A photograph by Scott Krier showing author Arielle Hebert seated at a wooden desk in a medium shot. Hebert sits slightly angled toward the right with a light smile, wearing a black long-sleeved scoop-neck top, a delicate silver key necklace, and grey trousers, displaying a floral tattoo on her right upper chest. She has shoulder-length dark brown hair with side-swept bangs. Behind her, a dark bookshelf sits beside vibrant indoor house plants, including large monstera and fiddle-leaf fig leaves.
Arielle Hebert Credit: Scott Krier / Black Lawrence Press

As detailed in a new interview with Creative Loafing Tampa Bay, Arielle Hebert’s “Bottom Feeders,” published in June by Black Lawrence Press, summons a kind of wild Florida girlhood poem by poem, each one popping like the pills that flowed so freely through the state in the late-2000s.

In advance of an appearance at St. Petersburg’s Tombolo Books next month, Herbert has shared “Lightning Capital of the World” from bottom feeders.

There’s no-cover, but RSVPs are requested, when Arielle Hebert comes to Tombolo Books in St. Petersburg on Thursday, Sept. 3.

See her explainer for the work, and the poem itself, below.

A vertical book cover photo for Arielle Hebert’s Bottom Feeders, shot by photographer Selina Román and published by Black Lawrence Press. Set under a deep violet light, a figure wearing a long-sleeved white garment with ruffled cuffs and sheer fabric arches backward on a gravel surface against a stone wall. The subject's face is obscured by a large, sculpted ceramic conch shell mask resting over their forehead and eyes. Bold white text oriented vertically down the left side reads "BOTTOM FEEDERS," with "ARIELLE HEBERT" printed in smaller capital letters centered beside it.
Cover art for Arielle Hebert’s ‘Bottom Feeders’, by Selina Román. Credit: Cover art by Selina Román / Black Lawrence Press

The poem “Lightning Capital of the World” is one of the quintessentially Florida pieces in my poetry collection, Bottom Feeders. Lightning is such a part of the experience of living in Florida, especially near Tampa, which is nicknamed the lightning capital of the world. Growing up on the Gulf Coast, lightning storms were a wonder, a phenomenon that captivated me.

Lightning is part of our culture; we even have sports teams named for it. It’s dangerous and deadly, but it’s also strikingly (forgive the pun!) beautiful and haunting. The poem is an ode to lightning, reverential in its depictions of lightning’s strength and beauty, of which I am in awe. The poem’s shape, with its jagged lines, mimics the form of lightning as well.—Arielle Hebert

Arielle Hebert, “Lightning Capital of the World” from Bottom Feeders. Copyright © 2026 by Arielle Hebert. Reprinted with the permission of Black Lawrence Press.

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This article appears in August 20 – 26, 2026.