Is ‘Real Florida’ writer Jeff Klinkenberg the last of his kind? [Audio]

For nearly 40 years, Jeff Klinkenberg’s “Real Florida” columns were featured in the St. Petersburg/Tampa Bay Times. A gifted storyteller with a keen eye for detail and a dogged determination to document, Klinkenberg went down every Florida backroad, every logging trail, every blackwater creek to find the most interesting – and often the most eccentric – people to profile. With the recent publication of his seventh collection of stories, Son of Real Florida (University Press of Florida), Klinkenberg was honored by the Florida Humanities Council with both its Florida Folk Heritage Award and a Lifetime Writing Achievements Award. He has become, like so many of the people and places he immortalized, a Florida treasure.