Florida Conversations: An Evening with Mac Stone

Mac Stone is coming to the Tampa Bay History Center on Wednesday, November 4, for a talk that fits right in with the city's proximity to the water. Stone is an award-winning National Geographic photographer, conservationist, producer, writer, and naturalist, and his work focuses on the wetlands, wildlife, and ecological systems of the American South. He's a trained biologist, and he's spent more than a decade photographing ancient forests across North Carolina, South Carolina, and Florida.

The evening draws on that archive to share the stories and images behind his new book, Cypress: The Last Old-Growth Swamps. It's not his first time documenting these landscapes: he also wrote Everglades: America's Wetland and American Amazon: Ancient Forests and Living Waters of the Wild Southeastern U.S., and he served as producer and cinematographer on the American Amazon IMAX film and the PBS NATURE series. He's currently the executive director of Naturaland Trust, where he works on land conservation and restoration throughout the Southeast.

Stone frames these landscapes as living archives of deep time, and the talk asks what their survival means for the future of the South. The program is part of the Florida Conversations series, supported by the University of South Florida Endowment, USF Libraries, and a gift from Shelley Blood.

The talk runs from 6:30 PM to 7:30 PM in TECO Hall at the Tampa Bay History Center, 801 Water Street, and it's presented both in person and virtually via Zoom. Tickets are $5, and free for History Center members.