Ying Chang Compestine

Another contender for a Maine Student Book Award in 2008-09 is Revolution Is Not a Dinner Party (Random House, 2007) by Ying Chang Compestine (pictured at right). This novel about life in China during the Cultural Revolution is based on the author’s own experiences. The first chapter from the audiobook, performed by Jodi Long and published by Listening Library (an imprint of the Random House Audio Publishing Group), is excerpted here. South Portland school librarian Connie Burns introduces the excerpt, then previews the rest of the story and explains how you can get involved with the Maine Student Book Awards.

Lynne Jonell

Emmy and the Incredible Shrinking Rat by Lynne Jonell, illustrated by Jonathan Bean (Henry Holt, 2007), is intended for children ages 8-12, but its whimsy and wit broaden its appeal. The novel was chosen as one of School Library Journal’s Best Books of 2007, and now it’s a contender for a Maine Student Book Award in 2008-09. Here, school librarian Connie Burns introduces the story and reads the first chapter aloud. You can find the book, or a complete professional recording by Full Cast Audio, at your library.

Fear and Civil Liberties

On October 20, 2008, the Maine Humanities Council hosted a symposium entitled Fear, Civil Liberties, and the Rule of Law. The program began with an overview of the topic by Joel Rosenthal, President of the Carnegie Council for Ethics in International Affairs, and member of the Maine Humanities Council board. Rosenthal is a frequent lecturer and writer on ethics, U.S. foreign policy, and international relations.

The next speaker in the program was Jeff McCausland, U.S. Army Colonel (Retired) and Carnegie Council Senior Fellow. During his military career, McCausland served in a variety of command and staff positions both in the United States and Europe, including as Director for Defense Policy and Arms Control on the National Security Council Staff during the Kosovo crisis. He has published and lectured broadly on military affairs, European security issues, the Gulf War, and leadership throughout the United States and abroad.

The program concluded with a panel discussion moderated by Joel Rosenthal. Panelists Shenna Bellows (Executive Director of the Maine Civil Liberties Union), Paula Silsby (U.S. Attorney for Maine), and Steve Podgajny (Executive Director, Portland Public Library) explored what the pressure on civil liberties means for Americans.

Please let us know what you think!
Thanks.

Blaine House

The Blaine House is the Governor’s residence in Augusta, Maine. At the 175th anniversary celebration of this historic house on August 16, 2008, historian Jo Radner interviewed some of its former residents and staff.

Do you have a story to tell about the Blaine House? We'd love to hear from you!

David Richards

David Richards earned his Ph.D. in History from the University of New Hampshire. His research for the 2006 book Poland Spring: A Tale of the Gilded Age (University Press of New England) forms the basis of this presentation at the Yarmouth Historical Society. Richards is the assistant director of the Margaret Chase Smith Library in Skowhegan, Maine. He has also served as executive secretary of the Androscoggin Historical Society in Auburn, and curator of collections at the United Society of Shakers in New Gloucester.

Do you have a story about someone who stayed or worked at Poland Spring? David would love to hear it! Please leave it in the "Comments" section.

Moon Runner

School librarian Connie Burns of South Portland is a steadfast supporter of the Maine Student Book Award. Here, she presents one of the books on the list of contenders from the 2006-07 school year: Moon Runner by Carolyn Marsden (Candlewick, 2005). After Connie introduces the main character, Mina, then reads the first chapter and previews the rest of the story, it’ll be hard to resist finding a copy of the book at your library and finishing it. If you do, or if you've already read the book, leave your comments here!

Blue Hill Authors

Maine is home to many children’s authors and illustrators. Fans are usually only fortunate enough to see one at a time, but in July 2008, three of the best-known—Cynthia Voigt, Ruth Freeman Swain, and Rebekah Raye—appeared together at the Blue Hill Library. In this recording, they are introduced by Brook Ewing Minner, the library’s Assistant Director, who then leads a lively conversation among writers and artists and their audience. (For an interview with Cynthia Voigt, pictured at right, by Maine Humanities Council facilitator Annaliese Jakimides, see this Bangor Metro site.)

Eve LaPlante

Samuel Sewall, the only judge to publicly repent his decision to condemn twenty people to death as witches in 1692, is the subject of Eve LaPlante’s new biography, Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall (HarperOne, 2007). LaPlante counts Sewall as her sixth great-grandfather, a family connection that gave her access to rare documents not previously available. Through these documents, as well as Sewall’s extensive personal diaries and letters, she vividly recreates Sewall’s life and times. LaPlante is the author of two previous books, Seized (a multidisciplinary exploration of temporal lobe epilepsy) and American Jezebel (a biography of Anne Hutchinson), and essays for The Atlantic, the New York Times, Ladies’ Home Journal, Gourmet, and Boston.

Schair Memorial Lecture

The 2008 Douglas M. Schair Memorial Lecture on Genocide and Human Rights was a dialogue for Muslim-Jewish understanding, presented in cooperation with the Islamic Society of Portland and the Jewish Community Alliance of Southern Maine. The featured speakers were Judea Pearl and Akbar Ahmed. Pearl, a computer scientist from Israel, and Ahmed, a social scientist from Pakistan, share a concern about the deterioration of relationships between Muslim and Jewish communities around the world. They have become partners in a dialogue project in memory of Pearl’s son, journalist Daniel Pearl, under the auspices of the Daniel Pearl Foundation. Through their public dialogue, they aim to inspire ongoing conversations in the communities they visit that are similarly honest and respectful. They were recognized for this project in 2006, with the first annual Purpose Prize.

The Schair Memorial Lecture took place at the University of Southern Maine on April 8, 2008. The Lecture Committee is already planning next year's lecture! Please leave your feedback here.

Linda Greenlaw

Linda Greenlaw's three books about life as a commercial fisherman—The Hungry Ocean (1999), The Lobster Chronicles (2002), and All Fishermen Are Liars (2004)—have climbed as high as #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. Her first novel, Slipknot, began a mystery series whose second installment is Fisherman’s Bend (2008). Before becoming a writer, Greenlaw was the captain of a sword boat, the career that earned her a prominent role in Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm and a portrayal in the subsequent film. She now lives on Isle au Haut, where she captains a lobster boat. She stopped at the Portland Public Library in August to promote her new mystery and accept Q&A. What would you have liked to ask her if you'd been there?

Emerson Baker

Emerson ‘Tad’ Baker of York, Maine, is a former chair of the Maine Humanities Council. An author and Professor of History at Salem State College, he directs several archaelogical excavations in New England and also served, from 2002 until its premier in 2004, as a lead consulant for the Emmy-nominated PBS TV series, “Colonial House.” In August, 2008, Baker visited Cousins Island to read from his 2007 book, The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England. His appearance was sponsored by the Yarmouth Historical Society.

Vietnam in Context

Patrick Rael is Associate Professor of History at Bowdoin College. His areas of interest include antebellum America, Civil War and Reconstruction, and comparative slavery. Among other publications, he has edited a volume of scholarship on African-American Activism Before the Civil War (Routledge, 2008). In this talk, Rael places the Vietnam conflict in a continuum of U.S. military engagements, considering the impacts of war on society, and vice versa.

Margaret Sweat

Connie Burns is a school librarian in South Portland with a hidden passion: the lives of Victorian women. In pursuit of her passion, Burns researched Margaret Jane Mussey Sweat (1823-1908) for her Master’s thesis in the American and New England Studies program at the University of Southern Maine. Sweat is best remembered for her bequest of the mansion that would become the Portland Museum of Art, but she was also a published author and an influential member of Portland’s elite during her life. Here, Burns reads from Sweat’s diary and letters (held in the Maine Women Writer’s Collection) and discusses her role in Victorian society.

Annaliese Jakimides

A Coastal Companion: A Year in the Gulf of Maine, from Canada to Cape Cod (Tilbury House, 2008) is part field guide, part almanac; a celebration of the natural world that also highlights people who have chosen the Gulf of Maine as the setting for their life’s work. Poems by contemporary Maine poets open each chapter, and illustrations by two Maine artists, Kimberleigh Martul-March and Margaret Campbell, are featured throughout the text. Author Catherine Schmitt, a science writer for the Maine Sea Grant College Program, opens this reading with an excerpt from the book, then introduces contributor Annaliese Jakimides for a poetry reading.

Jakimides is a Bangor, Maine-based writer who has led numerous programs for the Maine Humanities Council and also contributes to Bangor Metro Magazine. To leave your comments on her poems, or the Coastal Companion project, please add a comment below.

Portland Freedom Trail

“Weaving History and Literature: the African American Oral and Written Tradition” brought five writers together to read from their work and discuss how African American history is revealed through storytelling and literature. The speakers were JerriAnne Boggis, founder and director of the Harriet Wilson Project; Kate Clifford Larson, biographer of Harriet Tubman; novelists Michael C. White and David Anthony Durham; and poet Patricia Smith. Biographies of the speakers are available here; download the walking tour map of the Portland Freedom Trail in PDF format here.

Interview with Lizz

Created by the Maine Humanities Council, Literature & Medicine: Humanities at the Heart of Health Care is a national award-winning reading and discussion program for health care professionals. The Maine Public Broadcasting Network's Tom Porter interviewed Literature & Medicine Program Officer Lizz Sinclair when the anthology Imagine What It's Like was published by the University of Hawai'i Press in the summer of 2008. Here, with permission from MPBN, is a re-broadcast of the interview.

Please leave your questions about the program here, or contact Lizz directly using the information on our website. Thank you!

Alison Hawthorne Deming

Alison Hawthorne Deming is the author of three books of poetry, three nonfiction books, and two limited-edition chapbooks. Her place-based writing has earned her fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown , the Arizona Commission on the Arts, and the Tucson/Pima Arts Council; as well as many awards, including the Bayer Award in science writing from Creative Nonfiction for the essay “Poetry and Science: A View from the Divide.” Deming was born and raised in Connecticut, but currently lives near Aqua Caliente Hill in Tucson, where she serves as Professor in Creative Writing at the University of Arizona. Here, she is introduced by Stonecoast faculty member Barbara Hurd.

Nalo Hopkinson

Nalo Hopkinson is one of the world’s best known fantasy and science fiction writers. She is the author of four novels (most recently The New Moon’s Arms, Warner, 2007) and numerous short stories, and editor or co-editor of several anthologies, including So Long Been Dreaming: Postcolonial Visions of the Future (Arsenal Pulp Press, 2004). Hopkinson was born in Jamaica and lived in the Caribbean until the age of 17, when her family moved to Toronto. Here, she is introduced by fellow science fiction writer Michaela Roessner Herman.

Please leave your feedback on Hopkinson's reading, which includes much-anticipated new work, as a comment on this blog post.

Thanks to the Animals

When the Born to Read program selected books for its anti-bias initiative, Many Eyes, Many Voices, there was a distressing gap in the field of contenders: a suitable children’s book about Maine Native Americans. The few titles available were either too stereotypical or too distant—tales populated by warriors with headresses, or set amidst Plains buffalo or Southwest deserts. That changed in 2005, when Tilbury House publishers in Gardiner, Maine, published Thanks to the Animals by Passamaquoddy storyteller Allen Sockabasin. Born to Read Program Officer Brita Zitin sat down with Sockabasin and his editor, Audrey Maynard, to talk about the story behind this important book.

To learn more about Sockabasin, see this newsletter article. To leave your feedback on this podcast, add a comment to this blog post. Thanks for listening.

Teaching American History

Charles Calhoun's first talk at the 2008 Teaching American History program was entitled "Why Are Some Biographies So Good?" What do you think of Charles' answer to that question, and what would your answer be? Please leave your thoughts here.

Views of the East

Bowdoin sociologist Nancy Riley spoke at the 2008 Views of the East program about family and gender in contemporary China. Please leave your feedback on her talk, or any of the others, as a comment on this blog post. Thanks!

Miriam Colwell

Miriam Colwell was born in Prospect Harbor in 1917 and still lives in the house built by her great-great-grandfather in 1817. She is the author of Wind Off the Water (1945), Day of the Trumpet (1947), and Young (1955). As a small town resident and long-time postmistress, she has watched change upon change wash over the fabled coast for nearly nine decades. She explores those themes in her fourth novel, Contentment Cove (Islandport Press, 2008), which is set in a Down East coastal village in the 1950s, when social clashes and changing values were starting to tear at the fabric of Maine’s traditional way of life.

Helen Nearing

Scholar Mimi Killinger researched the life of homesteader and writer Helen Nearing for her doctoral dissertation in American History. Her dissertation became the biography The Good Life of Helen K. Nearing (University of Vermont Press, 2007). Here, Killinger recounts the inspiration for her project at the Good Life Center in Harborside, Maine, and reads excerpts from the biography. Killinger earned her Ph.D. from the University of Maine, where she is now Rezendes Preceptor for the Arts at the Honors College.

To learn more about the Nearings, visit the Good Life Center or the Thoreau Institute at Walden Woods.

Robert Coffin

The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Robert P. Tristram Coffin was a native Mainer, Bowdoin College graduate, and longtime Bowdoin faculty member. Though popular writer and speaker in his time, his work is not widely known today. In this podcast episode, Kevin Belmonte, who recently completed a Master’s thesis on Coffin for the American and New England Studies program at the University of Southern Maine, considers why. In the process, he shares pieces of Coffin’s correspondance and reads three poems aloud. Belmonte lives in York, Maine, where his family has resided since the 1630s. He is the author of William Wilberforce, A Hero for Humanity (Zondervan/HarperCollins, 2007), for which he received the John Pollock Award for Christian Biography. He has served as a script consultant for the BBC and PBS.

Permission to read Coffin’s poems in this episode was generously granted by the Estate of Robert P. Tristram Coffin. We were also assisted by the staff at the George J. Mitchell Dept. of Special Collections & Archives at Bowdoin, where Coffin's papers are held. To leave your feedback, please add a comment to this post.

Neil Rolde

Neil Rolde's 2006 book, Continental Liar from the State of Maine, is a biography of James G. Blaine, the Maine politician who dominated the American political stage from just before the Civil War and almost until the twentieth century. A former Maine politician himself, Rolde is a prize-winning historian and author of Unsettled Past, Unsettled Future: The Story of Maine Indians; The Interrupted Forest: A History of Maine's Wildlands; Maine, Down East and Different; and many other books. A former Board member of the Maine Humanities Council, and won the Constance H. Carlson Public Humanities Prize in 2005.

Feel free to leave your thoughts on Rolde's book as a comment on this blog post. Thanks!

Jeff Shaara

The Steel Wave is the second novel in what will be a trilogy of World War II stories by Jeff Shaara, who has also written about the Civil War, the American Revolution, the Mexican War, and the first World War. Shaara is the son of the late Michael Shaara, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Killer Angels, and got his start as a novelist when he was asked to write both a sequel and a prequel to his father's bestseller.

Please leave your feedback on this Brown Bag Lecture from the Portland Public Library here.

Shara McCallum

Shara McCallum is the author of two poetry collections, The Water Between Us (University of Pittsburgh, 1999, winner of the 1998 Agnes Lynch Starrett Poetry Prize) and Song of Thieves (University of Pittsburgh, 2003). McCallum was born in Jamaica, where she lived until she was nine with Afro-Jamaican and Venezuelan parents. She directs the Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University. Here, she is introduced by fellow poet Charles Martin.

McCallum's reading took place in Freeport during the winter residency of the Stonecoast MFA program in January, 2008. This is the last recording from the winter residency that we will post. (The summer residency is less than one month away!) We'd love to hear what you thought of this series of podcasts, and whether or not you're interested in hearing more from Stonecoast writers.

Lewis Robinson

Lewis Robinson is the author of Officer Friendly and Other Stories and the forthcoming novel Water Dogs, due out from Random House in January 2009. A graduate of Middlebury College and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award and a PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award. Here, he is introduced by fellow fiction faculty member Lesléa Newman.

Robinson's reading took place in Freeport during the winter residency of the Stonecoast MFA program in January, 2008.

Ashley Bryan

This interview with Ashley Bryan by Charlotte Albright was included on the Council’s 30th Anniversary CD, “Maine Writers Speak.”

Born and raised in New York City, Ashley Bryan has found a home in Maine. Folklorist, writer, illustrator and performer, Bryan draws on African myths and tales, his own and others’ experience, and his literary, artistic and thespian talents to create children’s books (enjoyed by adults, too) and storytellings in schools and other venues, sometimes under the auspices of the Maine Humanities Council. (Read about his appearance at the 2005 Born to Read conference here.) Bryan’s newest book is Let it Shine: Three Favorite Spirituals (Simon and Schuster, 2007).

You can leave your feedback in the comments section, below.

Amy Hand

Amy Hand is the children's librarian at the Camden Public Library. In April, 2008, she read aloud from some of her favorite children's books for Humanities on Demand. She also shared some songs and rhymes that go along with the books.

We hope you can find some children or grandchildren to listen with you, then let us know what they think!

Jody Fein

Storyteller Jody Fein visited the East End Community School in Portland on May 15, 2008, to tell stories to the Kindergarten, 1st Grade, and 2nd Grade. She selected the stories "Abiyoyo," "Stone Soup," and "The Wind and the Sun," all of which tie into the Born to Read initiative Peaceable Stories. This event was part of the Maine Festival of the Book. Audio recordings of other Festival events are on the MPBN website.

Andrew Walkling

Andrew Walkling is Dean's Assistant Professor of Early Modern Studies at the State University of New York at Binghamton, where he teaches in the departments of art history, English, and theater and is affiliated with the faculties of history, music, and philosophy. He earned a Ph.D. in British history from Cornell. A Fellow of the Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, he works in an interdisciplinary field focusing on the courts of Charles II and James II (1660-88). He is writing a book entitled Masque and Opera in Restoration England.

Two handouts accompanied Dr. Walkling's talk at Winter Weekend, "Dido's Lament: Virgilian Epic and 17th Century English Opera." These can be downloaded on the main Humanities on Demand website.

Art for Justice

Jennifer Hodsdon, a 2008 graduate of the Stonecoast program who now coordinates the Maine SpeakOut Project, led this discussion of some of the rewards and challenges that come from using writing as a transformative exercise to effect social change. The panelists were three Maine-based writer-activists—Gary Lawless, Cathy Plourde, and Chiara Liberatore—whose experiences range from writing workshops with homeless youth, veterans, and immigrant populations to theatrical performance with incarcerated youth and adults. You may have seen Lawless at Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, which he co-founded in 1979. Plourde founded Add Verb Productions, and co-wrote that organization's play "When Turtles Make Love: Real Talk Between Parents and Teens" with Liberatore.

Please use this forum to weigh in on any of the issues raised by the panelists and facilitator.

Poetry Festival

Three events from the Portland Public Library's 2008 Poetry Festival
were captured for Humanities On Demand: the kick-off with Annie Finch and Patricia Hagge, a collaborative reading by three poets whose work has been published by Moon Pie Press, and a lecture by Shakespeare scholar David Kastan.

Ford in Focus

Michael C. Connolly and Kevin Stoehr are the editors of John Ford in Focus, a collection of essays that offers a comprehensive examination of Ford’s life and career, revealing the frequent intersections between Ford’s personal life and artistic vision, including his roots in Portland. Stoehr is associate professor of humanities at Boston University and lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Connolly teaches History and Political Science at Saint Joseph’s College of Maine. He is the author of They Change Their Sky: The Irish in Maine. They spoke at the Portland Public Library in March, 2008. Please leave your questions about John Ford here!

"How Did You Get Here?"

Playwright Victoria Mares-Hershey’s “How Did You Get Here?” gives voice to Africans in Maine, during the period of slavery and beyond, by giving audiences a sense of their everyday lives. This reading of the play’s first act was recorded on March 21, 2008, at the Museum of African Culture’s new location on Brown Street in Portland. Museum Director Oscar Mokeme welcomes the audience and architect Stephen Oliver introduces the show, then volunteer actors join with Mares-Hershey to perform the excerpt.

Rachel Davis

Rachel Davis is the children's librarian at the Thomas Memorial Library in Cape Elizabeth. In April, 2008, she read aloud from some of her favorite children's books for Humanities on Demand. She also found some fingerplays to go along with the books.

Let us know what you and your kids think of the readings!

Barbara Boyd

Barbara Weiden Boyd is the Henry Winkley Professor of Latin and Greek at Bowdoin College, where she has taught since 1980. She earned her Ph.D. at Michigan and has written extensively on Latin literature, notably two books on the poet Ovid. In recent years she has prepared a series of school texts and teachers’ guides to Virgil’s Aeneid. She has also been a visiting professor twice at the Intercollegiate Center for Classical Studies in Rome. Her talk on "Translating Virgil" relies on a handout, which you can download in PDF format from our Humanities on Demand website.

Please let us know which translation of the Aeneid you prefer, and why...

Peter Aicher

Peter Aicher is Professor of Classics at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, where he frequently teaches courses on Homer and Virgil, in translation and in Greek and Latin. He combines these literary interests with a fascination with the city of Rome, which has resulted in several books and numerous articles and talks. He recently designed a course entitled “The City of Rome: Romulus and Mussolini,” which explores how an architectural language of power has evolved and persisted over the millennia.

This is only the first part of Professor Aicher’s talk on "The Rome of Augustus." In the second part, he uses maps of Rome and the ancient world to show where the events described in the Aeneid took place. This part of the talk will be available soon on video.

Pamella Beliveau

Storyteller Pamella Beliveau has performed for children of all ages at libraries, schools, festivals and other children’s events throughout Maine and New England. She has created early childhood literacy programs at public libraries, done residency work at schools throughout the state, and been recognized by the Maine Arts Commission for her quality storytelling programs. Here, she shares stories with a group of toddlers and preschoolers, then talks with their parents and caregivers about the strategies she has used.

This storytelling performance took place at a Born to Read family literacy event in September 2006. Please leave your questions and thoughts in a comment on this blog post.

Michael Putnam

Michael C. J. Putnam is MacMillan Professor of Classics and Professor of Comparative Literature at Brown University, where he has taught since 1961. Educated at Harvard, he has written 11 books on Latin literature and has edited four others. He is widely regarded as one of the leading interpreters of the work of Virgil. He has been closely associated with the American Academy in Rome for many years and is a summer resident of Rockport, Maine.

Martha Tod Dudman

Martha Tod Dudman’s first novel, Black Olives, turns her unflinching candor and sharp wit on reconstructing the end of a love affair. Dudman is the author of the powerful memoirs Augusta, Gone (which was adapted into an award-winning Lifetime Television movie) and Expecting to Fly. A professional fundraiser, Dudman lives in Northeast Harbor with her son and daughter. She has lived in Maine since 1975.

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas

Elizabeth Marshall Thomas was nineteen when her father took his family to live among the Bushmen of the Kalahari. Fifty years later, after a life of writing and study, Thomas returns to her experiences in The Old Way: A Story of the First People. She recalls life with the Bushmen, one of the last hunter-gatherer societies on earth, and discovers among them an essential link to the origins of all human society. Elizabeth Marshall Thomas is the author of many books, including The Hidden Life of Dogs. She lives in Peterborough, New Hampshire.

Penelope Schwartz Robinson

Penelope Schwartz Robinson, a 2004 Stonecoast graduate in Creative Nonfiction, won the first Stonecoast Book Award for her essay collection Slippery Men. She received an honorarium and a publishing contract with New Rivers Press, a teaching press at Minnesota State University, Morehead. Slippery Men will be published and distributed nationally in the fall of 2008. Robinson’s work has already appeared in Ascent, Willow Springs, Fourth Genre, and River Teeth, among others. At this reading, Robinson, who currently teaches nonfiction writing at the University of Maine, Farmington, was introduced by finalist judge Katha Pollitt.

Flower and Song

“A Dialogue of Flower and Song” is a one-act play written by Stonecoast student Cindy Williams Gutiérrez and performed here by Bridget Madden, Elsa Colón, Julie Manon, Luis Luque, and Kathleen Clancy. Gerardo Calderón of Grupo Condor provides live pre-Columbian music. The play re-imagines a 15th century Aztec literary event, drawing together three women poets from different periods in Mexico’s history—pre-Conquest Tenochtitlan, colonial New Spain, and the current Mexican Diaspora. This recording begins with an introduction and acknowledgements from the playwright.

The play is a work-in-progress. All rights are reserved by the playwright. For permission to reproduce, perform or publish this work, please email Cindy Williams Gutiérrez or call her at (503) 631-4113. If you would like to provide feedback on the piece as part of the development process, please leave comments here.

Charles Martin

Charles Martin is a renowned poet and translator. He is the author of six poetry collections, three of which have been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. His verse translation of Ovid”s Metamorphoses received the 2004 Harold Morton Landon Translation Award from the Academy of American Poets. In 2005, the American Academy of Arts and Letters honored him with the coveted Award for Literature. Martin lives in Manhattan and teaches at CUNY and Syracuse University.

Here at Stonecoast, he is introduced by Patricia Smith. Please submit your comments on Martin's work.

Tayari Jones

Tayari Jones was born and raised in Atlanta, Georgia where she spent most of her childhood with the exception of the one year she and her family spent in Nigeria, West Africa. As a visiting writer at Stonecoast, Jones read from her newer novel, The Untelling (Warner, 2005). Her debut novel, Leaving Atlanta (Warner, 2002), won the Hurston/Wright Award for Debut Fiction. Currently, Jones is an Assistant Professor at Rutgers-Newark University.

Jones gave this reading at the 2008 Stonecoast winter residency. In the recording, she is introduced by poet Tim Seibles. Please leave your thoughts on the reading here. Thank you!

Amy MacDonald

Amy MacDonald is a children’s book author who lives in Maine. The Portland Stage Company Affiliate Artists have created staged readings of three of Amy’s picture books, with different actors playing different characters. With Amy’s permission, we've added recordings of the Affiliate Artists performing Rachel Fister’s Blister, Please, Malese! and Little Beaver and the Echo. Enjoy the stories, and let us know what you think!

Maria Testa

Author Maria Testa combines readings from her book for young adults, Something About America, with discussion of events in Lewiston and Kosovo that inspired the story.

Owl Babies

In this picture book by Martin Waddell, illustrated by Patrick Benson, three baby owls whose mother has gone out into the night try to stay calm until she returns. As Vicky Smith, editor of children’s book reviews for Kirkus, reads the book aloud, you can follow along in your own copy or a copy borrowed from the library. Then leave your comments here!

Early Literacy

Vicky Smith is the former director and children’s librarian at the McArthur Public Library in Biddeford. She is now the editor of children’s book reviews for Kirkus. She has been active in the Public Library Association’s early literacy program, Every Child Ready to Read, as well as the Council’s own Born to Read program. Drawing on all of her experience, Vicky offers this brief introduction to early literacy skills for parents and other caregivers.

Parents, please let us know what you think of this episode! Do Vicky's recommendations make sense? Do they sound realistic?

William Bushnell

In addition to reading books, we like to read about books, but few people know what book reviewers really do or how they do it. William Bushnell has been a professional book reviewer and freelance writer for thirteen years. He has more than 1,350 published pieces in thirty magazines and newspapers including Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Civil War Times, Military Officer Magazine and many others. He is professionally affiliated with the National Book Critics Circle and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, and he teaches a class on book reviewing at the University of Southern Maine. He lives in Harpswell, Maine.

This reading was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series, sponsored by Martin’s Point Health Care.

Hannah Holmes

Hannah Holmes took a geology class at the University of Southern Maine that led to a career as a science writer, someone who turns the facts of science into stories, sometimes mysteries, with exciting plots and intriguing characters. She has toured the world for Discovery, making the complexities of science comprehensible, and scientists comprehensibly human as well. Much nearer home, she studied her backyard in Suburban Safari: A Year on the Lawn (Bloomsbury, 2005).

This interview with Holmes by Charlotte Albright was included on the Council’s 30th Anniversary CD, “Maine Writers Speak.”

Please leave your feedback in the comments section.

Sara Corbett & Mike Paterniti

Two journalists in one Portland household—and both write for the New York Times Magazine. Mike Paterniti and Sara Corbett are often away, however, laying the groundwork for their articles and books. Sometimes alone, as when Paterniti was Driving Mr. Albert: A Trip Across America with Einstein’s Brain (Dell, 2000). Sometimes together, as when Corbett recounts her experience of learning Spanish in Spain, in “Learning the Lingua Franca” in Travel and Leisure, May, 2004. Paterniti has won National Magazine Awards for features and profiles; Corbett’s New York Times essay “The Permanent Scars of Iraq” has been widely discussed.

This interview with Corbett and Paterniti by Charlotte Albright was included on the Council’s 30th Anniversary CD, “Maine Writers Speak.”

You can leave your feedback in the comments section, below.

Stonecoast Flash Readings

One of the highlights of each 10-day residency in the Stonecoast MFA program is the “flash reading” by faculty members. Each writer gets three minutes in which to share his or her work before introducing the next writer in the queue.

Please leave your comments on any (or all!) of the readers here.

The Place of Poetry

This program is the first in a series we'll be posting from the Stonecoast MFA program's winter 2008 residency in Freeport, Maine. In this faculty presentation, Maine poets Annie Finch and Baron Wormser led students and fellow Stonecoast faculty members in a wide-ranging conversation about the place of poetry. They based their discussion on two books: The Gift: Creativity and the Artist in the Modern World by Lewis Hyde and The Song of the Earth by Jonathan Bate.

Join the conversation by leaving a comment here.

Sue Miller

Sue Miller is the best-selling author of nine works of fiction, including The Good Mother and While I Was Gone, and the nonfiction book The Story of My Father. Her new book, The Senator's Wife, revolves around the marriages of two women—a young mother and the wife of a promiscuous politician—who live side by side in a New England townhouse. Miller lives in Boston. In this recording, she is introduced by Portland novelist Monica Wood.

This reading was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series, sponsored by Martin’s Point Health Care.

Jaed Coffin

Six years ago, at the age of twenty-one, Jaed Muncharoen Coffin left New England’s privileged Middlebury College to be ordained as a Buddhist monk in his mother’s native village of Panomsarakram—thus fulfilling a familial obligation. Part armchair travel, part coming-of-age story, his debut book A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants (Da Capo Press, 2007) chronicles his time at the temple. Jaed Coffin holds a B.A. in philosophy from Middlebury College and an M.F.A. from the University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Writing Program. A boxer, sea-kayaker, and lobster fisherman, he lives in Brunswick, Maine. In this recording, he is introduced by Shonna Milliken Humphrey, Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.

This reading was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series, sponsored by Martin’s Point Health Care.

Rita Charon

Rita Charon, M.D., Ph.D., is Professor of Clinical Medicine at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University and the leader of the emerging field of Narrative Medicine. (Click here for a full bio.) As Director and Founder of Columbia’s Program in Narrative Medicine, she guides both aspiring and practicing health care professionals in writing about their experiences from both their own points of view and the imagined perspectives of their patients. In this talk, “Listening for the Self-Telling Body,” she speaks about how these narratives, which she calls parallel charts, both heighten the attention of the caregiver, and create an affiliation between the patient and the caregiver. Dr. Charon is introduced by Lizz Sinclair.

This talk was part of the Literature & Medicine program’s national conference, Caring for the Caregiver: Perspectives on Literature and Medicine, held on November 9 & 10, 2007 in Manchester, NH.

Veneta Masson

A former public health nurse with many years’ experience, Veneta Masson, R.N., M.A., is also the author of three books. Though no longer in practice, Veneta continues to explore healing art. The title of her newest collection, Clinician’s Guide to the Soul, was also the title of her conference workshop. “As a family nurse practitioner, I relied on countless ‘clinician’s guides,’ concise, up-to-the-minute print or online references to specific topics like antibiotics, common skin conditions or pediatric lab values. But, a guide to the soul! What is the soul? And why, in this golden age of scientific exploration and achievement, do so many of us insist on its relevance to health and health care?”

This workshop was part of the Literature & Medicine program’s national conference, Caring for the Caregiver: Perspectives on Literature and Medicine, held on November 9 & 10, 2007, in Manchester, NH. Please leave your comments—or personal perspective, if you were there—on Veneta's workshop here.

Voici the Valley

The St. John Valley is found at the top of the state of Maine with the neighboring province of New Brunswick. Fondly called “The Valley,” this international region is home to around 55,000 people, mostly of French heritage. The Voici the Valley Cultureway was created by Sheila Jans, Don Cyr, and Daniel Picard of CultureWorth to celebrate the places and culture of the Valley. Visitors can enhance their experience (and residents can deepen their understanding) of the region with the Voici the Valley Audio Story and Guide, available for $15.

As you listen to the excerpts from Voici the Valley, you can add your comments here. Please also leave recollections or impressions of the St. John Valley, if you have lived there or visited.

Judy Schaefer

Judy Schaefer, R.N.C., M.A., is a nationally recognized author, editor, lecturer, teacher, and advocate for patients as well as nurses. Her workshop at the Literature & Medicine program’s national conference, Caring for the Caregiver (held on November 9 & 10, 2007 in Manchester, NH) was called “The Courage to Create: Finding Your Voice Through Writing.” If you have pen and paper handy while you listen, and pause the recording when Judy says to start writing, you can actually take part in the workshop yourself. Afterwards, you can leave your comments or share your writing here.

Rafael Campo

Rafael Campo, M.D., M.F.A., is a national award winning poet who is also a faculty member and practitioner of general internal medicine at Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. His newest collection of poetry, The Enemy, was published in April 2007. He is a recipient of the Annual Achievement Award from the National Hispanic Academy of Arts and Sciences, among many other awards. Campo lives in Brookline, Massachusetts.

Campo was a special guest at the Literature & Medicine program’s national conference, Caring for the Caregiver, held on November 9 & 10, 2007 in Manchester, NH. On the podcast, you will hear both his keynote presentation (introduced by Veneta Masson) and his workshop, “Fact” vs. “Truth” in Narratives of Illness. Please leave your comments on both recordings here.

Christina Baker Kline

Christina Baker Kline is a novelist, nonfiction writer, and editor. Her novels include Sweet Water and Desire Lines. Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in The New York Times Book Review, The Yale Review, Southern Living, Ms., Parents, and Family Life. Currently writer-in-residence at Fordham University, Kline lives in Montclair, New Jersey, with her husband, three boys, and their dog, Lucy. She spends summers with extended family on Mount Desert Island. Her newest novel is The Way Life Should Be.

This reading was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series, sponsored by Martin’s Point Health Care.

Richard Ford

Born in Mississippi, educated in Michigan and California, a sometime resident of Montana and New Orleans, his Pulitzer Prize-winning Independence Day set in New Jersey, Richard Ford now lives in Maine. And he writes about it: “Charity,” in Contemporary Maine Fiction (Down East Books, 2005), for example, is about people from away who see the possibilities of Maine in very different ways. The considerable debate about whether Ford is a “Southern” or “ex-Southern” writer now has a new dimension, “Maine writer.”

This interview with Roorbach by Charlotte Albright was included on the Council’s 30th Anniversary CD, “Maine Writers Speak.”