Michael O'Halloran

Gene Stratton-Porter, an American author, amateur naturalist, and animal photographer who lived from 1863 to 1924, was also one of the first females to establish a movie studio and production firm. She penned a number of best-selling books as well as popular pieces for periodicals at the time. She trained as a wildlife photographer and focused on the birds and moths that might still be found in one of the last remaining wetlands in the lower Great Lakes Basin. Northeastern Indiana's Limberlost and Wildflower Woods served as her writing space and primary source of inspiration for her stories, novels, essays, photographs, and films. The Song of the Cardinal, her debut book, which bears her name, was a huge economic success in 1903. The wooded wetlands and swamps of the rapidly vanishing central Indiana ecosystems she adored and chronicled are the settings for her novels Freckles (1904) and A Girl of the Limberlost (1909). Stratton-Porter intended to concentrate on nature books, but it was her love novels that made her renowned and provided the funds she needed to continue her research in nature. A D (1911), The Harvester (1911).