Holiday Gift Ideas: Books by Local Authors

By Maggie Gust

If you are looking for holiday gifts for family, children, friends, or acquaintances up north or locally, may I suggest you consider giving a little bit of the flavor of our region? We have many talented authors here in Southwest Florida.

No matter what you’re looking for, cookbook, romance, history, fantasy, poetry, children’s books about local turtles, birds or other animals, chances are that a local author may have written just what you need.

Area bookstores have local authors

shelves/displays, but ideas are available on some websites as well. The local writers’ group here in Marco Island has a just-published anthology, entitled “SW Florida Stories and Poems Vol. II,” a collection of stories and poems by members. They also have members’ book titles available on their website, www.marcoislandwriters.com/books-1.html. Most of the books are also available at Amazon and other major vendors as well. They have a booth at the Marco Island Farmers’ Market, which began November 18. It would be worth your while to stop by and look.

There is also the Gulf Coast Writers Association, www.gulfwriters.org/books-more, a Fort Myers based writers’ group whose members have books available in over 20 genres, including children’s books. The menu buttons for each genre make it very easy to view the selections. Conveniently, there is a link on the Marco Island Writers website directly to the Gulf Coast Writers book menu.

A small but thoroughly Floridian crop of books is available from the Pine Island authors. The titles are listed here: www.pineislandwriters.org.