In its 29th year, The Mount’s annual Summer Lecture Series highlights recent works of memoir and biography. Join us for an eclectic mix of stories about historical figures and contemporary underrepresented voices.

Ann McCutchan's The Life She Wished to Live paints a lively portrait of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings and the Florida landscape and people that inspired her.

Washington, DC, born and Wisconsin educated, Rawlings was an unlikely author of a coming-of-age novel about a poor central Florida child and his pet fawn.

Rawlings was a tough, passionate, and independent woman who refused the early-twentieth-century conventions of her upbringing. Determined to forge a literary career beyond those limitations, she found her voice in the remote hardscrabble life of Cross Creek, Florida. Between hunting alligator and managing an orange grove, Rawlings employed her sensitive eye, sharp ear for dialogue, and philosophical spirit to bring to life an unknown corner of America in vivid, tender detail―a feat that earned her the Pulitzer Prize in 1938.

“Fascinating and lively…A masterly and entertaining biography.” —Sarah Harrison Smith, The Wall Street Journal

“McCutchan is a sensitive observer of Rawling’s work, and of her deeply unconventional life.” —Dwight Garner, The New York Times

The Mount is a Massachusetts Cultural Council UP designated organization welcoming participants of all disabilities. Please contact The Mount at 413-551-5100 or by email, info@edithwharton.org, to discuss accommodations needed to participate fully in this event.