In 1993, Edythe Abdullah interviewed Idella Parker, author, teacher and former maid for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Florida State College at Jacksonville published the recorded interview on their YouTube page.
On January 10th at 1:30pm, join the Friends of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Farm, Inc., for award-winning author and poet Lola Haskins’ presentation, “Marjorie and Me: Some Poems and a Tribute.” Haskins will read poems inspired by places that Marjorie loved, as well as an essay to honor her.
The public is invited to stay afterwards for the annual meeting of the Friends of the MKR Farm. The presentation is free (after park entrance fee). Learn more at this link.
On November 18, 2025, MKR trustee, Joy Wallace Dickinson presented on Rawlings’ ties to Rollins College as part of the Casa Feliz Parlor Series. Dickinson and two other historians spoke about life in Winter Park, Florida, during the 1930s. Photo by Jennifer Campbell.
In September 2025, MKR trustee, Christina Parrish visited Fountains Abbey, a National Trust home in the UK. One of their exhibits featured Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ The Yearling as a popular children’s text from the 1930s and 40s. Photo by Christina Parrish.
Come to the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park on Saturday, October 11th, from 10-11am for a discussion of Marjorie’s experiences during World War II. This program will include a time to recognize veterans in attendance.
On Nov. 3 at 7pm, join historian and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ Society trustee, Casey Wooster, for a talk on the sites and stories associated with Rawling’s life in St. Augustine.
This seminar is part of the Lifelong Learning / St. Augustine Historical Society speaker series at Flagler College, Markland House. Find out more and register at this link.
Join ART@Noon Thursday, September 25, 12-1pm via Zoom for Bringing Words to Life – The Art of Book Illustration, presented by St. John’s Cathedral.
This presentation will explore Leo & Diane Dillon’s adaptation of The Secret River by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, as well as N.C. Wyeth’s sweeping adventure scenes and more. Find out more and RSVP at this link.
This summer Finding the Secret River, a five-day intergenerational camp, took place, inspired by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ The Secret River and organized by the Village Improvement Association. This program is part of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society’s series of memorials honoring the Society’s first president, Phillip S. May. Read the press release here.
Mark your calendar for Saturday, August 9, 2025, 10:00-11:30am, to celebrate Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ birthday with the Friends of the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Farm. The free event at the MKR Historic State Park in Cross Creek will feature cupcakes, mango ice cream, music, and a tour of Marjorie’s historic home. The park is located at 18700 SE CR 325 in Cross Creek. More details can be found at this link.
Rawlings’ Society member, Mike Miller wrote about Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings in the online publication, Florida Backroads Travel. Read the article at this link.
On June 26, 2025, the Lynx Bookstore added a new book vending machine to the Gainesville Regional Airport. Florida writers, including Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, will be featured in the vending machine. Read more at this link.
Join the Palm Harbor Library to celebrate Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings for a range of programs, August 11-30, 2025. See the flyer for more information. After July 14, register for the cooking and crafting programs at the provided links.
The 36th annual Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Conference was featured in the Apr. 16, 2025, issue of News Leader. Tracy McCormick-Dishman writes about the society, as well as guest speaker, Arthur I. “Buddy” Jacobs. Read a pdf of the article here.Photo by Peter Cannon.
Deborah Dickey will be giving a presentation on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings at St. Augustine’s Romanza Festivale of Music and the Arts. Her presentation on May 15 from 3-4pm at Voorhees Mission House, St. Cyprians Episcopal Church will include readings of the letters between MKR and Norton Baskin. For more details, click here.
MKR Trustee and former Executive Director Leslie Kemp Poole has been selected as the Bronze medal winner in the 2024 Florida Book Awards Florida Nonfiction category for Tracing Florida’s Journey’s: Explorer’s, Travelers, and Landscapes Then and Now.
Our own Teri Sopp will be interviewing keynote conference speaker Trish O’Kane on Jacksonville’s local NPR show First Coast. You can listen on Thursday morning, April 10, at 9:00 am by logging into WJCT’s website and live streaming the show. Check out the livestream when it happens here.
Tickets for My Friend Zelma will be available on Monday, March 24th, at aclassictheatre.org. The play will be performed at The Center for Spiritual Living in St. Augustine April 4-6. All proceeds from the April 5th matinee will benefit the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society. Check out the press release here.
Smithsonian Magazine recently featured a story on Zora Neale Hurston’s obsession with Herod the Great. Want to learn more? Check it out online here.
The Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society expresses its condolences on the passing of Oscar winning actor Claude Jarman, Jr., on January 12, 2025. Claude played Jody Baxter in the 1946 film adaptation of The Yearling and was featured in Donna Green-Townsend’s documentary From Novel to Movie: The Yearling in Florida.
Betty Jean Steinshouer will be giving a talk at the Ocala Public Library on March 29th at 11am, titled “Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and ‘Cracker Chidlings.’” Mark your calendars!
Joy Wallace Dickinson will be giving a presentation on the life and work of Mabel Norris Reese on January 18, 2025, in St. Augustine at the Peña-Peck House. For more details and to reserve a spot, click here.
Florence Turcotte, MKR Archivist at the University of Florida, will be speaking on her edited publication of the letters between Rawlings and Julia Scribner on Saturday, January 11, 2025 from 1-3 pm. For more details, click here.
Check out this interview with Buddy Jacobs, conducted by our own Roy Hunt. Jacobs was instrumental in helping to restore the MKR house at Cross Creek to make it publicly available for tours in the 1960s. Click here.
Check out this 2018 video from Florida Frontiers on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. Click here.
The MKR Society celebrated Audubon’s Birds of Florida with a fascinating guest lecture from our own Leslie Poole and guests from our society, the local Halifax Audubon Society, and other local visitors. It was a sold-out event! Thank you to everyone for making this event a success.
Join us for an exclusive viewing of Audubon’s Birds of Florida, an upcoming exhibit at the Cici and Hyatt Brown Museum of Art on Saturday October, 5th from 5-7 pm. The event will feature a cash bar and opening remarks from our own Leslie Poole, author of Tracing Florida Journeys. You may purchase tickets at this link. Please consider sharing the attached promotional flyer to your social media.
Our own David Nolan sat down with David Drysdale for an interview to recreate what he presented to our Trustees in St. Augustine. You can view it on our society YouTube channel here.
St. Johns Cultural Council and St. Augustine Film Society will be screening two films and offering live musical performances at The Waterworks to celebrate MKR’s 128th birthday on Friday and Saturday, August 23 & 24.
Additionally, the St. Johns County Library will present an online discussion “All About Marjorie” on Thursday, August 29th at 6:30 pm. To be added to the zoom link, please email hgeorge@sjcfl.us.
Keith Huneycutt’s new book from UP of Florida is now available. This is an edited novella by a 19th century Florida writer, Ellen Brown Anderson. Huneycutt, an MKR Trustee, authenticated the manuscript and provides a historical context for the book. Purchase your copy here.
WCJB covered John Hemingway’s visit to Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Park. Check out the event here.
Shannon O’Neil describes the life Rawlings lived in Crescent Beach and St. Augustine in her article, originally published in First Coast Magazine. Check out the article here.
The Amelia Islander recently published an article on our own Marsha Phelts, along with Beverly Davis and Berta Arias, on their book Life on American Beach: Voices from Within.Check out the article here.
Journalist, professor, Rawlings Trustee, and environmentalist Leslie Poole discusses her feature story: To Preserve and Protect — a snapshot of the crossroads Florida’s environment is currently facing. Listen to the podcast episode here.
Check out this travel blog from Fitting in Adventure on the MKR State Park.
Check out the following story on Dessie Smith Prescott by June Perry, The History Geek, in the Clermont News Leader. Click here to read the full story.
Check out the following story on Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings by June Perry, The History Geek, in the Clermont News Leader. Click here to read the full story.
Congratulations to our own Darien Andreu, former society president and current editor of the MKR Newsletter, on being recognized by St. Augustine’s St. Johns Cultural Council as one of its Recognizing Outstanding Women in the Arts Recipients. Click here to read the full story.
Join Betty Jean Steinshouer at the Mount Dora Public Library for a talk on Marjory Stoneman Douglas and Rachel Carson – Their Books Changed the World.
This presentation will be at 2:00 PM on May 4, 2024. W.T. Bland Public Library, 1995 N. Donnelly St., Mount Dora, FL 32757.
Lunch & Learn on March 1-2: The St. Augustine Friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
Lunch & Learn on March 1-2 at the Peña-Peck House: The St. Augustine Friendship of Zora Neale Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
During Women’s History Month, The Woman’s Exchange of St. Augustine will hold a special exhibit, a trolley tour, and two Lunch & Learn events. Events feature Anna Lillios, David Nolan, and Ann McCutchan
Writers’ Talks at the Rawlings Farm in Cross Creek. Saturday, February 24th: Cathy Salustri, Back Roads of Paradise—A Journey to Rediscover Old Florida. Retracing routes followed by Federal Writers’ Project authors during the Great Depression, including Stetson Kennedy and Zora Neale Hurston. Over the course of 5,000 miles Cathy Salustri conjures up the ultimate Florida road trip—often beautiful, sometimes bizarre, almost always exhilarating. Meet and greet the author at 1:30pm; book talk at 2:00pm. Free with regular park admission. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park at Cross Creek, S. County Road 325, Cross Creek, FL. 32640.
The new online exhibit Zora Neale Hurston’s St. Augustine, presented by George A. Smathers Libraries at the University of Florida, explores the impact of the Ancient City on the life, correspondence, and work of Hurston, including letters between Hurston and Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. The online exhibit was curated by Casey Wooster, collections assistant for Governor’s House Library, and made possible by the assistance of Darien Andreu, David Nolan, and Flo Turcotte.
On Saturday, January 13th, the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Park will host a Writer’s Talk with Marisella Veiga, author of Famous Florida Recipes: Centuries of Good Eating in the Sunshine State. The book is a modern revision of Lowis Carlton’s beloved classic. Marisella Veiga, an award winning journalist and short story writer, is also the author of We Carry our Homes with Us: A Cuban-American Memoir. There will be a book signing and food sampling at 1:30. The presentation with questions and answers will begin at 2:00pm.
On Saturday, November 4th, the Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings State Park will host a Writer’s Talk with John Hemingway, author of A Strange Tribe: A Family Memoir. The book is an intimate chronicle of the tumultuous relationship between father Gregory Hemingway and grandfather Ernest. There will be a book signing at 1:30, presentation with question and answers at 2:00pm.
On July 1, 2023, the National Educational Television Association (NETA) will be releasing Society member, Donna Green-Townsend’s 58-minute documentary to more than 350 public television stations across the country. From Novel to Movie: The Yearling in Florida takes an inside look at a classic movie as well as the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel which inspired the film. The film will be premiering August 8th on WUFT-TV at 9 PM.
On Saturday, May 13, 2023, Rawlings Society members gathered at the Citra Cemetery to place a literary marker on the grave of J.T. Glisson, who passed away on April 25, 2019, at the age of 92. As a young man, J.T. befriended his Cross Creek neighbor, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, who encouraged him to write and draw. He later authored and illustrated The Creek, a memoir of growing up in the flatwoods of north-central Florida, in which he acknowledges that the idea of earning his living as an artist came to him when he saw Rawlings’ books illustrated with the sketches of Edward Shenton and N.C. Wyeth.
Interested in a historic home purchase? The historic home of Maxwell Perkins, famed editor for Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and many other acclaimed American authors, is currently up for sale in Connecticut. Learn more here.
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society 