\/a> is the author of the novel, A Country You Can Leave, a NY Times recommended book and an Amazon Fiction Editor\u2019s Choice, as well as the nonfiction books Strange Trade and the forthcoming memoir, Fugitive Archives. Originally from California, she lives in New York City.<\/p>\n

\t\t\tLike this:<\/p>\n

Like Loading…<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\n\tRelated\n<\/p>\n

\t