Orlando isn’t known for its thriving literary scene. Outsiders tend to view Orlando as devoid of any culture not created for the express purpose of maximizing profit, a city lacking in artistic or intellectual depth, a postmodern wasteland of popular Western decadence and consumerism. This viewpoint, however, is hardly reflective of the literary community that’s flourished quietly here, from Zora Neale Hurston’s time in Eatonville to Jack Kerouac’s College Park peregrinations to Bill Belleville’s delvings into the natural world.

Today, Orlando offers a number of different venues for prose and poetry writers: established and emerging reading series and competitions There Will Be Words, Literary Death Match, Time for Prose and Speakeasy; brand-new reading series from MFA candidates at UCF and Full Sail; the Kerouac Project residency; and annual writers conferences such as Rollins College’s Winter With the Writers and New Smyrna’s Blue Flower Arts Winter Writers’ Conference.

Local publisher and writers’ blog Burrow Press, part of the Urban Think Foundation and based in the Urban ReThink space, is doing its part to change naive perceptions of the city. 15 Views of Orlando, Burrow Press’ second collection of short stories in print, is due out at the end of the month. “I envisioned this collection as presenting a multifaceted and human view of the city of Orlando, a contrast to the bubblegum view that most nonresidents will share,” says Nathan Holic, editor of the anthology. “I wanted dark spaces, nooks and crannies, strange and interesting hangouts. I wanted the forgotten characters of the city.” Echoing that intention, contributor Vanessa Blakeslee says in an email exchange that the writers wanted to tell “stories of the city as experienced by residents, rather than tourists, capturing Orlando’s diverse neighborhoods, subcultures and peculiarities.”

15 Views is just that: 15 stories set in 15 different Orlando-area locations, from the neon strip of Little Vietnam on Colonial Drive to the desolate parking lot of an Albertson’s supermarket in Oviedo. The contributing authors include Flannery O’Connor Award winner and Rollins writing professor Philip Deaver, indie-lit sensation Lindsay Hunter (co-host of the Quickies flash-fiction reading series and author of the story collection Daddies) and a baker’s dozen more locally connected writers. (Disclosure: This reporter has contributed to the Burrow Press blog, though not to 15 Views of Orlando.)

While the individual stories appeared one by one on the Burrow Press website last year, they’ve since been “stolen from the tubes of the Internet” to encourage curious readers to buy the book. The print version is not only elegantly laid out by Burrow Press designer Tina Holmes, but also augmented with extra interviews and essays about the 15 Views project, the writing process and the idea of Orlando as a literary setting.

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