Pulitzer Prize-Winning Author Gets ‘Stamp of Approval’

From left: Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Historic State Park Manager Valerie Rivers; Florida State Parks Department Director's Office Policy Coordinator Dana Bryan (and stamp collector); USPS Senior Vice President, General Counsel Mary Ann Gibbons; Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings Society Founding Member Phil May, Jr.; Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings confidante and protege "Jake" J.T. Glisson; and USPS Stamp Services Executive Director David Failor. Photo taken by Tom McKercher, USPS.

Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings became the latest inductee into the U.S. Postal Service’s Literary Arts commemorative stamp series Feb. 21 when the 41-cent First-Class stamp bearing her likeness was dedicated outside her Cross Creek, FL, home in the historic state park named in her honor.

“What better location to immortalize Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings on postage than the captivating surroundings that inspired her work,” said U.S. Postal Service Senior Vice President, General Counsel, Mary Ann Gibbons. “It’s easy to understand why her 1942 memoir Cross Creek characterized her homeas ‘a place of enchantment.’The orange trees, pines, palm trees and towering oaks laced by Spanish Moss add to the tranquility of her cedar-shingled farmhouse nestled between a quiet country road and Lake Orange.”

Joining Gibbons in the dedication was a Rawlings confidante and protégé Rawlings inspired to become a writer and artist. “Jake” J.T. Glisson, born in 1927, grew up knowing her as his parent’s next-door neighbor, “200 yards up the road.”

The property is located approximately 20 miles southeast of Gainesville. The park includes the home, restored and preserved as it was in the 1930s, and a barn, tenant house, citrus grove, seasonal garden, chickens, ducks, nature trails and a 1940 Oldsmobile Hydromatic very similiar to her own. In 2006, Rawling’s Cross Creek house and farmyard were designated a national historic landmark. Sitting on her original homemade table is an old typewriter cradling a yellowed page from one of her novels; beside it, a notepad, pen and cigarette-laden ashtray sit undisturbed — as if she stepped away for a moment.

To learn more about the stamp, visit this link: http://www.usps.com/communications/newsroom/2008/sr08_015.htm

Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings commemorative stamp dedication at the the historic state park named in her honor