Home
Advertise
Florida Blog
FLORIDA CULTURE Authors
Festivals
Theater
Wineries
FLORIDA HERITAGE Heritage Sites
History
Museums
FLORIDA TRAVEL Day Trips
Getaways & Inns
Parks
Tourist Attractions
Towns
FLORIDA TRAVEL GUIDES Northwest
North Central
Northeast
Central East
Everglades
Central
Central West
Southwest
Southeast
FLORIDA MAPS Florida County Map
Florida Road Map
OTHER STUFF About Me
My Secret
Contact Me
Florida Facts
Florida E-zine
Florida Links
Florida Real Estate
Your Page!

[?] Subscribe To This Site

XML RSS
Add to Google
Add to My Yahoo!
Add to My MSN
Subscribe with Bloglines

FLORIDA AUTHORS AND THEIR BOOKS

Florida authors and their books have been a passion of mine since I first moved to Florida.

I have a pretty fair collection of Florida novels, Florida history books, and a lot of interesting trivia and history that I kind of lump into the category "Floridiana".

Every time I walk on the beach I notice that most folks sitting in their beach chairs are reading a book.

I don't get close enough to examine titles, but I would bet that quite a few are books about Florida by famous Florida authors.

There is a special thrill in reading a book that is set in the same place where you are reading it.

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings At Cross Creek Florida writers have been part of our landscape since the first Spanish historians scribbled about their adventures in the new world.

Many of them take up permanent residency, like Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings. They become known as Florida authors.

Marjorie moved to Cross Creek and wrote some of her finest stuff there, including "Cross Creek" and "The Yearling".

These were Florida books, and The Yearling won the Pulitzer Prize. She is maybe the most famous Florida author.

Some Florida writers who lived in the state are not included in my list because their work was not about Florida.

Jack Kerouac, who lived in Orlando and St. Pete, and Tennessee Williams who lived in Key West are examples that come to mind.

As far as I know, they didn't write any books about Florida or books with a Florida setting, so I don't include them in my list of Florida writers.

Portrait Of Ernest Hemingway Ernest Hemingway lived in Key West for quite some time, but only wrote one book with a Florida setting.

"To Have And Have Not" is set in Key West, but rumors are that Papa wrote it in Bimini. I still include him among Florida authors.

That's Hemingway to the right wearing a very un-Florida like sweater.

Robert Frost spent many winters in Coconut Grove, but I don't think "Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening" is included in any books about Florida.

No list compiled by me or anybody else could possibly be complete. There are just too many Florida writers for a little website like mine to include them all.

So I will start with just a few Florida authors that I am familiar with.

John D. MacDonald At His Desk A gifted writer can paint a picture of a place in words so that it becomes very clear to the reader.

Among the most gifted of Florida authors was John D. MacDonald, shown at right working at his trusty old typewriter.

An amazing thing can happen when several good authors collaborate on a book. This is what happened in 1996 with "Naked Came The Manatee".

This satirical Florida novel had 13 chapters and 13 authors.

Each author had a South Florida connection.

The authors, in order of the chapters, are:

Dave Barry, Les Standiford, Paul Levine, Edna Buchanan, James W. Hall, Carolina Hospital, Evelyn Mayerson, Tananarive Due, Brian Antoni, Vicki Hendricks, John Dufresne, Elmore Leonard and Carl Hiaasen.

Dave Barry wrote the first chapter, Les Standiford wrote the the next. You get the idea.

The creation of the book was like improv theater: nobody knew what they were going to write until they saw the preceding chapter.

Then their writer imaginations took wing.

This is one of the funniest Florida books ever written. It is a book that captures the essence of South Florida culture and all its eccentricities.

I have tried to limit my list to authors who have written books set partly or entirely in Florida.

Each of the following authors has created clear story portraits that capture a bit of Florida in their life and times.

Fiction

  1. Edna Buchanan
  2. Jimmy Buffett
    3.
  3. Harry Crews
    4.
  4. Tim Dorsey
    5.
  5. James W. Hall
    6.
  6. Ernest Hemingway
    7.
  7. Carl Hiaasen
    8.
  8. Zora Neale Hurston
    9.
  9. Elmore Leonard
    10.
  10. John D. MacDonald
    11.
  11. Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
    12.
  12. Patrick Smith
    13.
  13. J. P. White
    14.
  14. Randy Wayne White
    15.
  15. Jane R Wood
    16.

Non-Fiction

  1. Dave Barry
  2. Loren G. "Totch" Brown
    3.
  3. Al Burt
    4.
  4. Marjorie Stoneman Douglas
    5.
  5. Dr. Gerald Grow
    6.
  6. Michael Grunwald
    7.
  7. Stetson Kennedy
    8.
  8. Jeff Klinkenberg
    9.
  9. Vernon Lamme
    10.
  10. Sidney Lanier
    11.
  11. D. M. Miller
    12.
  12. Gary R. Mormino
    13.
  13. Bill Murphy
    14.
  14. Harriet Beecher Stowe
    15.
  15. David T. Warner
    16.

History

  1. Raymond Arsenault
  2. Michael Gannon
  3. Kevin M. McCarthy
  4. Arva Moore Parks
  5. Charlton W. Tebeau

Follow the links to the pages on each author and his or her works along with a brief biography.

This page will be a work in progress, and I invite your suggestions for consideration.

Create Your Own Web Page
About A Florida Author Or Book

We want to know what you think about books you've read that were written by Florida authors. Write your book review right here about the books you loved or the ones you hated.

This will create a web page with a unique URL that you can use to share your reviews with friends and associates.

Enter Title of Book And Its Author Here

What Other Book Reviewers Have Said

Click below to see contributions from other visitors to this page...

A Land Remembered by Patrick Smith  starstarstarstarstar

This was a great weaving of the history of Florida into a novel format. The book follows the travails and travels of the Mac Ivey family through three ...

Cat Sitter on a Hot Tin Roof by Blaize Clement  starstarstarstarstar
Siesta Key is the setting for Blaize Clement’s Dixie Hemingway series. Dixie was “retired” from the police department after her cop husband and their ...

In the Midst of All That Makes Life Worth Living. Polk Co. Florida. to 1940  Not rated yet
Cantor Brown has written several books about Florida. Very detailed history on Polk County.

Ghosts on the Coast: A Visit to Savannah and the Low Country by Jane R. Wood  Not rated yet
As the author of this book, I have to say this was the most fun to research and write. What's not to like about Savannah, Charleston and Pawleys Island,...

Trouble on the St. Johns River by Jane R. Wood  Not rated yet
"Trouble on the St. Johns River" is a fiction book with an environmental theme. Brothers Joey and Bobby Johnson are outraged when they discover their ...

Adventures on Amelia Island: A Pirate, A Princess and Buried Treasure by Jane R. Wood  Not rated yet
This book is the second in a series which follows 13-year-old Joey, 9-year old Bobby, and 5-year-old Katy, their sassy little sister, to Amelia Island ...

Voices in St. Augustine by Jane R. Wood  Not rated yet
Thirteen-year-old Joey Johnson has a problem. He hears voices. Only he can't find the people who belong to them. His curiosity leads him on a quest where ...

Ruth Minerva by Ruth M Garcia-Marmolejos  Not rated yet
“Ruth Minerva” is the story of a woman as she makes her life’s journey, encounters trials and discovers love and happiness. Growing up Ruth Minerva is ...

THURMOND - Permanently Sealed by: Lathan Hudson  Not rated yet
THURMOND - "Permanently Sealed" is a collection of short stories and cartoons.
THURMOND sees himself in 'black-and-white' while the rest of his world ...

Scenic Driving Florida by Jan Annino Godown  Not rated yet
Godown is a former director of The Florida Historical Society and Florida Folklore Society. This is a great book for learning about Florida and some of ...

Silencer by James W. Hall  Not rated yet
I have always enjoyed reading authors who create a great character and build a series of books around him or her. Since John D. McDonald died taking his ...

UP FOR GRABS, by John Rothchild  Not rated yet
I am reading this book about the raping, plundering and pillaging of Florida by developers since the era after the Civil War. He has some very interesting ...

All Books By Randy Wayne White  Not rated yet
My name is Travis McGee. My creator was John D. MacDonald.

Old John D. died in 1986, and I floundered around without a plot to live in for many years....

HISTORY OF FLORIDA IN FORTY MINUTES, by Michael Gannon  Not rated yet
This was a delightful book that took me 38 minutes to read, so the title is not at all misleading.

Michael Gannon has a breezy style that held my interest ...

Uncle Tom's Cabin  Not rated yet
Most of us have heard of Uncle Tom's Cabin and how it was a novel that infuriated Northerns and Southerners alike, but for different reasons.

I don'...

THE TRAVIS MCGEE NOVELS BY JOHN D. MACDONALD  Not rated yet
Sometimes panned as a pulp fiction writer, John D. MacDonald is one of the finest writers exploring the human condition. Mixing a number of topics including ...

HEMINGWAY'S CATS: AN ILLUSTRATED HISTORY by Carlene Fredericks Brennen  Not rated yet
This is an interesting and easy book to spend a couple of hours paging through to learn the history of Hemingway himself from the perspective of his love ...

SCAT by Carl Hiasson  Not rated yet
Carl Hiasson delivers another Florida tale full of colorful characters and insights into the dwindling state of what was once a paradise of flora and fauna....

VISITING SMALL TOWN FLORIDA by Bruce Hunt  Not rated yet
This is a nice travel guide that discusses several towns in Florida in great detail. It's obvious that the author has been every place he writes about,...

BLACKWATER SOUND, by James W. Hall  Not rated yet
If you like Thorn, the hard bitten Florida conch that is featured in many of Hall's novels, you will love this book. One of the key figures in the book ...

A FLASH OF GREEN, by John D. MacDonald  Not rated yet
This book is one of the first ecological novels. It follows the efforts of a group of environmental activists as they try to keep developers from dredging ...

ONE TANK TRIPS, VOL. 3, by Bill Murphy  Not rated yet
We recently moved to Clearwater and didn't know much about Florida. This little book told us about 52 neat places to visit, all within one tank of gas ...

Subscribe to our free monthly E-Zine, Florida Heritage Travel for news of Florida authors, tourist attractions, art shows, festivals and other activities.

Email

Name

Then

Don't worry -- your e-mail address is totally secure.
I promise to use it only to send you Florida Heritage Travel.

Return From Florida Authors To Florida Backroads Travel Home
For Things To Do In Florida


footer for florida authors page