After college, Laura Reiley entered the world of work on the heels of a two-year culinary school program. A professionally trained chef, she was then qualified to draw discriminating and effete conclusions about meals eaten and wines consumed. She did so with gusto, reviewing restaurants and writing about food for magazines and newspapers in Baltimore; San Francisco; and most recently St. Petersburg, Florida.

Though a food writer must keep one eye on food, it is somewhat inevitable that the other eye will drift to its anthropology: the folkways of the eaters and drinkers. After moving to Florida’s Gulf Coast in 2003, Reiley began to admire how Harriet Beecher Stowe once described her home state as ”a tumble-down, wild...general happy-go-luckiness which [is] Florida.” What better way to explore her wild new home than with a first edition of Moon Florida Gulf Coast, for which she won first prize in the 2005 North American Travel Journalists Association Awards? From there, she set her sights on the allures of Central Florida for Moon Walt Disney World & Orlando.

After completing a second edition of her Gulf Coast book, she chose to linger for a spell in her own backyard, her adopted home in the Tampa Bay area, where she lives with her husband, a psychologist; her daughter, a thirteen-year-old; and her dog, a balding schnoodle. It didn’t take long to conclude that, with their sports teams, outdoor activities and cultural draws, Tampa and St. Petersburg have enough charisma to merit their own guidebook.