Laura Reiley entered the world of work on the heels of a two-year culinary school program. As a professionally trained chef, she was now 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, Maryland; San Francisco, California; and most recently St. Petersburg, Florida.

A food writer must keep one eye on food, but it is somewhat inevitable that the other eye drifts to the anthropology of food—the folkways of the eaters and drinkers. After moving to Florida’s Gulf Coast in 2003, Laura began to admire how Harriet Beecher Stowe once described her home state: “a tumble-down, wild…general happy-go-luckiness which [is] Florida.” There was no better way to explore her wild new home than with the first edition of Moon Florida Gulf Coast, for which she won first prize from the North American Travel Journalists Association. From there, she set her sights on all the allures of Walt Disney World Resort, Orlando, and Central Florida.

Laura lives in Tampa with her husband, a psychologist; her daughter, an eleven-year-old; and her dog, a schnoodle.