Friday Five – Andrew Careaga

Here we are, on the verge of official summer, which begins with Sunday’s solstice. If you’re still scrambling to put together a summer reading list, I recommend you consider adding Florida writer Jillian Luft‘s debut novel Scumbag Summer to your list.

Published in 2024 by House of Vlad Press, the novel is set in 2003 Orlando. The protagonist, a recent liberal arts graduate from a public college in Florida, heads to “O-Town” to secure an entry-level clerical job. She soon falls for her flirtatious, painkiller-addicted boss and slides into a summertime affair that is complicated by all kinds of family issues on both sides. Rather than attempt to summarize this novel myself and inadvertently publish spoilers, I refer you to Jennifer Ostopovich’s excellent review from last August and offer this blurb from the Bookshop.org book description:

From bowling alleys to barrooms, malls to matinees, through the dull refuse of suburbia with new and unforgettable meaning, this book is a love letter to a fleeting season of illicit love, rampant addiction, buried grief and inevitable heartbreak-a whiskey-soaked, deep-fried, classic rock-scored mega-chain ode to Florida, youth, and the swan song of the human heart.

Jillian’s other writing includes short fiction and nonfiction in literary magazines like Hobart, Booth, X-R-A-Y, The Forge Literary Magazine, and many others. She writes in raw but beautiful language about illness and death, mothers and daughters, pop culture and Florida, bodies and desire–topics that “typically arise from deep-seated obsessions or something that’s piqued my curiosity.” (For a sample of her recent work, I recommend “Dottie After Dark,” an exquisite nonfiction piece that reads like a short story.) She is also the founder of Sweet Trash Press, a publishing imprint of House of Vlad, and is working on a memoir about caregiving for her terminally ill mother as a preteen. Read on to learn about her debut novel, her other writing, and her definition of scumbag.

Well over a century ago, the Parisian bistro Café de la Rotonde was well-known as a creative hub for artists like Pablo Picasso and Diego Rivera, and for fostering avant-garde art movements like dadaism and surrealism. By the 1920s it had become a popular hangout for expatriate American writers like Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, and F. Scott Fitzgerald, as well as French existentialists Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and other writers, philosophers, and intellectuals.

Karina Longo, editor-in-chief of La Rotonde Review

The bistro’s reputation as a catalyst for creativity inspired poet Karina Longo to bestow its name on her recently launched online poetry magazine. La Rotonde Review made its debut in January with an aim, as Karina explains on the magazine’s about page, “to offer a space where high-quality poetry is celebrated, and poets from all backgrounds are supported.” La Rotonde Review got off to a great start in January with its inaugural poem, “Salt,” by Joseph Fasano, and has been publishing fantastic work since. Soon, La Rotonde Review will publish its first anthology: a collection of poems connected to the theme of “dissolution,” which she discusses in more detail below.

Karina, who can be found on Twitter as @TheDarkestStar_, is a neurodivergent Brazilian-Italian poet based in Milan. She has been published in many impressive literary magazines, including Expat Press, Apocalypse Confidential, Eunoia Review, Eulogy Press, Some Words, Trampoline Poetry, Michigan City Review of Books, Dodo Eraser, HAWKEYE, Burning House Press, Blood + Honey, Be About It Press, Mythic Picnic, cataloguing poetry, Micromance Magazine, Resurrection Mag, Londemere Lit, and Prosetrics. She also has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize.

Read on to learn more about Karina and her lit mag.

Category: Friday Five

Friday Five: ‘Scumbag Summer’ author Jillian Luft

Friday Five: Karina Longo, editor of La Rotonde Review