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.”

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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.”

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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.

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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.