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.