From her first awkward poems and stories, to her finely crafted essays as a newspaper and feature writer, to her Florida Period highlighted by the Pulitzer Prize for ""The Yearling"" in 1939, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings became, in the words of Margaret Mitchell, America's ""born perfect storyteller."" Arguing that Rawlings has been underestimated and underappreciated as one of the great American writers, Tarr and Kinser bring together for the first time the work that contributed to her once stellar position as a hero of American letters. This collection includes Rawlings' childhood publications in the ""Washington Post"" and ""McCall's Magazine"", early stories and poems written while she was a student at the University of Wisconsin, feature articles for newspapers in Louisville, Kentucky, and Rochester, New York, and her work for the YWCA in New York City. This collection of juvenilia, college writing, newspaper pieces, and stories of life in Florida is an intimate glimpse at an important writer mastering her craft.