September 28, 2021 7:00 pm
Author and Poet Clarissa Thomasson will be speaking at the Green Street Church in Englewood as the Lemon Bay Historical Society again opens this historic building to the public. Due to the COVID Delta variant masks will be required.
Thomasson will showcase her book Surviving Sarasota which highlights the lives of Sarasota County’s first American settlers from 1851 – 1865 as they endure the Third Seminole War, the American Civil War, and its aftermath. She has also written a poem for Sarasota County’s Centennial which can be viewed HERE.
Her first two novels, Defending Hillsborough and Reconstructing Hillsborough were chosen by the North Carolina Association of Public School Librarians for use in the high school study of the Civil War. Lorinda’s Legacy was “pick of the month” at Greensboro, NC Barnes and Noble.
In 2000, Thomasson returned to Florida and now resides in Venice, FL. where she has written five children’s books in her Little Green Monkey series, four novels: Florida Shadows, Florida Secrets, Florida Sunset and Surviving Sarasota set in Southwest Florida, a World War II novel—Over the Bridge—and Venice Dreamers, which highlights Venice’s original settlers.
Thomasson’s stage plays, Over the Bridge and Florida Shadows, each won first place in the Clarence “Bud” Jones Playwriting Competition at the Firehouse Theatre in LaBelle, FL, in 2014 and 2015.
Thomasson is also a freelance writer–having written for GRAND magazine, Yesterday in Florida—where she won a 2005 Florida Trust for Historic Preservation Award for her contributions to Florida history—and Eastside Venice Neighbors—where she wrote monthly articles on Florida history. She is also a contributor for the Venice Gondolier.