7 Questions With Art Levy, Author of Made in Florida

 

Art Levy is a Florida Trend associate editor. He writes the Of Counsel law column, the Florida Originals column and many of the magazine’s Icon features. A graduate of the University of Florida’s journalism college, Levy joined Florida Trend in 2005. Before that, he worked for newspapers including the Tampa Bay Times and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. Over the years, his stories have won more than 20 awards. His newest book, Made in Florida, is a collection of published interviews with important Floridians, some famous and some not so famous.

1. How and when did you get hooked on history?

I grew up in Philadelphia during the 1960s and 1970s, a time when the city supported several major newspapers, including the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Bulletin and the Philadelphia Daily News. So, as a child, I read a couple of newspapers a day, starting with the comics and sports, but also reading the local, state and national news sections. Newspapers are a first draft of history, I think, so I was immersed in history from the time I could read.

2. What role does history play or has it played in your personal life?

When we study history, we learn from the experiences of others – and then we use that information to determine what sort of person we want to be and what sort of person we don’t want to be.

3. How does history play a part of your professional life/career?

I’ve been a journalist since 1984. I hope my job –  from writing thousands of newspaper and magazine stories to writing the book “Made in Florida” – has helped readers better understand their world. I’d be thrilled if many years from now a scholar uses my work to learn more about 21st Century Florida.

4. Why is studying/knowing history important?

History shows us what’s important and helps us make better decisions, not just in a global sense, but in our own lives.

5. What is your favorite period or aspect of history to learn about and why?

I spend so much of my time on modern-day Florida, but I would love to learn more about Florida’s past. My family immigrated to Philadelphia in the early 1900s from Eastern Europe, so I’m also curious about that area and era.

6. What is “Made in Florida” and how did it come about?

After spending most of my career writing feature stories for newspapers, I joined Florida Trend, a statewide news magazine, in 2007, as an associate editor. Early on, I started traveling the state interviewing prominent Floridians for an interview feature called Icon. The 90 interviews in “Made in Florida” were originally published in Florida Trend. Since the University Press of Florida published the book in 2019, I’ve continued to interview people, even during the pandemic, and I’m up to about 130 interviews and counting. The full title of the book – “Made in Florida: Artists, Celebrities, Activists, Educators, and Other Icons in the Sunshine State” – gives you a sense of the wide diversity of people I’ve interviewed over the years.

7. What is it about Florida that makes it and its people so unique?

Florida is a big state, divided into distinct regions that could literally stand alone as separate states: South Florida, Central Florida and North Florida/Panhandle. So, when you have a state this big and this diverse, stuffed with 21.5 million people of all sorts who generally moved here from other places – then you’ve got a state that has just about everything – good, bad and in-between. Maybe, it’s Florida’s ever-expanding diversity that sets it apart from other states.