Writer and Historian
Leslie Kemp Poole
BOOKS
Leslie Kemp Poole is the author of four histories: Tracing Florida Journeys: Explorers, Travelers, and Landscapes Then and Now; Saving Florida: Women's Fight for the Environment in the Twentieth Century; Biscayne National Park:An Administrative History; and Maitland. She is co-editor and essay contributor to The Wilder Heart of Florida: More Writers Inspired by Florida Nature. She is Associate Professor of Environmental Studies at Rollins College, Winter Park, Florida.
TRACING FLORIDA JOURNEYS: EXPLORERS, TRAVELERS, AND LANDSCAPES THEN AND NOW
How has Florida's land changed across five centuries? What has stayed the same, and what remains only in memory? In Tracing Florida Journeys, Leslie Poole delves into the stories of well-known explorers and travelers who came to the peninsula and wrote about their experiences, looking at their words and the paths they took from the perspective of today.
Highlighting the Florida that was and the Florida that exists now, Poole brings together historical research, interviews with experts, and her personal experiences to tell a revealing story of the state's natural history.
THE WILDER HEART OF FLORIDA: MORE WRITERS INSPIRED BY FLORIDA NATURE
This captivating collection of essays and poems includes some of Florida’s finest authors, several of them award winners, who describe their love for the state’s natural beauty and how their lives have been enriched by its varied landscapes—from beaches to prairies to springs to scrublands. Included in the volume are essays by some noted but deceased writer/activists: Marjory Stoneman Douglas, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Nathaniel Reed.
Poole co-edited the volume with Pulitzer Prize winner Jack E. Davis and contributed an essay about a preserve in Central Florida that she has visited for decades with her family.
SAVING FLORIDA: WOMEN'S FIGHT FOR THE ENVIRONMENT IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Florida is renowned for its beautiful beaches, natural springs, and subtropical wilderness. However, dredge-and-fill projects, air pollution, and pesticides spread so uncontrollably during the twentieth century that they sparked an environmental movement. Those who engaged in and led the fight were often women.
Saving Florida reveals how women's clubs prompted legislation to establish Florida's first state park, which later became the core of Everglades National Park, in 1916--before women even had the right to vote. It tells the story of Doris Leeper, who convinced her community and the federal government to protect a 24-mile beach that is now Canaveral National Seashore. It remembers Clara Dommerich, who organized the first meeting of the Florida Audubon Society in her living room in 1900. And it celebrates the towering environmental legacy of the three "Marjories": author Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, scientist/activist Marjorie Harris Carr, and journalist/activist Marjory Stoneman Douglas.
These and many other women led the fight for unprecedented changes in how the Sunshine State reveres its unique natural resources. They set the foundation for this century's environmental agenda, which came to include the idea of sustainable development. As a collective force they forever altered how others saw women's roles in society.
MAITLAND
Maitland, known by members of the Seminole tribe as Fumecheliga (the muskmelon place), has a history as diverse and beautiful as its tranquil lake-studded Florida landscape. Named for a soldier who never saw it, the city got its start as an army fort in the Second Seminole War. Later its temperate climate and rich soil drew settlers who put their dreams, sweat, and savings into the soil, growing vegetable crops, raising cattle, and planting extensive citrus groves. Others soon followed, including a number of wealthy winter residents who sought refuge from northern winters and better health in the warmer climate. Together they built a city that served as a center of commerce, learning, and art for the area. Today much of the citrus industry is gone, replaced with subdivisions, thriving office centers, and a cultural corridor, but Maitland remains a place where people move to make better lives.