Craig Pittman

Craig Pittman, author of the new non-fiction spellbinder "Cat Tale: The Wild, Weird Battle to Save the Florida Panther" and the New York Times bestseller "Oh, Florida! How America's Weirdest State Influences the Rest of the Country," is a native Floridian. Born in Pensacola, he graduated from Troy State University in Alabama, where his muckraking work for the student paper prompted an agitated dean to label him "the most destructive force on campus." Since then he has covered a variety of newspaper beats and quite a few natural disasters, including hurricanes, wildfires and the Florida Legislature. Since 1998 he has reported on environmental issues for Florida's largest newspaper, the Tampa Bay Times (formerly the St. Petersburg Times), where his coverage has won both state and national awards. He is the co-author with Matthew Waite of "Paving Paradise: Florida's Vanishing Wetlands and the Failure of No Net Loss" (2009), and since then has has written "Manatee Insanity: Inside the War Over Florida's Most Famous Endangered Species" (2010), which the Florida Humanities Council declared an "essential read" for all Floridians, and "The Scent of Scandal: Greed, Betrayal, and the World's Most Beautiful Orchids," which the Atlanta Journal-Constitution declared "irresistible." His 2016 bestseller "Oh, Florida!" won raves in the New York Times, Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times, as well as the gold medal for Florida non-fiction from the Florida Book Awards. His new one, "Cat Tale," is based on more than 20 years of following the fate of Florida's state animal, the elusive and endangered panther. Pittman lives in St. Petersburg, Fla., with his wife and children. For more, see http://craigpittman.com