Literary Walking Tour of Pensacola

Diane Jones Skelton’s writing adventures in travel began with “Traipisin’ Around,” a regular column she wrote for Tyler County, a short-lived direct mail shopper in Tyler, Texas. She polished her writing craft during a 20-year volunteer associate editor position for a national fraternal magazine and won the College Fraternity Editors Feature Writing Award. Later, as a 45-year-old journalism graduate student at the University of Kansas, she placed third place nationally in feature writing. At Kansas, she earned a master’s in journalism and returned to her love of teaching writing. She completed her varied journalism career as a student publications adviser, advising award-winning student publications at Washburn University, Topeka, Kansas; All Saints Episcopal School, Fort Worth, Texas; and Central High School, Keller, Texas. She also taught Mass Communications as an adjunct instructor at Tarrant County College, Fort Worth, Texas. Her interest in literary travel never waned as she visited Larry McMurtry’s Archer City, one of America’s few books towns, and Hay-on-Wye in Wales, one of the world’s most famous books towns. She’s toured Sherlock Holmes’ Baker Street home (fictional, of course) and visited other literary sites like the Bronte’s parsonage, Sir Walter Scott’s Abbotsford, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald’s home, Alabama’s Globe Theatre, Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings’ home, the Jack Kerouac House, O’Henry’s house in Austin, Texas, plus enjoyed literary festivals like the Texas Shakespeare Festival and Dickens on the Strand. In her latest book is A Literary Traveler’s Guide to the Gulf South: Bay St. Louis to Apalachicola she combines her writing, research, design and photography skills to produce a 164-page travel guide. She has published two memoirs, The Gumbo Diaries: Mississippi and Beyond and Thank You for Asking via StoryWorth. Her work has appeared in The English Journal, Mississippi Magazine, Mississippi Genealogy, Gulf Breeze News, Florida Hockey Life, Emerald