Martin Dibner ( - )

Genre: General Fiction

Martin Dibner, who resided in Casco, Maine, was born in Brooklyn, New York. He received a B.A. in banking and finance from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, in 1933. He also studied at the Art Students League in New York. After college, New York and Miami commercial art firms and newspapers employed him as an art or creative director. His Navy experience during World War II provided the plot and characters for several of his novels. After the war, he did graduate work in painting and sculpture at Rollins College in Florida.

Dibner's first novel, The Bachelor Seals, was published in 1948. The next novel, The Deep Six (1953), was his most popular one and was released as a film in 1958. Showcase, his third novel, was also published in 1958. Dibner was awarded a Breadloaf Fellowship in 1960. Two years later he was a Huntington Hartford Foundation fellow. His novels published in the 1960s are Sleeping Giant (1960); A God For Tomorrow (1961); and The Admiral: A Novel (1967).

In the late 1960s, Dibner was appointed the first director of the California Art Commission. In the early 1970s he moved to Maine where he had vacationed for many years. His knowledge of and enthusiasm for the state is reflected in the text he wrote for George Tice's photographic book, Seacoast Maine; People And Places (1973/1987). He was editor/designer for the first edition of Greater Portland Landmarks' Portland (1972), an architectural history of the city. He was also the editor of A History Of Casco, Maine (1976).

In addition to the historical writing, he published two novels in the 1970s, The Trouble With Heroes (1971) and Ransom Run (1977). When Westbrook College's Joan Whitney Payson Gallery opened in 1977, Dibner was hired as its first director. After leaving the gallery, Dibner published three other books: Devil's Paintbrush (1983), a novel; Portrait Of Paris Hill: A Landmark Maine Village (1990); and John Muench: Paintings And Prints 1950-1990 / with An Introductory Essay By Judith Sobol And A Biography by Martin Dibner (1991). (Judith Sobol directed the Payson Gallery in the mid-1980s to early 1990s.) Dibner entered a new phase of his creative career when he became a mentor and teacher to many Maine short story and novel writers who studied creative writing with him. The Maine Community Foundation honors and memorializes Dibner's commitment to emerging talent in its annual Martin Dibner Fellowships.


Last Update: 05/30/2007

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