Arlo Haskell

Arlo Haskell in Key West, FL (Photo: Ashley Kamen)

Arlo Haskell is an American author, publisher, and literary organizer.

Early life and education

Arlo Haskell was born and raised in Key West, Florida, where his mother, Monica Haskell, was director of the Key West Literary Seminar during the late 1980s and early 1990s.[1][2] Haskell attended Bard College in the late 1990s, where he studied poetry and was a student of John Ashbery.[3][4] After college, he worked for David Wolkowsky, ferrying guests to Wolkowsky's private island and doing other odd jobs.[5][2]

Career

In 2017, Haskell authored and published his first work of nonfiction, The Jews of Key West: Smugglers, Cigar Makers, and Revolutionaries (1823–1969) (Sand Paper Press). Critics generally praised the social history for its depth of research and style, arguing that it had filled gaps in regional Florida history and in American Jewish history.[6][7][8][9] In a review for the Journal of the Southern Jewish Historical Society, Raymond Arsenault remarked that it "introduces a fascinating cast of characters, revealing a unique saga of Jewish community life that no previous historian has chronicled."[10] The Jews of Key West won the Phillip and Dana Zimmerman Gold Medal for Florida Nonfiction from the Florida Book Awards and a President's Medal from the Florida Authors and Publishers Association.[11][12] Haskell is also the author of the poetry collection, Joker (Sand Paper Press, 2009).[13][14]

Haskell is the publisher of Sand Paper Press, a small press he founded in 2003, where he has frequently collaborated with poet and translator Stuart Krimko.[2][15][16] Publications include The Last Books of Héctor Viel Temperley (2011), which was translated from Spanish by Krimko and named a BOMB Editor's Choice.[17] Another Sand Paper title, Harry Mathews's The New Tourism (2010), was co-edited by Haskell and selected as a "Book of the Year" by The Times Literary Supplement.[18][3]

Haskell is executive director of Key West Literary Seminar, the nonprofit organization whose annual writers' conference has been held since 1983.[19][20] His career with the organization began in 2008, when he led the digitization of its extensive audio archive.[21][22] Since his promotion to executive director in 2015, Haskell has increased the organization's scholarship program, launched a literary walking tour of Key West, and created writing programs for local high school students.[2] In 2019, he led the organization in its $1.2 million purchase of the former home of poet Elizabeth Bishop.[23]

On June 4, 2019, Haskell was named by city proclamation the Poet Laureate of Key West by the Mayor, Vice Mayor and Board of Commissioners of Key West.[24]

Political activities

In 2020, Haskell co-founded the Key West Committee for Safer, Cleaner Ships, a nonprofit group that fought successfully to establish the first-ever regulations for cruise ships in Key West.[25] As the group's treasurer, he helped organize a citizens' initiative that placed three referendums with proposed amendments to the city charter for a popular vote.[26] Key West's voters approved the amendments by wide margins on November 3, 2020, resulting in limits on the size of cruise ships that may call and the number of persons that may disembark each day.[27]

Haskell was the committee's primary spokesman during the political campaign, in which the cruise industry secretly financed a dark money group that lobbied against the measures using fearmongering and disinformation tactics.[28][29][30] He was also an expert witness in the committee's legal defense of the referendums in Federal and State court.[31][32][33] 

Since their passage, the charter amendments have been cited as an inspiration by others seeking to regulate cruise ships in places including Bar Harbor, Maine, the Cayman Islands, and Juneau, Alaska.[34][35][26]

References

  1. ^ "Stuart Krimko and Arlo Haskell on Sand Paper Press / Key West". January 26, 2015. Archived from the original on October 12, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  2. ^ a b c d "Arlo Haskell: Explorer of Literature and Jewish History in Key West". Archived from the original on January 22, 2018. Retrieved September 28, 2018.
  3. ^ a b "A Conversation with Harry Mathews - Believer Magazine". January 1, 2012. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  4. ^ John Ashbery, Collected Poems 1956–1987, edited by Mark Ford. (New York: The Library of America, 2008.), p. 1003.
  5. ^ ""Call Me David" — How David Wolkowsky Showed me the World - Key West Literary Seminar". September 28, 2018. Archived from the original on September 29, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  6. ^ "The Jews of Key West: Smugglers, Cigar Makers, and Revolutionaries (1823–1969) by Arlo Haskell - Jewish Book Council". www.jewishbookcouncil.org. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  7. ^ "A history of Jews at the southernmost corner of the U.S. - Charlotte County Florida Weekly". July 5, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  8. ^ "The Jews of Key West: Smugglers, Cigar Makers, and Revolutionaries". March 26, 2018. Archived from the original on September 29, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  9. ^ Marilyn Bowden, Miami Today, November 30, 2017, p. 23.
  10. ^ Raymond Arsenault, Southern Jewish History, Vol. 21 (Charleston, 2018), pp. 182–5.
  11. ^ "Arlo Haskell Wins Florida Book Award for "The Jews of Key West"". Archived from the original on September 29, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  12. ^ "Book Awards - Florida Authors & Publishers Association". Archived from the original on September 29, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  13. ^ Haskell, Arlo (October 12, 2018). Joker. Sand Paper Press. ISBN 9780984331215. Retrieved October 12, 2018 – via Google Books.
  14. ^ Haskell, Arlo (February 28, 2011). "Arlo Haskell". Arlo Haskell. Archived from the original on September 29, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  15. ^ "Stuart Krimko and Arlo Haskell on Sand Paper Press / Key West". January 26, 2015. Archived from the original on October 12, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  16. ^ Magazine, T (September 10, 2014). "10 of the Gallerist David Kordansky's Top Cultural Influences". Archived from the original on October 12, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  17. ^ "The Last Books of Hector Viel Temperley by Lila Zemborain - BOMB Magazine". bombmagazine.org. Archived from the original on September 29, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  18. ^ The Times Literary Supplement, June 24, 2011.
  19. ^ "Building a Literary Bridge to the Caribbean: An Interview with Key West Literary Seminar Executive Director, Arlo Haskell". February 9, 2018. Archived from the original on May 25, 2019. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  20. ^ "Key West Literary Seminar". C-SPAN.org. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  21. ^ "Worshipful Company of Snowbirds - Poetry Off the Shelf". Poetry Foundation. October 11, 2018. Archived from the original on October 6, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  22. ^ "audio archive - Key West Literary Seminar". Archived from the original on September 29, 2018. Retrieved October 12, 2018.
  23. ^ León, Concepción de (November 13, 2019). "Literary Nonprofit Buys Elizabeth Bishop's Key West Home". The New York Times. Archived from the original on November 19, 2019. Retrieved November 18, 2019.
  24. ^ "Key West Names New Poet Laureate, Arlo Haskell". WLRN. Retrieved June 6, 2019.
  25. ^ Glenza, Jessica (October 1, 2020). "'We want our island back': the group taking on cruise ships in Florida Keys". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  26. ^ a b "Key West's Big Ship Ban Signals a Major Shift Ahead for Cruise Tourism". Skift. November 11, 2020. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  27. ^ Hines, Jayme Deerwester and Morgan. "Key West votes to ban large cruise ships from docking, limit cruise visitors to 1,500 per day". USA Today. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  28. ^ Dolven, Taylor (December 10, 2020). "How the cruise industry secretly backed 'dark money' mailers about defunding Key West police". The Miami Herald. Archived from the original on December 10, 2020. Retrieved December 11, 2020.
  29. ^ Nehamas, Nicholas (October 16, 2020). "Disinformation, dark money, 'looting and rioting': 2020 election ads bombard Florida". The Miami Herald. Archived from the original on November 11, 2020. Retrieved November 23, 2020.
  30. ^ Citizen, PRU SOWERS Key West (October 10, 2020). "Key West Cruise ship ballot issue mailers under scrutiny". keysnews.com. Archived from the original on December 1, 2020. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  31. ^ "Judge Won't Keep Key West Cruise Ban Proposal From Ballot - Law360". www.law360.com. Archived from the original on October 30, 2020. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  32. ^ UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT, SOUTHERN DISTRICT OF FLORIDA, KEY WEST CIVIL DIVISION, CASE NO.:  4:20-CV-10076-JLK. Honorable Judge James Lawrence King.
  33. ^ CIRCUIT COURT OF THE SIXTEENTH JUDICIAL CIRCUIT, MONROE COUNTY, FLORIDA. Case No.: 20-CA-516-K. Hon. Bonnie J. Helms.
  34. ^ "Bar Harbor to Explore Limiting Future Cruise Ship Visits". The Maritime Executive. Archived from the original on November 20, 2020. Retrieved November 24, 2020.
  35. ^ Bolado, Carolina. "Key West Cruise Ship Vote Could Ripple Beyond Florida - Law360". www.law360.com. Retrieved November 24, 2020.