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These are the authors participating in our first Bangor Book Festival, in 2007. Click on a name for further information.
Christian Barter was born and raised in rural Maine. He received a BA from Bates College in music composition, and an MFA in writing from Vermont College. He has received residency fellowships from the Kimmel Harding Nelson Foundation and the Espy Foundation.
Christian Barter’s first collection of poetry, The Singers I Prefer, was published by CavanKerry Press in June 2005, and was a finalist for the 2006 Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize from The Nation and the Academy of American Poets for the most outstanding book of poems published in the United States in the previous year. His poems have appeared in a number of periodicals, including The Georgia Review, North American Review, and The American Scholar, and his work has been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer's Almanac and in Poets & Writers magazine. He is a trail crew supervisor at Acadia National Park in Bar Harbor, Maine.
Books
- The Singers I Prefer
Website www.fishousepoems.org/archives/christian_barter
Ted Bookey moved to Maine from New York, where he taught English in public schools and at Long Island University. He teaches in the Senior Education program at the University of Maine in Augusta , and is the author of three books of poems: Mixty Motions, Language as a Second Language, and, in collaboration with his wife, Ruth, a book of translations from the German of Erich Kastner.
Bookey's poetry, criticism, and reviews appear in many journals and anthologies. His plays have been produced in Maine and off-Broadway.
Books
- Mixty Motions
- Language as a Second Language
Website
Gerry Boyle was born in Chicago where his paternal grandparents settled as young Irish immigrants. His father and mother moved to Rhode Island when Boyle was a toddler. He had a comfortable, middle-class upbringing there, with lots of siblings and books. After graduating from high school in Warwick, Rhode Island, Boyle attended Colby College in Waterville, Maine, where he studied literature. He also wrote short stories and poetry. It was his first taste of writing and of Maine and he was hooked.
Boyle left Maine for a time, but returned and landed a job with the Rumford Falls Times, a small weekly newspaper in Rumford, a paper-mill town not unlike Androscoggin (Deadline). Boyle’s beats at the paper included high school wrestling, for which he was eminently unqualified. The newspaper survived despite all odds.
Many of Jack McMorrow’s adventures began with Boyle's experiences roaming around Maine looking for a good story. The first McMorrow novel, Deadline, was published in 1993, followed two years later by Bloodline. Since then Boyle has produced a new McMorrow mystery every year or two. Boyle makes frequent book-research trips, sticking to his pledge to never send McMorrow anywhere his creator hasn’t been.
Books
- Home Body
- Pretty Dead
- Cover Story…see website for more titles
Website www.gerryboyle.com
Kristen Britain grew up in the Finger Lakes region of New York State, where she started her first novel—an undersea fantasy featuring herself and her friends—at the age of 9. She published her first book, a cartoon collection called Horses and Horsepeople, at the age of 13. After completing her degree in film production at Ithaca College in 1987, she made the logical (?!) leap from cinema to the National Park Service. Her many years as a park ranger enabled her to work in a variety of natural and historical settings, from 300 feet below the surface of the earth to 13,000 feet above sea level on the Continental Divide; and from the textile mills of the American Industrial Revolution to the homes of Americans who changed the course of history.
Currently she lives in a log cabin in Maine where she writes full-time and pursues her interests, reading, guitar playing, and cartoon illustration, supervised by a cat and a dog. She enjoys exploring the magical places around her and can often be found paddling a canoe in still water, ambling through the woods to mountain summits, or sitting along the rocky shore listening, watching, and daydreaming. This is her fantasy, at least. Her third book in the Green Rider series, The High King’s Tomb, will be available in November 2007.
Books
- Green Rider
- First Rider's Call
Website www.kristenbritain.com
Ashley Bryan’s numerous awards and honors include the Coretta Scott King Award for illustration, six Coretta Scott King Honors, the Arbuthnot Prize, and a Fulbright Scholarship. He has illustrated the work of many others, including The Story of the Three Kingdoms by Walter Dean Myers, The Sun Is So Quiet by Nikki Giovanni, and A Nest Full of Stars by James Berry, as well as written and illustrated Beautiful Blackbird and All Night, All Day: A Child's First Book of African-American Spirituals, among others.
Ashley Bryan grew up in Harlem. His first books were illustrated ABC and counting books that he made in kindergarten. He was educated at Cooper Union and Columbia University. In France during World War II he continued to sketch, keeping his drawing paper dry under his helmet.
After the war he returned to Europe on a Fulbright scholarship to study art in France and Germany. His travels in Africa inspired him to retell and illustrate the African folktales for which he is so well known, including Beat the Story Drum, Pum-Pum and Lion and Ostrich Chicks. His West Indian folk tale The Cat's Purr and his collections of Black American Spirituals, Walk Together Children and I'm Going To Sing, were ALA Notable Children's Books. In 1990 he received the Arbuthnot Prize, a prestigious international award given to recognize lifetime achievement in children's literature. He was the U.S. nominee for the Hans Christian Andersen Award for illustration in 2006.
For many years he taught art at Dartmouth College. Now he travels all over the world captivating audiences of children and adults with his powerful storytelling and poetry presentations. When he is not traveling, he lives on an island off the coast of Maine where he paints, makes puppets from objects he finds as he walks along the beach, creates stained glass windows of beach glass, and writes and illustrates books. Two video documentaries feature his life and work: a National Geographic production made in 1984 and American School Publishers' Meet Ashley Bryan: Storyteller, Artist, Writer, made in 1992.
Books
- Beautiful Blackbird
- Ashley Bryan’s African Tales, Uh-Huh
- Beat the Story Drum
- Pum-Pum
- Let It Shine: Three Favorite Spirituals
- Sing to the Sun
- Ashley Bryan’s ABC of African American Poetry
- All Night, All Day: A Child’s First Book of African American Spirituals
Website
I began as a daughter, born in northern Maine, the last of five children. Over the years I picked up several new hats, each of them adding warmth and texture to my life. In 1977 I became a wife, in 1981 a mother (I liked it so much I did it again in 1984). And as each new hat was added, I found that I've became stronger, more comfortable with the fit, and happier.
Teacher and student, dreamer and philosopher are lifelong hats silently grown like a second skin. And it is from this foundation that I write my novels.
And so now, when asked what I do, I smile and say I'm a romance writer. There is the occasional raised eyebrow in response, and my smile widens. I tell them I'm a Mainer, so what else is there to write about? I'm living smack in the middle of a romantic landscape, nestled between an invigorating ocean and embracing mountains, all cloaked in a mantle of wilderness. The people of Maine are stalwart, independent, and willing to meet life head-on. They probably don't think of themselves as romantic, but they are its very essence.
This is why my stories are set here. And why I wish to share them with the rest of the world.
I live in a log home on a lake in central Maine. I've been married for 25 years and have two remarkable sons. We own more boats than we have people to run them, but it's a diversified group. I own a kayak, which is just my speed. My husband owns a fishing boat, two sailboats, a canoe, and an ice sailboat.
Books
- Charming the Highlander
- Loving the Highlander
- The Seductive Imposter...see website for more titles
Website www.janetchapman.com
Martha Tod Dudman was born in St. Louis, Missouri; grew up in Washington, D.C.; and went to Antioch College in Yellow Springs, Ohio. She moved to Maine in 1975, first to Little Cranberry Island, and then to Northeast Harbor, where she raised her son and daughter and where she still lives today. She served as president and general manager of a group of radio stations in Ellsworth and Bangor for 10 years, and then as a professional fundraiser. Among other projects, she managed capital campaigns for the Maine Discovery Museum and the Northeast Harbor Library. She is a director of Bar Harbor Bank & Trust.
Dudman is the author of three books. Her second, Augusta, Gone, was the winner of the 2002 Books for a Better Life Award and was released as a Lifetime film in 2006. Dudman’s essay “Leaving the Island” was included in the anthology The Empty Nest, and her new novel, Black Olives, will be published by Simon & Schuster February 2008.
Books
- Expecting to Fly
- Augusta, Gone
- Dawn
Website
Kathleen (Lignell) Ellis grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area, and moved to Lubec, Maine, in 1977. She currently teaches English and Honors at the University of Maine in Orono, where she lives. She has published four collections of poetry, Vanishing Act, Entering Earthquake Country, Red Horses, and The Calamity Jane Poems, as well as co-edited the anthology The Eloquent Edge: 15 Maine Women Writers. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Maine Arts Commission, and the Pablo Neruda Poetry Prize from Nimrod. She wrote the filmscript for the centennial documentary project on Edna St. Vincent Millay in 1992.
Ellis holds a BA in English from the University of California at Berkeley and an MA in Spanish literature from the University of Maine. She has traveled extensively and lived in Mexico, Guatemala, Spain, and Portugal, and translated the work of many Latin American women poets. She coordinates the Poets/Speak! Reading at the Bangor Public Library each April and teaches summer poetry workshops at the Farnsworth Art Museum.
Books
- Vanishing Act
- Entering Earthquake Country
- Red Horses
Website
Christopher Fahy is the author of collections of short stories and poetry, and nine novels. He won the 1987 Maine Arts Commission Fiction Competition, judged by Mary McCarthy, with his chapbook of stories, One Day in the Short Happy Life of Anna Banana. In 1999 he won a Grand Prize in the International Poetry Competition sponsored by Atlanta Review. Also in 1999 he published Limerock: Maine Stories. Fever 42, a novel, was published in 2002, and the novel Breaking Point in 2004. Fahy lives with his wife, children's book author Davene Fahy, on the coast of Maine.
Books
- Matinee at the Flame
- Chasing the Sun
- Breaking Point...see website for more titles
Website http://www.christopherfahy.com
Jay Franzel lives in Wayne, Maine, with his daughter and their dingo. He has worked with at-risk students for more than 20 years, and is currently teaching in Winthrop. He has been published in various journals including Animus, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cafe Review, Off the Coast and Puckerbrush Review.
Books
- Walking Track
Website
Elizabeth Garber was Belfast's 2006 Poet Laureate and coordinated the Belfast Poetry Festival and Art Walk that year. She is the author of two books of poetry. Two of her poems have been read on the Writer's Almanac. She is the founder of the Illuminated Sea Press encouraging the independent publishing of fine Maine poets, including Baron Wormser and Belfast's own Barbara Maria, Karin Spitfire, and Linda Buckmaster.
Books
- Listening Inside the Dance: A Life in Maine Infused with Tango
- Pierced by the Seasons: Living a Life on the Coast of Maine
Website
Nancy Garden grew up in New England and New York and began writing at a very early age. She has been an actor, an office worker, a teacher, and an editor. A recipient of the Robert B. Downs Intellectual Freedom Award, the Margaret A. Edwards Award for lifetime achievement in writing books for teens, ALA Best Books for YAs for the past 25 years, and the Katahdin Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Maine Library Association, most of her books are written for teens, middle grade readers, and young children. She divides her time between two small towns, one in Massachusetts and the other in Maine.
Books
- Endgame
- The Case of the Stolen Scarab
- Annie on My Mind...see website for more titles
Website www.nancygarden.com
Henry Garfield grew up in Maine, but spent the 1980s and 1990s in southern California, where he penned his first two novels, Moondog and Room 13. His third novel, Tartabull’s Throw, is a prequel to the first two, and revolves around the 1967 Red Sox. An excerpt appears in the anthology Further Fenway Fiction. His short story “The Heroes Challenge the Gods to a Ballgame” is in the spring 2007 issue of 108 Magazine. His young adult historical novel The Lost Voyage of John Cabot was a Publisher’s Weekly Editor’s Pick in 2004. He is a consulting editor for Bangor Metro magazine.
Books
- The Lost Voyage of John Cabot
- Tartabull’s Throw
- My Father the Werewolf…see website for more titles
Website www.hwgarfield.com
Ardeana Hamlin lives and writes in Hampden, Maine. Her historical novels are set in the Bangor area. She is a columnist for the Bangor Daily News.
Books
- Pink Chimneys
- A Dream of Paris
Website
In college I signed up for history and science. I took a few art classes, too, but nothing seemed to grab my attention. Then a friend suggested I take an illustration course. When I saw the art of N. C. Wyeth, Howard Pyle, Maxfield Parrish, and many other great illustrators, I knew I was hooked.
Although my work is often described as off-beat and quirky, I also have a love for traditional painting. Some of my favorite artists are Vermeer, Bouguereau, Caravaggio, and Sargent. After college, my first art job was working as an assistant animator producing cartoons for Saturday-morning television. I was horrible! I had my own style and could never make it work with those cartoon characters. After three months I got a new job as a photographic retoucher. It was a good job because I learned how to do fine details in a realistic way. When my wife, Karen, and I moved to Boston, I ended up in a bookstore working in the children’s section. For two years I read picture books on every lunch break, studying the artwork. I began to get an idea of what books were really out there and in the evenings I started developing my own style of work. One day, with a portfolio filled with my favorite pieces, I set off on a train to New York to see a publisher about doing my own books. After a few tries, I got the contract for my first book, Then the Troll Heard the Squeak, and have been illustrating picture books ever since.
Now I keep busy doing picture books, chapter books, book jackets, and various art-related projects. When I get the chance I enjoy landscape painting, especially at Acadia National Park. I also like to putter in my garden, and go hiking and camping with my wife and children.
I love to visit children in schools and to share my books with them. I once gave a presentation to a group of kindergarten children. Just before a reading of Lady Bugatti, one little boy in the front row blurted out, “This looks like a weird book, but I think I’m ready for it!” I enjoy creating books, especially new worlds for children to explore.
Library Lion (written by Michelle Knudsen) was selected for the Maine Discovery Museum’s 2007 Time of Wonder Children's Book Award, given each year to a book that “captures the sense of wonder and imagination of the most enduring children’s literature.”
Books
- Library Lion (written by Michelle Knudsen)
- The Wicked Big Toddlah (author and illustrator)
- Weslandia (written by Paul Fleishman) ...see website for more titles
Website www.kevinhawkes.com
James A. Hetley is an architect and retired Kempo karate instructor who lives in Maine. He also served three years in the U.S. Army during the Vietnam war, and has worked such diverse jobs as electronics instructor, trash collector, and operating engineer in a refrigeration plant.
Books
- Dragon’s Teeth
- Dragon’s Eye
- The Winter Oak
- The Summer Country
Website www.sfwa.org/members/hetley/
I'm not a scientist. In college I majored in moldy English novels, which was the closest thing to a writing degree offered by the University of Southern Maine. I planned to be a rock star. Or an artist. I avoided the mandatory laboratory-science course until the 11th hour, at which time I realized I should have spent the previous four years in the geology department. But it was a bit late.
After a stint as an editor at New York-based Garbage Magazine in the late 1980s, I returned to Maine to start a freelance writing career. I worked for oodles of magazines, traveled the world, and gathered a fascinating variety of fungal infections and other diseases.
In the late 1990s, I was recruited by the Discovery Channel Online for a grand experiment called live Internet reporting. Under this model, Discovery detailed writers to distant and uncomfortable corners of the globe, from which we wrote daily dispatches on various subjects. I spent one unbathed month hunting dinosaurs in the depths of Mongolia's Gobi desert, for instance. I spent another at the Montserrat Volcano Observatory, where the fine volcanic ash made a ruin of my computer, fogged my contact lenses, and fixed my hair in the style of a ball of jute twine. Stuck for weeks on a research vessel in the Pacific, I endured low-grade harrassment from an unsavory researcher, but in the end found myself piloting the Alvin submarine around "black smokers" a mile and a half under the ocean. I also wrote a column called "The Skinny On..." which dealt with weighty scientific issues like why your pee smells funny after you eat asparagus. It was a glorious era, until one fine day while covering an adventure race in New Zealand, when I was roused from my sleeping bag in a field of sheep doo, and pulled off the project. Discovery.com's own plug had been pulled.
The magazine market was on the ropes, too, so I took to book-writing. My first effort, The Secret Life of Dust, was published in August 2001. Dust had been a hard sell to publishers, but readers loved it. So did judges: It was a finalist for the prestigious Aventis Prize for Science Books in the U.K. Most recently, The Secret Life of Dust has been published in Japan, where people read from right to left, and up to down. The beautiful Japanese cover is on the back, and the book has a built-in silk bookmark.
My new book, Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn, gave me some quality time at home. After bouncing around the world investigating the strange and exotic, I dug into the home turf—and found it every bit as weird as any other place I've been. All the creatures and plants we disregard on a daily basis proved to be utterly absorbing, once I observed the details of their behavior. (And make no mistake, plants behave. They also misbehave.) It was a great year, and the friendships I made continue on. At the urging of my squirrels and birds, I've allowed native sunflowers to take over a flower garden—the squirrels express their gratitude by decapitating the plants, leaving ugly green stalks. The latest batch of young crows are so verbal that I'm trying to teach one to talk a bit. This takes patience.
Books
- The Secret Life of Dust
- Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn
Website www.hannahholmes.net
Annaliese Jakimides is a writer and visual artist. Her prose and poetry have been published in many journals and magazines, including Utne, GQ, Hip Mama, and Beloit Poetry Journal, and included in collections, most recently The Other Side of Sorrow (winner of a 2007 IPPY—Independent Publisher Book Awards Bronze Award); the recently published The Long Meanwhile, where her short story does time along with those of Alice McDermott, Lydia Davis, and others; the forthcoming A Seaside Companion (2008); as well as an as yet untitled Hallmark anthology. Her work was also included in last spring’s multimedia performance Behind the Apron. Her essays continue to be broadcast on public radio. She writes the arts interview (Work in Progress) and essay (Last Word) for Bangor Metro magazine (www.bangormetro.com).
Her poetry and fiction have been cited in national competitions, including the recent Diner poetry prize, selected by Maine poet laureate Betsy Sholl, the Acadia Prize for Poetry, and the World’s Best Short Short Story competition, while her essay “Choice” continues to be required reading for all incoming freshmen at the University of South Carolina. She has been included in East Coast reading tours for anthologies that have published her work, including the 10-city tour for The Essential Hip Mama.
After living for 27 years on 40 acres on a dirt road in northern Maine, where she pumped water by hand and raised a family, she now lives in an apartment in the old Bangor High School in downtown Bangor.Books
Website
Michelle Knudsen is a writer, editor, book lover, movie lover, science fiction and fantasy addict, occasional community theater actress, perennial allergy-sufferer, and cat owner, among other things. Most of her published work is for children (28 books), but she also writes fiction and nonfiction for adults. Her Library Lion (illustrated by Kevin Hawkes) was selected for the Maine Discovery Museum’s 2007 Time of Wonder Award, given each year to a book that “captures the sense of wonder and imagination of the most enduring children’s literature.” She lives in Brooklyn, New York.
Books
- Library Lion (illustrated by Kevin Hawkes)
- Angel Babies (illustrated by Jane Maday)
- Fish and Frog...see website for more titles.
Website www.michelleknudsen.com
For the first seven years of her life, Sharon Lovejoy was introduced to the wonders of nature by her Quaker Grandmother Lovejoy, a botanist and an educator. As an adult, Sharon's passion for the natural world guided her to become a naturalist, a watercolor illustrator, and an award-winning garden and nature writer.
As a graduate with Distinction in the Field of Art from San Diego State University, Sharon successfully combined her training in art with her love of botany and natural science. She worked as a docent naturalist for the Morro Bay Museum of Natural History and for the Smithsonian Institution in the lagoons of Baja California. In 1982, she founded Heart's Ease Herb Shop & Gardens in Cambria, California, where she shared her love and knowledge of nature with visitors for 15 years.
Sharon's home, business, and display gardens first captured national attention on the cover of the August 1990 issue of Country Living magazine. Since then, her home and garden creations have appeared in numerous books and magazines. She writes a column for Country Living GARDENER magazine, which has won four international awards from the Garden Writers Association. In addition to her own books, she has contributed to many others and published in many magazines, including Fine Gardening, The American Horticulturist, and Woman’s Day. She lives in southern Maine.
Books
The Little Green Island with a Little Red House
Country Living Gardener: A Blessing of Toads-A Gardener's Guide to Living with Nature
Trowel & Error: Over 700 Shortcuts, Tips & Remedies for the Gardener...see website for more titles
Website www.sharonlovejoy.com
Robin Merrill has her MFA from Stonecoast and her BS from Maine Maritime Academy. A former Merchant Mariner and Great Lakes Pilot, she traded seafaring in for a teaching career. Now her life is more adventurous. She teaches at Upper Kennebec Valley High School and Kennebec Valley Community College. In her spare time, she serves as president of the Maine Poets Society. She lives in Central Maine with her husband and daughter and their hounds Orville and Olive. Her poems have recently appeared in Margie, Oklahoma Review and Spoon River Poetry Review. Her chapbook, Laundry & Stories, is available from Moon Pie Press. You can visit her (and the hounds) at her website.
Books
- Laundry & Stories
Website www.robinmerrill.com
L. A. Meyer's first novel, Bloody Jack (Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy), received multiple starred reviews and was named an ALA Best Book for Young Adults, a Booklist Editor's Choice, and a Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book. Before he started writing, L. A. Meyer was an art teacher, an illustrator, a designer, and a naval officer. He lives with his wife in a small fishing village on the coast of Maine.
Books
- Mississippi Jack
- In the Belly of the Bloodhound
- Under the Jolly Roger
- Curse of the Blue Tattoo
- Bloody Jack
Website
Novelist Eleanor Lincoln Morse has taught in adult education programs, in prisons, and in university systems in Maine and in southern Africa. She holds master’s degrees from Yale University and Vermont College. She lives on Peak’s Island.
Books
- An Unexpected Forest
Website
After leaving the fashion business as a designer in 1972, I struggled for many years to find another medium in which I felt comfortable enough to express myself. My formal training as a fashion designer and my love of garments still, 35 years later, lead my hand in the colors I choose while painting a large abstract, or the way I dress BoBo in my second children's book.
I often feel I took the long way in my journey as an artist, but if I've learned anything, it's that every experience we have in our lives helps to build the foundation that we need to stand on when we finally get around to standing in front of that easel.
My styles of painting and my subjects continue to vary according to what's going on in my life. Art is a terrific tool for understanding one's self and finding what you need to pay attention to. After 30 years of writing children's stories, I finally succeeded in getting my first book published in 2006, How to Be a Good Dog, and I'm now working on its sequel, BoBo and the New Neighbor. This summer I actually went outdoors to paint landscapes, which is a first for me. I love creating from my imagination and trying to capture an exact likeness is a definite challenge. After half a dozen trips to paint the Maine landscape, I found the inspiration of nature feeds the imagination and the imagination sets you free to paint whatever you want. That's what I now do.
Books
- How to Be a Good Dog
Website www.gailpage.com
Sanford Phippen grew up in Hancock Point, graduated from the University of Maine in 1964, received a master's degree from Syracuse University, and taught English in the public schools of central New York for 15 years before returning to Maine. A former English teacher at Orono High School, he now teaches at the University of Maine. He is an essayist, a writer of fiction, and a sought-after speaker.
Books
- The Best Maine Stories
- Standing Outside the Door, and Two Other Plays
- Cheap Gossip
- Kitchen Boy
- The Police Know Everything
- People Trying to Be Good
Website
Born in Brookline, Massachusetts, Ed Rice grew up in Bangor and graduated from Bangor High School in 1966. He holds a BA from Northeastern University and an MEd from the University of Southern Maine.
Rice has been a reporter, an editor, a theater critic, and an arts critic for publications such as the Portland Press Herald, Maine Times, and Maine Public Broadcasting System's Maine Things Considered. He has also taught journalism and communication studies at the University of Maine at Orono and Doane College in Crete, Nebraska.
His biographical profile of Louis Sockalexis appears in the Cleveland Indians annual media guide and on the team's website. Rice also spearheaded the nomination drive that led to the induction of both Louis and Andrew Sockalexis into the national American Indian Athletic Hall of Fame in Lawrence, Kansas in April 2000, as well as the induction of Andrew Sockalexis into the Maine Running Hall of Fame in 1990.
An avid long distance runner who has run and completed 25 marathons (including eight Boston Marathons), Rice created and directs Bangor's popular Terry Fox 5-K Run, which has raised over $70,000 for breast cancer research at Eastern Maine Medical Center in Bangor. In 1997 he ran across the state of Massachusetts (162 miles in seven days) in support of a friend, the late Ginny DelVecchio, who was dying of ALS, Lou Gehrig's disease, and founded the Angel Fund. In December 2005, the Angel Fund released If They Could Only Hear Me (edited by Rice), a collection of 30 personal essays (including one by Rice) that describe the many ways people have taken up the fight against ALS. All proceeds benefit the fund and its support of the ALS research wing at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Books
- Baseball’s First Indian
Website www.sockalexis.info
Rhea Côté Robbins was brought up bilingually in a Franco-American neighborhood in Waterville, Maine, known as “down the Plains.” She attended Waterville High School and graduated in 1971. Her maman came from Wallagrass, a town in the northern part of the state and her father was from Waterville. Tracing the family tree back, on both sides of her parents, she found that in Québec their people settled in close proximity to each other, and on a further search into their origins in France, she discovered that in the 1600s they lived within 10 miles or less of each other. At least three of the branches of the original settlers came over on the same boat to New France. She has spent many years researching the origins and visiting the hometowns of these people in Canada and France.
She attended the University of Maine at Presque Isle, 1980–1982, graduating with an AA degree with a concentration in art. In 1982–85, she attended the University of Maine on a bilingual education scholarship. After teaching public high school briefly, she worked as editor of an international, bilingual socio-cultural journal entitled, Le FORUM, formerly known as Le F.A.R.O.G. Forum, at the Franco-American Center from 1986–96. She received her master’s from the University of Maine in May 1997, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Maine at Farmington in 2004.Through her work, studies, and travel, she continues to contemplate what it means to be Franco-American and female in the U.S. She is a founder and executive director of the Franco-American Women's Institute. She currently teaches creative nonfiction, literature, and Franco-American women's experiences at the University of Maine. She is the author of Wednesday’s Child and the editor of Canuck and Other Stories.
Books
- Wednesday’s Child
Website www.rhetapress.com
Anne Rivers Siddons is the author of many bestselling novels, all set in the South, including Sweetwater Creek, Islands, and Nora, Nora. She is also the author of two works of nonfiction, Go Straight on Peachtree and John Chancellor Makes Me Cry. Her novel Downtown recreates her early career as a writer and editor for Atlanta magazine. She and her husband, Heyward, split their time between their home in Charleston, South Carolina, and Brooklin, Maine.
Books
- Heartbreak Hotel
- Sweetwater Creek
- Fault Lines
- Islands
- The House Next Door
- Nora, Nora
- Fox's Earth
- Homeplace
- Kings Oak
- Outer Banks
- Colony
- Hill Towns
- Downtown
- Up Island
- Low Country
- John Chancellor Makes Me Cry
- Go Straight on Peachtree
Website
When Allen Sockabasin was a child in the 1940s and 1950s, his Passamaquoddy village of Peter Dana Point (Mud-doc-mig-goog) was isolated and depended largely on subsistence hunting and fishing, working in the woods, and seasonal harvesting work for its survival. Passamaquoddy was its first language, and the tribal traditions of sharing and helping one another ensured the survival of the group. To the outside world they lived in poverty, but Sockabasin remembers a life that was rich and rewarding in many ways. Their traditions and values were passed on by example and by storytelling, and his elders were generous with their time and their skills, teaching him and the other young people the survival skills of hunting and fishing and canoeing, the value of hard work, and the beauty of their traditional arts. He remembers this life in his heartsong memoir, An Upriver Passamaquoddy, published earlier this year. He is also the author of the children’s picture book Thanks to the Animals, illustrated by Rebekah Raye and also published by Tilbury House.
Sockabasin is a talented musician who performs in a distinct style he calls Native Folk. In addition to his work as a musician, Allen has worked as a logger, builder, landscape contractor, tribal chief, HIV/AIDS program coordinator, and a substance abuse and child welfare director. But his primary interest is the preservation of the Passamaquoddy language and culture. He teaches immersion courses to Passamaquoddy students at the University of Maine, incorporates the language into all of his performances, and presents workshops in schools throughout Maine. Every summer Sockabasin invites thirty-five Native American children in need to his rural camp, where they sleep in tents, paddle a fleet of canoes, and learn traditional skills as well as their Native language. In the process, they also learn to take pride in themselves and in their Native culture. (Photo credit: Kendra Sockabasin)
Books
- Thanks to the Animals (illustrated by Rebekah Raye)
- An Upriver Passamaquoddy
Website
Born and raised in suburban Wyckoff, New Jersey, Melissa Sweet received an associate degree from Endicott Junior College in Beverly, Massachusetts, and studied art at the Kansas City Art Institute. She has worked at various types of commercial art, and has created posters, greeting cards, and one-of-a-kind handmade books. Since entering the world of children’s books with illustrations for the first of James Howe’s Pinky and Rex easy reading series, she has illustrated over 60 titles. Her lighthearted, gentle cartoon illustrations have graced a wide range of children’s books from board books to series fiction to more serious nonfiction subjects, all very successfully.
She now lives with her husband and step-daughter in a small coastal Maine village near a working harbor. Above her drafting table there’s a quote from the poet Mary Oliver: “To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.” That’s good, she says, “because I often find myself taking walks, gardening, biking, but I’m taking it all in and it somehow shows up in my books…It’s been over 20 years and I still can’t wait to get into my studio every morning.” Carmine: A Little More Red was the first book she wrote and illustrated and The New York Times selected it as one of the 10 best children’s books of 2005. Coming soon: Tupelo Rides the Rails.
Books
- Carmine: A Little More Red
- Chicken Joy on Redbean Road (written by Jacqueline Briggs Martin)
- Love and Kisses (written by Sarah Wilson)...see website for other titles
Website www.melissasweet.net
Cynthia Thayer was born in New York City in 1944, raised in Nova Scotia, and migrated to Maine via Massachusetts in 1976 to farm organically. For many years she was a weaver, showing her work throughout Maine and the East Coast. Ten years ago, at the age of 50, she wrote her first short story, which was published in the Antigonish Review, and was hooked on writing.
She earned her BA in British literature from Bridgewater State College in Massachusetts, graduating Magna Cum Laude, and went on to do her graduate work in 19th-century British literature. While in Massachusetts, she taught high school English and theater at Bridgewater-Raynham Region High School and since living in Maine, she has taught adult education classes at Sumner High School, workshops for Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and Schoodic Arts for All, fiction writing with Turnstone Writers’ Workshop, and fiction writing at the University of Maine at Machias.
Her first novel, Strong for Potatoes, won the Rep's Choice Award, was named best new fiction by Ingram Books, and was a Barnes and Noble Discover book. Her second novel, A Certain Slant of Light, was also published in a condensed version by Reader's Digest in English, Portuguese, Danish, and Swedish. Both books were named BookSense books. Her most recent novel is A Brief Lunacy, a literary thriller.
She is the president of Schoodic Arts for All, a founding member of the Meetinghouse Theatre Lab, and a member of the Wednesday Spinners of “WEARINGWOOL naked spinners” fame.
Books
- A Brief Lunacy
- A Certain Slant of Light
- Strong for Potatoes
Website www.abrieflunacy.com
Sometime around the age of 6 or 7, Sarah L. Thomson plunged headlong into a book and never came up for air. She did, however, manage to attend school and grow up, and for 10 years, was part of the exhilarating, exhausting, maddening, and incredible industry of book publishing in New York City, eventually becoming a senior editor at HarperCollins Children’s Books. After her first book, The Dragon’s Son, was published, she left editing and New York. She now lives in Portland, Maine.
Books
- The Secret Life of the Rose
- The Manny
- Amazing Tigers…see website for more titles
Website www.sarahlthomson.com
Cynthia Voigt was born in Boston, Massachusetts, and grew up in Connecticut. For many years, she lived in Maryland and taught school, and now she lives in an old farmhouse in Deer Isle, Maine. She loves to write. She says that she begins a book with a character and a slight plot, and after that, she begins to see the theme.
Over the last 25 years she has published almost 30 novels, most for young adults. Her Dicey’s Song won the Newberry Medal, awarded to the most distinguished children’s book published in the previous year. Over the years her books have gathered many other awards, including the American Bookseller Pick of the Lists, Hornbook Fanfare Book, and the Edgar Allen Poe Award.
“I write…because I want to write. I don’t consider myself a good storyteller, and I have no burning stories to tell. I have no solutions to the problems of the world. I think there are solutions for individual people and individual circumstances. My writing is my way of saying, ‘Have you looked at it this way?’ I do it. I enjoy it.“It’s a razzle-dazzle kind of fun to have a story come out and do well. That’s wonderful. But it’s only when you’re up there working when it’s actually real: that’s what the whole thing is rooted in, and that’s the only thing that actually counts.”
Books
- Bad Girls, Bad Girls, Watcha Gonna Do?
- Bad Girls in Love
- It’s Not Easy Being Bad
- Bad Girls
- Tree by Leaf
- The Vandemark Mummy
- Orfe
- Glass Mountain
- Jackaroo
- Elske
- On Fortune’s Wheel
- The Wings of a Falcon
- Homecoming
- Sons from Afar
- Come a Stranger
- Seventeen Against the Dealer
- Angus and Sadie
- Building Blocks
- The Callender Papers
- When She Hollers
- Dicey’s Song
- The Runner
- A Solitary Blue
- Izzy, Willy-Nilly
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