Writing is a solitary endeavor, but Tiffany Razzano has been giving local wordsmiths a reason to crawl out of their writing caves for more than 11 years. As the founder and president of Wordier Than Thou, a literary-arts initiative, Razzano is the mastermind behind a monthly authors open mic, a publishing conference, a bookstore and numerous events. She’s organized literary pub crawls, a banned-books drag show, a literary burlesque show, and an annual Halloween haunted house with horror skits penned by local writers. When the coronavirus pandemic kept people home, she hosted an online “Quarantine Storytime” and personal library tours.
“The goal was to attract people who may not normally go to a book event by making it weird and fun,” Razzano says of Wordier’s offbeat literary events. That’s literary with a small “l,” she notes. Writers and readers of all levels and genres are welcome. As a result of her inclusiveness and creativity, Wordier has fostered a growing St Pete community of readers and writers.
Sunny with a Chance of Sunshine
Razzano, a native of New York, is also a writer. By day, she’s a field editor for Patch online news covering St. Petersburg, Sarasota, Bradenton, and Miami, a job that sometimes requires writing seven articles a day. Prior to writing for Patch, she was an editor at Tampa Bay Newspapers covering local communities in central Pinellas County. She’s also written for La Gaceta, Creative Loafing, Watermark, Creative Pinellas and the Tampa Free Press.
As a child she was a voracious reader and dreamed of becoming a writer. She worked in community journalism on Long Island after college and moved to Pinellas after her parents relocated to the Tampa Bay area.
Despite her hectic calendar, Razzano may be the most laid-back Type-A personality you’ll ever meet. She is both pragmatic and fantastical. She says her idea for a local writer’s open mic started out of self-interest. Working in community journalism, she got requests to speak at local events, but had little confidence in her public speaking abilities. “I hated it and thought ‘I need to get better at this,’ ” she says. She sought out a local open mic night for practice, but there wasn’t one dedicated to fiction and creative non-fiction writers. She created one.
And Then There Were Many
Her first event was held at the former L Train, a black-box theater on Central Avenue. Soon afterward, the Blah, Blah, Blah Literary Reading and Open Mic moved to Studio@620, where it continues.
As successful as the open mic night was, Razzano wanted to reach people who may never have stepped inside a bookstore. To that end, she led Wordier to host quirky literary-themed events at local bars. She challenged local writers to roast dead authors and imagine a world with Donald Trump as President (pre-2016 election), and invited all of Tampa Bay to hear the resulting works.
In addition to the fun stuff, Razzano steers Wordier to provide writers with more tools for success. Wordier hosts the Tampa Bay Publishing Conference every spring in St. Petersburg.
Writing in the Time of Chaos
Her latest extension of Wordier Than Thou is a queer feminist pop-up bookstore that sells new and used fiction and non-fiction books by LGBTQ+, women and writers of color as well as banned books. It’s called This Bookstore Kills Fascists, a not-so subtle protest of book censorship in Florida schools. The bookstore’s name is a twist on the slogan “This machine kills fascists” that folk singer Woody Guthrie painted on his guitar during World War II in protest of Hitler and his Nazi regime.
Razzano says the bookstore name is “tongue in cheek” while still trying to make a point against banning books. Nevertheless, some other shop owners at Bazaar on Apricot & Lime in Sarasota where the bookstore operated complained that the name was “too hostile.” She closed that location and continues to operate a pop-up store at the monthly Gulfport IndieFaire as well as at other area markets and businesses such as the Public Studio House on Central Avenue.
