Gabrielle Calise is a Florida-based culture writer and editor obsessed with offbeat stories and nostalgia.
Gabrielle is the editor of A24's travel book Florida! A Hyper-local Guide to the Flora, Fauna, and Fantasy of the Most Far-out State in America. She currently reports on local history, music and shenanigans for her hometown paper, the Tampa Bay Times.
Rabbit holes she has fallen down include, but are not limited to: local strip club lore, ghost towns, spaceship houses, Florida’s long-lost hot dog girls and tourist attractions that don’t exist. Most recently, she went looking for roadkill with the state’s only pet taxidermist and splashed around with a pod of freelance mermaids and mermen.
“I loved being the editor of this nearly 600-page love letter to Florida. This involved researching, writing and editing original reporting, essays, lists, maps and more. I hired and led a team of contributors from around Florida. I also assigned and edited chapter content, collaborated with the design team on visuals, and worked with Florida creatives to license story excerpts and original essays.”
Press: Vogue, New York Magazine, Nylon, Axios Tampa Bay, Axios Miami, It’s Nice That, InWeekly, First Coast Connect with Melissa Ross, Miami New Times, Tampa Bay Times. Creative Loafing Tampa Bay also deemed it the “Best Big Ass Book About Florida” in the Best of the Bay 2022 awards.
Culture, music and nostalgia reporter, The Tampa Bay Times
2018 – Current
“My beats include weird Florida, Tampa Bay history, local personalities and celebrities, reality television and music. My favorite stories answer the type of questions that you’ve thought about driving down the side of the road, like, “How do you pronounce THAT?” and What the hell is that thing?”
As I teenager, I loved photographing and blogging about shows around Tampa Bay. I am honored to be back doing that now, from reviewing big time artists like The Cure and Beyonce to profiling a local mother-daughter punk duo and answering music mysteries.
I co-founded our Florida Wonders series to chase down answers to reader queries. Before that, I worked on Tampa Bay Times’ audience engagement team as a social media producer, where I led a digital brand redesign and tried to keep the website from breaking on nights and weekends. Read the stories here.”
“I recently chatted with Poynter about nostalgia writing, how I created my beat and my favorite projects.
Jeff Pearlman interviewed me for his podcast, Two Writers Slinging Yang.”
Contributing writer and editor, Wildsam Field Guides
2021
“In Wildsam’s Gulf Coast guide, I shared the geography, traditions, and cultural institutions from my favorite corners of the South. As a contributing writer and editor, I also got to interview Floridians including a wild animal trapper, an Ybor City cigar roller and a retired Weeki Wachee Springs State Park mermaid who once swam for Elvis.
This almanac delivers a deep dive into the heritage of the Gulf Coast through news clippings, timelines, writings and other historical hearsay.”
Etc.
“As an indecisive journalism student trying to find my niche at the University of Florida, I completed five internships, briefly worked at an ad agency, told stories on-air and behind the scenes at the local PBS/ NPR affiliate, and taught journalism students how to code. I went to Berlin on a photojournalism study abroad program, decided to take daily German classes, and found myself back in Berlin a year later as a reporting fellow with RIAS, a German-American exchange program.
These days you can find me in St. Petersburg, riding a red bicycle and looking for story ideas. Separately, I am trying to master the art of homemade hummus so I can make my Lebanese mother proud (yes, I’ve even interviewed her, too!)”