Bangor Book Festival

Authors scheduled to participate in the
2009 Bangor Book Festival

(Preliminary information - photos and biographical summaries still incomplete.)

Edgar Allen Beem	Marcus LiBrizzi	Dick Shaw
Bob Duchesne	Donna Loring	Robert Shetterly
Jean Flahive	Susan Lubner	Donald Soctomah
Sandra Hutchison	Theresa Mattor	Matt Tavares
Rick Hautala	Kathleen Mundell	Lucie G. Teegarden
Alex Irvine	Ellen Obed	Brian Vanden Brink
Kerck Kelsey	Douglas Preston	Greg Zielinski
Mark LaFlamme	Wayne Reilly
Bill Lippincott	Trudy Scee

Edgar Allen Beem

Edgar Allen Beem is a freelance writer who lives in Yarmouth, Maine. Former art critic for the Maine Times, he has written about art and architecture in Maine for 25 years. He is a frequent contributor to Down East, Yankee, and Photo District News, and he has written for the Boston Globe Magazine, Art News, Design New England, Maine Boats & Harbors, Conde Nast’s Traveler, and Teacher. He is the author of Maine Art Now and Maine: The Spirit of America, and he writes a weekly opinion column entitled The Universal Notebook for The Forecaster, a Greater Portland weekly newspaper where most of the essays in his new book Backyard Maine originally appeared.

Bob Duchesne

Jean Flahive

Jean Flahive has a long career in higher education, serving as a dean of students at a community college in Maine, and as an adjunct instructor at the college level. Jean has worked as a grantwriting consultant for the Passamaquoddy Tribe, rural communities and non-profit organizations throughout Maine.

Sandra Lynn Hutchison

Sandra Lynn Hutchison was born in Toronto, Ontario, and completed a Ph.D. in Canadian literature at the University of Toronto. She has published two books: Chinese Brushstrokes (Turnstone Press, 1996), a collection of stories about China in the prelude to and aftermath of the Tiananmen incident; and a book of poetry, The Art of Nesting (GR Books: Oxford, England, 2008).

Chinese Brushstrokes was featured in the Books for Everyone catalogue and has been included in the Language Arts’ curriculum in Saskatchewan high schools for the past 10 years. Some of the poetry that appears in The Art of Nesting was awarded an Emily Dickinson Poetry Prize by Universities West Press in 2005. Hutchison has published poems, stories, journalism, and essays in a wide variety of publications, including the Oxford anthology of stories about China Chinese Ink Western Pen (Oxford University Press, Oxford, England, 2000) Her novel, The Red Pen Society, is forthcoming in 2009.

Hutchison has lived and traveled in Asia, India, and the Middle East. For almost a decade, she has lived in Orono where she works as a full-time writer and a part-time professor of Maine literature and Canadian literature at the University of Maine. For the past two years, she has served as poetry editor for the Maine literary journal Puckerbrush Review.

Rick Hautala

Alex Irvine

Kerck Kelsey

After a career in textbook publishing and banking, Kerck Kelsey decided to indulge his love of history by going back to school and, just before his seventieth birthday, received a Master's degree in history from Harvard University . He wrote his thesis on the oldest Washburn brother, Israel Washburn, Jr.: Maine's little-known giant of the Civil War. The great-great-grandson of Cadwallader Washburn, Kerck serves as historian for the Washburn-Norlands Living History Center and is a frequent lecturer. He lives in South Freeport, Maine, with his wife Susan.

Mark LaFlamme

Mark LaFlamme is a crime reporter and columnist at the Sun Journal in Lewiston, Maine. The Maine Press Association (MPA) and New England Press Association named Mark's weekly column, "Street Talk," "Best in Maine" and "Best in New England". In 2006 Mark won the MPA's prestigious "Journalist of the Year" award.

In 2004 Mark began in earnest writing fiction of the macabre centered in New England. That same year he wrote his first novel, Worumbo, the tale of a young reporter with blossoming psychic abilities and government experiments with mind control at an abandoned Maine mill.

In 2005 he published The Pink Room, in which a leading physicist attempts to use the science of string theory to bring his daughter back from the dead. Also that same year, in a departure from his usual genre, Mark published the novella Asterisk: Red Sox 2086, a futuristic story of Abraham Noble, one of the greatest hitters of all time who nearly brings about the end of baseball.

In 2007 Mark published Vegetation, the tale of a man at war with the world of plants.

In 2008 Mark published Dirt: An American Campaign, the story of a grieving son who vanishes with the body of his dead wife and in doing so, imperils his father's bid for the presidency.

He's currently working on two novels Delirium Tremens and The Beast, soon to be published by Splinter Press. In spite of his chosen career, Mark has no plans to write a crime drama.

Marcus LiBrizzi

Marcus LiBrizzi is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Maine at Machias. His most recent book, Lost Atusville: A Black Settlement from the American Revolution, provides an extremely rare look at African-American history and folklore in early Maine. He has also written Dark Woods, Chill Waters: Ghost Tales from Down East Maine as well as other books and articles on the gothic and Downeast culture.

Dark Woods, Chill Waters: Ghost Tales from Down East Maine (Camden: Down East Books, 2007)
Maine Politics and Government (second edition). (University of Nebraska Press, 2009)

Bill Lippincott

William Lippincott is a member and a past President of the Maine Antiquarian Bookseller’s Association. He has owned and operated Lippincott Books, an antiquarian bookshop in Bangor, for over twenty years.

Donna Loring

Donna Loring grew up on Indian Island and graduated from the University
of Maine at Orono with a BA in Political Science.

She is a Vietnam veteran, was the first woman graduate of the Maine Criminal Justice
Academy to become a police chief, served as the police chief for the Penobscot Nation from 1984-90, and in 1992 became the first woman director of security at Bowdoin College.

Donna served in the Maine State Legislature as the tribal representative of the Penobscot Nation from 1998-2004, and 2005-2008.

Susan Lubner

Susan Lubner is the author of three picture books published by Abrams Books for Young Readers: A Horse’s Tale (Spring 2008, illustrated by Margie Moore), Ruthie Bon Bair: Do Not Go to Bed with Wringing Wet Hair (Fall 2006, Illustrated by Bruce Whatley) and the best selling Noises at Night (Fall 2005, co-authored by Beth Raisner Glass, Illustrated by Bruce Whatley).

Noises at Night was featured on the Today Show as a best book for young children and received, along with Susan’s second book Ruthie Bon Bair: Do Not Go to Bed with Wringing Wet Hair, a Mom's Choice Award in 2006. Susan was born and raised in Bangor and currently resides in Southborough, Massachusetts with her husband and two daughters. Susan and her books are featured on her website at www.susanlubner.com.

Theresa Mattor

Theresa Mattor is a landscape architect and author based in Greater Portland. A native of Laconia, New Hampshire, she received a bachelor’s degree in landscape architecture from the University of Oregon. Since moving to Maine in 1988, she has enjoyed a design career that focuses on historic and contemporary landscapes, with a specialty in residential sites. She lectures frequently about contemporary landscape design, native plants, and historic landscapes. She lives in Hollis, Maine, with her husband and son.

She co-authored, with Lucie Teegarden, Designing the Maine Landscape, published in May 2009.

Kathleen Mundell

Kathleen Mundell is the director of Cultural Resources, a non-profit working with communities throughout Maine on programs that help sustain their local culture. A folklorist, she is also the Traditional Arts Specialist at the Maine Arts Commission. Four over fifteen years, Ms. Mundell has worked with Native American traditional artists in Maine and New York.

Ellen Obed

Ellen Bryan Obed grew up in Waterville, Maine and graduated from the University of Maine in 1969. She lived in Canada 16 years, 12 of them in the province of Newfoundland and Labrador where she taught school, researched the Labrador flora, and raised her three children. Obed is the author of eight books for children. Her Borrowed Black has been translated into seven languages and has appeared in 13 different editions since it was first published in 1979.

The seasons and nature are the subject for most of Obed's writing. Her other books include Little Snowshoe, A Letter from the Snow (which won the 1999 Maine Chapbook Competition,) two collections of poetry, Wind in my Pocket and Wind Dance, two plant books, Blackberry Land and Crowberry Sky (Labrador School Board,) Partridgeberry, Redberry, Lingonberry, Too, (Boulder Publications, Sept, 2008). Her latest book, Who Would Like a Christmas Tree? (Houghton Mifflin, Fall, 2009,) is the story of the animals and plants that live on the Christmas tree farm around the year.

Ellen and her husband Robert Elliott, a boat-builder and chair maker, live and work in a rural setting in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine.

Douglas Preston

Douglas Preston worked as a writer and editor for the American Museum of Natural History and taught writing at Princeton University. He has written for The New Yorker, Natural History, National Geographic, Harper’s, Smithsonian, and The Atlantic. The author of several acclaimed nonfiction books, Preston is also co-writer with Lincoln Child of the bestselling series of novels featuring FBI Special Agent Aloysius Pendergast.

Wayne Reilly

Wayne E. Reilly worked for the Bangor Daily News for 28 years as reporter, editorial writer and assignment editor. After retiring, he began indulging his lifelong love of history by writing a weekly column for the newspaper about life in Bangor a century ago. His main sources have been the archives of the city’s two daily newspapers as well as much other primary and secondary material. A book of his columns Remembering Bangor: The Queen City Before the Great Fire was published recently by The History Press. Reilly has edited two other books based on family diaries and letters: Sarah Jane Foster: Teacher of the Freedmen and The Diaries of Sarah Jane and Emma Ann Foster: A Year in Maine During the Civil War. During his career he has written free-lance stories for many publications and won many journalism awards.

Trudy Scee

Trudy Irene Scee, Ph.D., is a free-lance writer, photographer, and historian. She holds undergraduate degrees in Forestry and History, a Master of Arts in History from the University of Montana, and a Doctorate of Philosophy in History from the University of Maine.

Dr. Scee has taught history at Mount Allison University in New Brunswick and worked extensively for the University of Maine System and has taught for a number of years at Husson University in Bangor. She has published several academic essays, worked as a journalist, and held a number of photographic exhibitions.

In addition to her newest book, Tragedy in the North Woods: The James Hicks Murders, published this summer, Dr. Scee has written N.H. Bragg & Sons: 150 Years of Service to the Maine Community and Economy, 1854-2004; In the Deeds We Trust: Baxter State Park, 1970-1995; A Bird for a Bonnet: Gender Class and Culture in American Birdkeeping, 1750-1990; The Inmates and the Asylum: The Bangor Children's Home, 1835-2002; Mount Hope Cemetery, A Twentieth-Century History. She has just finished Timothy P. Wilson and the Seeds of Peace. Her latest books, City on the Penobscot; A Comprehensive History of Bangor Since 1769 and Maine Explained will be published in late 2009 or early 2010. Other works are underway.

Tragedy in the North Woods: The Murders of James Hicks (Salem, MA, The History Press, 2009)

Trudy Scee's Dictionary of Maine Words and Phrases (Bangor, ME, BookMarcs Pub, 2006)

N. H. Bragg & Sons, 150 Years of Service to the Maine Community and Economy (Tilbury House, 2004)

Dick Shaw

Dick Shaw has lived all of his 57 years in Bangor, Maine. A 1970 graduate of Bangor High School, he earned a B.S. from the University of Maine in 1974. Now retired from a 30-year career with the Bangor Daily News, he is a free-lance writer, lecturer, and the author of seven old photo books for Arcadia Publishing. He is a city historian in Bangor and has appeared on the History Channel and A&E Network.

Bangor, Arcadia Publishing, 1994 (Pictorial History of Bangor, Maine)

Bangor, Volume 2: The Twentieth Century, Arcadia Publishing, 1997

Robert Shetterly

Robert Shetterly was born in 1946 in Cincinnati, Ohio. He graduated in 1969 from Harvard College with a degree in English Literature. At Harvard he took a couple of courses in drawing which changed the direction of his creative life --- from the written word to the image. Also, during this time, he was very active in Civil Rights and in the Anti-Vietnam War movement.

After moving to Maine in 1970, he taught himself drawing, printmaking, and painting. While trying to become proficient in printmaking & painting, he illustrated widely. For twelve years he did the editorial page drawings for the Maine Times newspaper, illustrated National Audubon's children's newspaper Audubon Adventures and approximately 30 books.

His paintings & prints are now in collections all over the U.S. and Europe. A collection of his drawings & etchings, Speaking Fire at Stones, was published in 1993. He is well known for his series of 70 painted etchings based on William Blake's Proverbs of Hell, and for another series of 50 painted etchings reflecting on the metaphor of the Annunciation. His painting tends toward the narrative and the surreal, and he has not been, until this time, a portrait painter.

Robert Shetterly lives with his partner Gail Page, also a painter, in Brooksville, Maine.

Donald Soctomah

Donald Soctomah serves as the Passamaquoddy Tribal Representative to the Maine Legislature, 1998 to 2002 and 2006 to 2010. He works as the Historic Preservation Officer for the Passamaquoddy Tribe. Donald is a graduate of University of Maine at Orono with a bachelor of science degree in Forest Management. In 2007 he received an Honorary Doctorate Degree from the University of Machias.

He has written several books about Passamaquoddy history covering the years 1850 to 1950.

Matt Tavares

Matt Tavares wrote and illustrated his first picture book, Sebastian's Ball, as his senior thesis at Bates College. Two years later, after much revision, Sebastian's Ball became Zachary's Ball, his first published picture book. Zachary's Ball went on to win an Oppenheim Gold Seal Award, a Massachusetts Book Award, and was named one of Yankee Magazine's 40 Classic New England Children's Books.

Since then, Matt has published seven more books, all with Candlewick Press: he is the author-illustrator of Mudball and Oliver's Game, and the illustrator of The Gingerbread Pirates, by Kristen Kladstrup, Lady Liberty: A Biography, by Doreen Rappaport, 'Twas the Night Before Christmas, attributed to Anonymous, Jack and the Beanstalk, written by E. Nesbit, and Iron Hans: A Grimms' Fairy Tale, retold by Stephen Mitchell. His books have won three Parents' Choice Gold Awards and two Oppenheim Gold Seal Awards.

Matt Tavares lives in Ogunquit, Maine with his wife and their two daughters.

Lucie G. Teegarden

Lucie G. Teegarden is a writer and editor who has spent more than 35 years producing college, university, and museum publications and books. She holds a B.A. in languages from the College of New Rochelle and an M.A. in French from Yale University and enjoys editing French and ESL teaching materials as well as books on art, history, gardening, and other subjects. Before moving to Brunswick, Maine, in 1983, she lived in Kenitra, Morocco, and in the suburbs of Boston, New Haven, and New York City.

She co-authored, with Theresa Mattor, Designing the Maine Landscape, published in May 2009.

Brian Vanden Brink

Brian Vanden Brink is often chosen as architectural photographer by those in the world of residential design. He has been photographing award-winning architecture for three decades. Brian’s name is synonymous with a respect for design and passion for light. His work has been featured widely in a variety of design and consumer publications such as Architectural Digest, Architectural Record, Boston Globe Magazine, Coastal Living, Design New England, Down East, La Vie Claire, Maine Home & Design, Metropolitan Home, New England Home, New York Times Magazine, Photo District News, Residential Architect, and View Camera magazine.

His photographs grace many books including his own At Home by the Sea: Houses Designed for Living at the Water’s Edge and At Home In Maine: Houses Designed to Fit the Land.

Brian’s new book RUIN: Photographs of a Vanishing America is scheduled for release in the spring of 2009. RUIN is a photographic study of abandoned architecture throughout the United States.

He can often been seen motoring in his 1947 Willys Jeep in Camden, Maine where he lives with his wife Kathleen.

Greg Zielinski

Greg Zielinski was born in Reading, PA, and graduated with a B.S. from Pennsylvania State University, M.S. from Idaho State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has held professorships at George Mason University, University of New Hampshire and most recently at the University of Maine. His research and teaching experience were in Climatology, Meteorology and Geology. Field work for that research gave him the opportunity to visit many remote parts of the world such as Antarctica, Greenland, Canadian Arctic and the Himalayas of Nepal. He also was the Maine State Climatologist.

Through his research he published over 60 professional articles in scientific journals, including Nature and Science, and he led or co-led several international commissions on various aspects of climate. He was a featured scientist on several television documentaries related to the impact volcanic eruptions have on climate, including shows on PBS (NOVA), History Channel, National Geographic, Discovery Channel and Animal Planet. His favorite subjects are winter storms in New England, such as nor’easters, and the weather and climate over the last few centuries as recorded in personal diaries, annals and newspapers.

He has published two scientific books for the general public, New England Weather, New England Climate (University Press of New England) with Barry Keim, and Conditions May Vary: A Guide to Maine Weather (Down East Books).

In 2008, Greg left the academic profession to focus on writing novels, although the weather still drives his interest, especially past storms. He has just completed his first novel, a historical fiction based on the November 1898 storm referred to as the Portland Gale. The storm was responsible for the loss of many ships and much damage along the coast of New England, but its notoriety came from the sinking of the steamship Portland and the loss of 192 lives. It remains the greatest maritime tragedy in New England. His second novel, now being written, is based on the New England Dark Day of May 1780.