NOTE: Books available at the WATERBORO PUBLIC LIBRARY will appear in PLUM TELETYPE. Please note that the Waterboro Public Library does not have most of these books! Check our catalog to see what we have!
Novelist, historian, and Congregational clergyman from Hallowell (also lived in Farmington), Abbott (Bowdoin, 1820) is the author of over 200 books, best-known for his Little Rollo books and his Lucy books, which mixed instruction with entertainment. Rollo Learning to Read is available online through Pat Pflieger's site, as is Rollo's Travels. The Literature for Children database has full-text reproductions of a number of Abbott's works, including Caleb in the Country (1852), History of Cleopatra, queen of Egypt (1851), and many others. Abbott's granddaughter, Eleanor Hallowell Abbott (1872-1958), was a popular short-story writer, novelist, and memoirist in her own right; her best known work is Molly Make-Believe (1910).
Diedre Johnson lists Jacob Abbott's girls series books on her 19th Century Girls Series page.
A good bibliography of Abbott's works is available through Pat Pflieger's "Nineteenth-Century Children and What They Read" site; they're listed in chronological order. She also cites a book that contains a list of Abbott's works: A Bibliography of Jacob Abbott, compiled by Carl J. Weber (Waterville, ME: Colby College Press, 1948). Bowdoin College offers an online collection guide to Abbott's personal papers.
Acheson, born in Dover, New Hampshire, is a professor in the Department of Anthropology and School of Marine Sciences, University of Maine, Orono. He attended Tufts University for two years and completed his undergraduate studies in biology and sociology at the Colby College in 1962. In 1970 he earned a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the University of Rochester. He has taught at the University of Maine since 1968. His research interests include economic and maritime anthropology, and Meso-America economic development. He has been the recipient of numerous research grants from the National Marine Fisheries Service, National Science Foundation, University of Maine Sea Grant, and NOAA/Sea Grant and State of Maine Department of Marine Resources. A comprehensive account of his research projects can be found in his curriculum vita.
Acheson is best known for his economic and sociological studies of Maine fishing communities. The Lobsters Gangs of Maine (1988), the first thorough study of the contrast and conflicts between the industry's customs and state regulation, is included in The Mirror of Maine. Other books include The Fishing Ports of Maine and New Hampshire (with Ann Acheson, John Bort, and Jayne Lello; 1980); Question of the Commons: The Culture and Ecology of Communal Resource (with Bonnie McCay; 1987); Anthropology and Institutional Economics (1994); Capturing the Commons: Devising Institutions to Manage the Maine Lobster Industry (2003).
Agell is a children's author/illustrator and poet. She was born in Sweden, lived in Montreal and Hong Kong, and came to Maine in 1977 to attend Bowdoin College. She lives now in Brunswick with her husband Peter Simmons and their two children. She's a language arts teacher at Harrison Middle School in Yarmouth. You can find information about Agell's speaking availability online.
Books include: Making Paper By Hand (1981); I Swam with a Seal (1985); The Sailor's Book (1991); Dancing Feet (1994); Mud Makes Me Dance in the Spring (1994); I Wear Long Green Hair in the Summer (1994); Wind Spins Me Around in the Fall (1994); I Slide into the White of Winter (1994); I Love the Seasons and Me (1995); To The Island (1998); Up the Mountain (2000); and a young adult novel, Welcome Home or Someplace Like It (2003), set in the fictional town of Ludwig on the coast of Maine.
Aldridge was born in New York City, moving to Maine as a teenager; she lives now in Sebasco Estates. Her second husband was the poet Richard Aldridge (12 Nov. 1930 - 4 Feb 1994), who wrote Maine Lines: 101 Contemporary Poems About Maine (1970) and edited Poetry Amherst: A Sesquicentennial Anthology of Poems by Alumni of Amherst College (1972). His work has been collected in The Poems of Richard Aldridge.
Josephine Aldridge writes children's fiction:
Poet Richard Aldridge was born in New York City. A 1952 Amherst College graduate, his first published poems appeared in New Poems by American Poets (1953). After his discharge from the Army in 1955, he was granted a Fullbright to study at Worcester College, Oxford. He was awarded a second Fullbright and completed his studies at Worcester in 1957. He then returned to New York where he worked for Doubleday and Company, the publisher. He soon resigned his position and moved to Maine. In 1958 he married Josephine Haskell, whom he had known since childhood. He and Josephine lived on the same property at Sebasco Estates that had previously been the children's camp where they met. He taught at Morse High School and the Hyde School, both in Bath, until he retired in 1985 to devote his time to writing poetry.
Aldridge's published work includes Richard Aldridge: Poems, a chapbook published while he was at Oxford in 1957; An Apology Both Ways (1957); Down Through The Clouds, The Sea (1963); The Wild White Rose; Poems (1974); Red Pine, Black Ash (1980); and Driving North (1989). In 2001 his wife, Josephine was the compiler for The Poems of Richard Aldridge. In addition, he and Josephine collaborated on the children's book, Reasons and Raisins (1972).
He was the editor/compiler of Maine Lines; 101 Contemporary Poems about Maine (1970); Poetry Amherst; a Sesquicentennial Anthology of Poems by Alumni of Amherst College (1972); Memories of Morse, 1904-1979: A Seventy-Fifth Anniversary Tribute to Morse High School in Bath, Maine (1979); Speaking of New England: The Place & Her People: 72 Poems by 56 of Her Poets Past and Present (1993).
Journalist, editor, former Hollywood reporter, and essayist Max Alexander was raised in Michigan, received a B.A. in art history from Columbia University, worked in New York City and southern California for some years, moving to Maine in 1999 after years of vacationing here. He lives now on 150-acre "Faraway Farm" in rural Washington, Maine, where he homesteads with his wife, Sarah R. Baldwin, and their children.
Alexander has worked as senior editor of People magazine and as executive editor of Variety and Daily Variety. His writing has appeared in This Old House, Martha Stewart Living, Bon Appetit, The Boston Phoenix, Down East magazine, The New York Times Book Review et al. He is co-author of The Arrows Cookbook: Cooking and Gardening from Maine's Most Beautiful Farmhouse Restaurant (2003; along with Clark Frasier and Mark Gaier), editor of Ernest Shackleton (2003, A&E Biography, written by George Plimpton), and author of the memoir Man Bites Log: The Unlikely Adventures of a City Guy in the Woods (2004).
Elizabeth Anne Chase Akers Allen was born in Strong, Maine, and grew up in Farmington, having been sent alone to Farmington Academy. Her early life was hard: She was often beaten and locked in the cellar.
Allen had three children and was married three times, first to Marshall Taylor in 1851, whom she divorced; then to Maine sculptor Benjamin Paul Akers in 1860 (he died of tuberculosis in 1861); and finally to Elijah M. Allen in 1865. She eventually moved to Tuckahoe, NY, where she spent the last three decades of her life. She also worked in Washington, D.C., from 1863-1865 as a government clerk, and she lived in Richmond, Va., for a short time. More biographical background on Allen is available through Famnous Americans.
Most famous for her poem, later set to music, "Rock Me To Sleep, Mother" (1860), a sentimental hymn to motherhood for which Alexander M.W. Ball of N.J. contested ownership, she also published several books of poetry and two series of travel writings from trips to Italy around the time of the U.S. Civil War. Her travel columns tended to emphasize Maine's advantages over the places about which she was writing. She was a pioneering woman journalist in Maine, writing and serving as assistant editor for the Portland Transcript from 1855 until the war, and after the war as associate and literary editor of Portland's Daily Advertiser. She also was a foreign correspondent in Italy for the Boston Evening Gazette. More information about Allen's travel writing is available on line.
Allen's publications include Forest Buds, from the Woods of Maine (1856), written under the pseudonym Florence Percy; Poems (1866/1868); Queen Catherine's Rose (1885); The Triangular Society: Leaves From the Life of a Portland Family (1886), her only novel; The silver bridge, and other poems (1886); "Gold nails" to hang memories on: a rhyming review, under their Christian names, of acquantances in history, literature, and friendship (1890; editor); The high-top sweeting, and other poems (1891); the pamphlet The proud lady of Stavoren: a legend of the Zuyder Zee (1897); The Ballad of the Bronx (1901); Sunset Song and other verses (1902). "Rock Me To Sleep, Mother" was also published separately in 1882/1883.
Allen is included in Lynda Sudlow's A Vast Army of Women: Maine's Uncounted Forces in the American Civil War (2000).
Diane Amos, an established Maine artist, lives with her husband in Greene, Maine, with a cat and a dog. They have four grown children. Amos says that she had never considered writing books until she went with one of her art students to a meeting of the Maine Chapter of the Romance Writers of America. Her first novel, titled Getting Personal (2003), features Monique St. Cyr, an impulsive obituary writer in Maine whose erotic-fiction-writing mother gets her involved in a research project meeting men online. The sequel, Mixed Blessings (2004), follows Monique's relationship with her old-fashioned Aunt Lily, who moves in next door after Monique's mother leaves on a 3-month honeymoon. Other titles are Winner Takes All (2005), about a man and woman vying to win a lottery contest; A Long Walk Home (2005), in which Annie agrees to have her sister's 13-year-old daughter come live with her in Maine, but is unprepared for the wild girl in black and body piercings who drives a wedge between Annie, her lover, and her friends; and a historical novel, Outlaw Hearts (2007).
Amos's website has a little biographical information, a short excerpt from Getting Personal, images of her paintings, and information on her upcoming booksignings.
Anderson is a writer of informal histories, particularly of beer, baseball, and pop architecture. A native of Yonkers, NY, and a 1962 graduate of Cornell University, Anderson now lives with his wife, Augusta-native Catherine Buotte, in Bath, where he runs a publishing company, Anderson & Sons Publishing. He was inducted into the Maine Baseball Hall of Fame in summer 2002.
His books include:
There is a review of The Great State of Maine Beer Book on the All About Beer website. Anderson's short bio and excerpts from his Maine beer book are found on the Real Beer site; this is an excerpt from the chapter on early Maine brewers.
Regan Ashbaugh lives in South Portland with wife, Nancy, a social worker, and their sons, Trevor and Lucas. Trevor's autism spurred Ashbaugh to create a foundation, the Southern Maine Autism Resource Center, to provide autistic children and their families with help that is lacking in Maine. Some of the proceeds of his books benefit this foundation.
Ashbaugh has been in investment banking for about two decades and besides being a writer, is still an executive with a brokerage firm. He also serves on charitable foundation boards and is a volunteer firefighter in South Portland.
His first financial thriller, Downtick (1998) revolves around a major player on Wall Street who moves to Maine seeking refuge from a psychopath who's pursuing him. His second, In the Red (1999/2000; also involved the investment world. "Ashbaugh is sort of like a [John] Grisham of Wall Street," said Ashbaugh's editor at Pocket Books.
Debby Atwell lives in Rockland and is author and illustrator of children's books, including Barn (1996); River (1999); Pearl (2001), which follows two centuries of American history -- from George Washington through the civil rights movement -- through one family; The Thanksgiving Door (Sept. 2003); and The Warthog's Tail (2005), a Halloween story. She's also the illustrator of two books written by her husband, David Lewis Atwell, Sleeping Moon (1994) and the out-of-print The Day Hans Got His Way: A Norwegian Folktale (1992/93?). There's more information about her and her books and paintings on her website.
Phyllis Austin, an award-winning journalist, has been a Maine Times reporter since 1974. A Brunswick resident, she is a 1964 graduate of Meredith College, Raleigh, North Carolina. She moved to Maine in 1969 as an Associate Press reporter. Her reporting focused on Maine state government and New England-wide environmental topics. She is highly regarded for her in-depth investigative articles on Maine forest practices and other environmental issues. A representative collection of her reporting is available online at Maine Environmental Policy Institute, and includes articles on commercial harvesting of snapping turtles and pesticides and forestry.
Austin is the recipient of a 1986 Alicia Patterson Journalism fellowship and two Stanford University John S. Knight Fellowships for Professional Journalists. In addition she received a Japan Press Association fellowship. In 1989 the Natural Resources Council of Maine presented her with its Maine Conservation Award. Other awards include the University of Southern Maine's 2000 Distinguished Service Award and the 2001 Maryann Hartman Award from Maine Women in the Curriculum and Women's Studies Program, University of Maine.
Jim Babb, born (June 1949) and raised in East Tennessee, now living in Searsport, Maine has since 1997 been editor of Gray's Sporting Journal, for which he writes the regular 'Angling' column. He's also worked as a commercial lobster fisherman, a truck driver, a boatyard worker and a reporter. His three books of fishing essays are Crosscurrents: A Fly Fisher's Progress (1999), excerpted at flyanglersonline.com; River Music: A Fly Fisher's Four Seasons (2001, illus. by C.D. Clarke); and Fly-Fishin' Fool: The Adventures, Misadventures, and Outright Idiocies of a Compulsive Angler (2005).
Novelist and non-fiction writer Nick Baker was born in Rochester, NY, on on 7 Jan. 1957, attended the Eastman School of Music (he was a bassoon player and considered becoming a composer) and Haverford College (PA), receiving a B.A. in English literature (1979). He lives in South Berwick, Maine, with his wife, Margaret Brentano, and two children. His great-grandfather Ray Stannard Baker (1870-1946) was press secretary to U.S. President Woodrow Wilson and won a Pulitzer Prize for an 8-volume biography of Wilson titled Woodrow Wilson: Life and Letters (1927-1939).
Nick Baker is well known as a critic of the destruction of paper-based media, in particular of the San Francisco Public Library's sending thousands of books to a landfill and eliminating its card catalogs. See his book Double Fold: Libraries and the Assault on Paper (2001) for more on this, and, if you can get a copy, his article titled 'Letter from San Francisco: The Author vs. the Library' in The New Yorker, 14 Oct. 1996, pp. 50-62. Other articles by Baker about book preservation include 'Deadline: A desperate plea to stop the trashing of America's historic newspapers' in The New Yorker, 24 July 2000, pp. 42-61 and 'Discards,' also in The New Yorker, 4 April, pp. 64-70+ (reprinted in The Size of Thoughts). The Association of Research Libraries' website has a page of (often scathing) reviews and responses to Baker's Double Fold.
Baker and his wife established the American Newspaper Repository in 1999, which now resides at Duke University.
Ironically, perhaps, there's a wealth of information about Baker online. John Walkenbach's Nicholson Baker fan page, with links to interviews and transcripts and a lengthy list of articles and essays written by Baker, is a good place to start. Edgar Allen Beam's article on Baker, 'Paper Chase,' (2003) is also worth reading. Wikipedia has a page on Baker (describing him as 'a contemporary American novelist, whose writings focus on minute inspection of the narrator's stream of thought'), and The New York Times (2001), Salon, identity theory.com, The Write Stuff (1994), and Powells.com offer interviews. There's also an interesting article in Guardian about Baker's books' themes. Baker's essay, On My Mind: A Couple of Codicils about San Francisco, which appeared in American Libraries in March 1999, is available online.
It's been said that Baker has an 'almost obsessive concern for minutiae,' and he himself once said that 'his job is 'to celebrate the over familiar.' His books include:
Katherine Anne (Kate) Banks was born (13 Feb. 1960) and grew up in Maine, graduating from Brewer High School. She received her B.A. from Wellesley College and a Master's in history from Columbia University. In the 1980s, she worked for several years as an assistant to Frances Foster in children's books at Alfred A. Knopf. Banks lived in Rome for eight years and now lives in southern France with her husband and two sons, Peter and Max.
Her children's and young adult books include:
In a 2002 interview with Banks conducted by The Cooperative Children's Book Center, Banks mentions that she 'grew up in Maine on the coast. Robert McCloskey [q.v.] was and still is one of my all time favorites. I still cherish A Time of Wonder which captures so effortlessly and beautifully in both words and watercolors a coming storm. Then there is Margaret Wise Brown [q.v.] who to my mind, was unique in her ability to relate to children and express their thoughts and visions through well chosen and organized words -- to invoke wonder at the most simple of things, which is really what life is all about.'
She's also written a brief biographical essay for Farrar, Straus & Giroux.
Banks (born 24 Jan. 1934) was a University of Maine history professor. He earned both his Masters and Ph.D. at the Orono campus. He is one of several Univ. of Maine faculty whose scholarly work is included in the 100 books of The Mirror of Maine. Banks' book, Maine Becomes a State: The Movement to Separate Maine from Massachusetts, 1785-1820 (1970), is described as a fusion "of popular and academic approaches to the study of history that heralded new understanding of a complex era in Maine." Chapter One is excerpted at the Davistown Museum website. Banks' other publications include his thesis, The Senatorial Career of William P. Frye (1958); his dissertation, The Separation of Maine from Massachusetts, 1785-1820 (1966); Maine During the Federal and Jeffersonian Period: a Bibliographical Guide (1974); and A History of Maine; a Collection of Readings on the History of Maine, 1600-1970 (1970/1976). He also was one of the research contributors to The Maine Bicentennial Atlas: An Historical Survey (1976). Banks died in April 1979.
Poet Kate Barnes is the daughter of Henry Beston and Elizabeth Coatsworth (q.v.), two other Mainers, both writers themselves. Barnes, who lives on a farm in Appleton, Maine, and who was Maine's first poet laureate, from 1996-2000, has published three books of collected poems: Crossing the Field (1992/1996), Where the Deer Were (1994/2000), and Kneeling Orion (2003). Three of her poems are online at The Writers of Maine.
Bill Barry, a Portland resident, is a research historian, book reviewer, editor, and freelance writer. He has also been a guest curator for a number of art and historical exhibits. His research and writing specialties are local and regional art, history and literature. He received an M.A. in American Cultural History from the University of Vermont. After his graduation in 1974, he was employed as Curator of Research at the Portland Museum of Art until the late 1970s. He now works as library research assistant for the Maine Historical Society in Portland, and in 2005 was awarded the Neal Woodside Allen Jr., History Award by the MHS, recognising and honouring outstanding contributions to the field of Maine history. Barry has been a frequent contributor to Down East, Portland magazine, Antiques, and Maine History.
Barry's publications include: Mr. Goodhue Remembers Portland: Scenes from the Mid-19th Century (1981; co-authored with Earle G. Shettleworth, Jr.); A Vignetted History of Portland Business, 1632-1982 (1982); Tate House: Crown of the Maine Mast Trade (1982; with Frances W. Peabody); Pyrrhus Venture (1983; a historic novel written with Randolph Dominic); L.L. Bean, Inc., Outdoor Sporting Specialties: a Company Scrapbook (1987); The History of Sweetser Children's Home: a Century and a Half of Service to Maine Children (1988); On the Borders of Yankee Land; An Illustrated History of Maine (1990, with Patricia McGraw Anderson); and The AIDS Project: A History (1997, ed. by Susan Cummings-Lawrence).
Barry edited This was Stroudwater: 1727-1860, by Myrtle Kittridge Lovejoy (1985) and was co-editor, with Gael May McKibben, of A Passionate Intensity: The Life and Work of Dorothy Healy (1992). He has contributed individual chapters to books such as Pilgrims and Pioneers: New England Women in the Arts (1987) and also wrote the introduction, with Earle Shettleworth, Jr., to American Domestic Architecture: A Late Victorian Style Book (1978), a reprint of Maine architect John Calvin Stevens' 1889 book.
He has been the curator and catalog writer for exhibits as diverse as 'Women Pioneers in Maine Art' (1981), 'Made in Maine: Michael Waterman' (1988), and 'Rum Riot and Reform: Maine and the History of American Drinking' (1999; with Nan Cumming). He also authored, with John Holverson, The McLellan-Sweat House, 1800, A Brief Guide (1974). The house is a part of the Portland Museum of Art.
Poet Chris Barter was born (5 Jan. 1969) and raised in Sullivan, in Hancock County, Maine, earning a B.A. in music composition from Bates College (1990) and an M.F.A. in writing from Vermont College. He lives now in Bar Habor, where he works as a trail crew supervisor at Acadia National Park. He has also taught British literature and writing at the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor, and currently teaches at the Stone Coast Summer Writers Conference. For a few years, he played trumpet in a band. More info on Barter in a June 2005 Mount Desert Islander article.
Barter was named by Poets & Writers as one of eighteen debut poets to make their mark in 2005. His first collection of poetry is The Singers I Prefer (2005). He's also been published in The Georgia Review, Notre Dame Review, Nebraska Review, The Literary Review, The Cafe Review, North American Review, The Louisville Review and The American Scholar. His poem 'Can You' was read in Aug. 2005 on the Writers Alamanac, and his poem 'Another Burning' is online at CavanKerry Press. You can read and hear several of his poems online via From the Fishhouse, which also provides an audio interview with Barter.
Arlo Bates, a poet, novelist, and English professor, was born in East Machias, Maine, on 16 Dec. 1850 and graduated from Bowdoin College in 1876, receiving a Master's degree in 1879. He edited the Boston Sunday Courier from 1880-1893, then became an English professor at M.I.T. (from 1893-1915), all the while writing poems, lyrics, stories, plays, articles, and novels. Bowdoin has 10.5 linear feet of archive material on Arlo Bates. The University of Delaware has some of Bates' papers, too. Bates was married to Harriet Lenora Vose (1856-1886), a writer whose pseudonym was Eleanor Putnum; Bates and Vose collaborated on a novel, Prince Vance, finished the year she died, 1886. Bates himself died on 24 Aug. 1918.
The following is an imperfect list of Bates' works:
Jim Baumer, a native Mainer (born in Lisbon Falls) who lives in Durham, received a degree in business and marketing from the University of Maine. He has worked as a professional writer for organizations and businesses; providing sales and marketing support to large corporations; and as a freelance writer, publishing articles in Mainely Kids, MaineArts Mag, Face magazine, Common Dreams, local newspapers, independent media outlets, and other venues. He also owns and operates RiverVision Press, "a small Maine press with an eye towards capturing life in Maine." In 2005, he published his first book When Towns Had Teams, a history of amateur and semi-pro town team baseball in Maine, which grew from his experiences and involvement in local baseball. He is currently (2006) working on a non-fiction anthology of Maine writers. There's more about Baumer on his website and on his weblogs, Write in Maine and Words Matter.
Lura Beam -- teacher, researcher, and writer -- was born in Marshfield, Maine, near Machias in Washington County, and graduated from the local high school in 1904. Her first two years of college were spent at the University of California, Berkeley. She then transferred to Barnard College, from which she graduated in 1908. For the next three years she taught in southern black schools that were directed by the American Missionary Association. Beam then became an administrator for the Association. She earned an M.A. from Columbia in 1917.
Her entire career of teaching, research, administration and writing was spent in the non-profit area. Other organizations where Beam was employed include the Interchurch World Movement (PDF), the Committee on Maternal Health/Maternity Research Council, the Association of American Colleges, and the American Association of University Women.
When Beam worked for the Committee on Maternal Health/Maternity Research Council in the 1920s, she met Louise Stevens Bryant (scroll down a bit), a social welfare/public health specialist who lived in Bronxville, NY. The two women remained committed friends and companions until Bryant's death in 1957. Often the two women spent their summer vacations in Marshfield. Bryant, fascinated by small town life, encouraged Beam to write the book for which she is best known in Maine: A Maine Hamlet. First published in 1957 to little notice, the book was republished in the mid-1980s and a new edition was published in 2000 in connection with the book The Mirror of Maine: One Hundred Books that Reveal the History of the State and The Life of its People. A lengthy review appeared in the Magic City Morning Star (Millinocket, ME) in 2004.
Beam's other books include:
Beam's papers are available at Radcliffe College.
Siri Beckman, a Stonington resident (born 23 Feb. 1942), is an artist/writer whose wood engravings and monotypes have appeared in the Island Institute's Island Journal as well as in her own limited edition books and in the books of other writers and poets. She earned a B.A. from Lake Forest College in Illinois and an M.F.A. in book arts and printmaking from the University of Arts, Philadelphia. A highly respected teacher who has taught at various colleges and art centers such as the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, she is an adjunct professor in the University of Maine Department of Art. She owns Out of the Woods Press. Her contact info is available through the Maine Arts Commission.
Beckman's limited edition narrative books include: A Dog Named Blackberry (1989), A Small Victory (1991), and In Away (1992). In 1998 Beckman illustrated and personally printed and published A Week at the Lake. The book is a diary of a vacation taken by Grace Butterfield Dow in 1932. A trade paperback of the book was published by Down East Books in 2001. Beckman's other book, Lighthouse (1993), is a small accordion-folded artist book with ten wood engravings.
Beckman has also illustrated Susan Hand Shetterly's (q.v.) The Tinker of Salt Cove (1990), Kate Barnes' (q.v.) Crossing the Field (1992), and Speaking of New England: The Place & Her People: 72 Poems by 56 of Her Poets, Past and Present (1993), edited by Richard Aldridge.
Beckman's wood engravings are in both private and museum collections and have been exhibited at numerous museums and special libraries. A 1993 exhibit at the Houghton Library, Harvard, was accompanied by a catalog titled Why Artists' Books?: Siri Beckman, Meryl Brater, Brian D.Cohen, Deborah Davidson, Laura Davidson, Roberta Delaney, Jean Evans, Becky Hunt, Joyce McDaniel, Peter Maden, Maria Muller, Stephanie Stigliano.
Art critic and freelance writer Edgar Allen Beem (born 22 Feb. 1949) is a Yarmouth resident. He lived in Westbrook during his childhood and young adult years and is a 1971 graduate of University of Maine Portland-Gorham, a precursor of today's University of Southern Maine. He majored in philosophy.
Beem has published two highly regarded art books, Maine Art Now (1990), a collection of art reviews, originally published in the (now-defunct) Maine Times, and Maine: Art of the State (2000), part of Harry M. Abrams, Inc. 'Art of the State' series. He has also contributed to a 1996 Neil Welliver exhibit catalog.
In addition to his extensive Maine Times publishing, Beem's articles have appeared in such diverse publications as Photo District News, Down East, Yankee, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and Teacher Magazine. His subjects have included art ('A Painting Should Not Mean But Be,' about Alan Magee's work), architecture ( 'Sweet Seclusion -- Dodge Morgan loves adventure and isolation -- This compact island compound provides both'), and interviews such as those with John Fitzsimmons, president of the Maine Technical College System, and Jim Tierney, former Maine Attorney General and Court TV commentator. He has an ability to capture the history and culture of New England life as demonstrated in an article written about the Kezar Lake region.
Beem also writes of more personal matters such as male friendships in the essay 'What A Man Becomes,'published in Wingspan: Inside the Men's Movement (1992).
Benedict (born 17 Sept. 1941) is on the faculty of the Univ. of Southern Maine's English Dept., and she's also taught in the MFA Writing Program at Vermont College, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and the Stonecoast Writers' Conference (Brunswick, ME). Her collection of short stories, Shiny Objects (1982) won the Iowa Short Fiction Award. Other awards include an NEA Fellowship and a Maine Arts Commission Fellowship. She has had work published in Best American Short Stories, The New England Review, and The Atlantic Monthly.
Claudia Bepko, MSW (born 15 April 1948), a mental health and addictions social worker and family therapist, grew up in a small town in Connecticut and now lives in Durham, Maine. She wrote the national bestseller, Too Good For Her Own Good: Searching for Self and Intimacy in Important Relationships (1991, with Jo-Ann Krestan) and published a memoir called The Heart's Progress: A Lesbian Memoir (1997). Bepko is also known in the alcohol addiction field for Feminism and Addiction (1991), which she edited, and The Responsibility Trap: A Blueprint for Treating the Alcoholic Family (1985; with Jo-Ann Krestan). She also co-wrote Singing At the Top of Our Lungs (1993/1994; with Jo-Ann Krestan).
She's illustrated books including:
Henry Beston (born in Boston as Henry Beston Sheahan), naturalist and writer, received his bachelors (1908) and masters (1911) degrees from Harvard, and an honorary degree from Bowdoin in 1953. He also served with the Harvard Ambulance Service in World War I. He was a journalist and the editor of Living Age in the early 1920s. He and his wife, writer Elizabeth Coatsworth (q.v.), lived on 'Chimney Farm' in Nobleboro, Maine, and in Hingham, Massachusetts. Their daughter, Kate Barnes (q.v.), was Maine's first poet laureate. Bowdoin College has 18 linear feet of Beston/Coatsworth family papers in its archives, including letters to magazines and other authors, drafts, reviews, photos, and biographical records. The Henry Beston website has biographical and family info, quotes, details of some of Beston's books, an interview with Kate Barnes, more. Wikipedia also has a Beston entry. Beston died in Nobleboro on 15 April 1968.
Beston wrote a number of books, including:
Beston also edited White Pines and Blue Water: A State of Maine Reader (1950), an anthology of the best in fact and fiction about Maine, from the 17th century to the 1940s. Published in 2000 was Best of Beston: A selection from the natural world of Henry Beston from Cape Cod to the St. Lawrence, edited and introduced by Elizabeth Coatsworth (an update of the 1970 volume, Especially Maine; the natural world of Henry Beston from Cape Cod to the St. Lawrence?)
Composer Ronald Perera wrote a choral work called The Outermost House, on a commission from the Chatham Chorale of Cape Cod; the piece takes as its text excerpts from Beston's The Outermost House.
Paul Betit was born on 10 Nov. 1946 in Augusta and raised there, and lives now in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife Deborah. He earned a B.A. in journalism from the University of Maine and for more than 30 years has worked as a newspaper reporter (including two years as sports editor), most recently as a staff writer and sportswriter for the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram. Betit is a Vietnam veteran who did communications intelligence work at Phu Bai, South Vietnam, and in Eritrea, Ethiopia, and he's written two crime novels set in these locales, both featuring the character of John Murphy, an Army Criminal Investigation Division officer: Phu Bai: A Vietnam War Story (2004), set in June 1967, and Kagnew Station (2005), set in Ethiopia in summer 1968. In both, Murphy investigates the mysterious death of a U.S. soldier. He plans a continuation of the series, set in Sweden. There's an interview with Betit (Jan. 2006) at the Portland Press Herald. Betit has a website with more info.
Audrey Beyer was born in Portland on 12 Nov. 1916 and lived in Cape Elizabeth. She attended Westbrook Jr. College (1937), received her bachelor's degree from the University of Maine (1939), and did graduate work at Northeastern University. Her career was spent teaching English at Westbrook College and other schools; in 1960, Westbrook gave her its Award for Alumnae Achievement.
Beyer is best known for her historical fiction for young adults:
Bianco was born on 24 Jan. 1950 in Brooklyn, New York, and raised there. He lives now in South Portland, Maine, where besides being a mystery author, he is also an award-winning jewelry designer whose family operated the largest jewelry store in Brooklyn (John Bianco and Sons Fine Jewelry) for over 25 years, and an illustrator and painter who has studied at the Art Students League, School of Visual Arts, and Parsons School of Art. He and his wife, Lynnelle, own a jewelry store in Portland, Porte 4.
Bianco's first novel, Dying for Deception (2004; published in 2006 as The Deal Master), features New York police detective William Gillette and his task force as they investigate a series of murders of redheaded women who live alone. His non-fiction work, Triumph of Success; 52 Three-minute Strategies for the Modern Business Professional, is due out at the end of 2007.
Louise Bogan was born on 11 Aug. 1897 in Livermore Falls -- her paternal grandfather was a sea captain out of Portland Harbor -- and was raised in Milton, NH, and Ballardvale, Mass., but she lived most of her adult life in New York City. She was widowed after four years of marriage in 1920; her second marriage was to poet Raymond Holden, lasting from 1925 until their divorce in 1937. Bogan was poetry editor and critic for The New Yorker from 1931 to 1970.
Her books of poetry and essays include:
She also edited anthologies, including The Golden Journey: Poems for Young People (1965), and she translated the poems of Goethe (Elective Affinities, 1963) and Ernst Junger (The Glass Bees, (1960) into English.
Her letters are collected in What the Woman Lived: Selected Letters of Louise Bogan 1920-1970 (1973) and a posthumously published autobiography contains more details about her life (Journey Around My Room, 1981), as do Elizabeth Frank's biography, Louise Bogan: A Portrait (1984) and May Sarton's Selected Letters, since Sarton and Bogan were long-time correspondents of each other. Her papers are collected at Princeton University, Washington University in St. Louis, and at Amherst College. You can read twelve of Bogan's poems and more about her life (quite a lengthy biographical page) on the Louise Bogan's page at Modern American Poetry; the Academy of American Poets also has a page on Bogan.
Bogan won the Bollingen Prize in 1955 for her poetry and held the Library of Congress Chair in Poetry from 1945-1946.
Pete Bollen, born in 24 March 1948 in Lynn, Mass., and raised there, has lived in Maine since 2003, residing with his wife in Bridgton. He served in the U.S. Navy from 1968 to 1970, and attended North Shore Community College in Beverly, Mass. He was editor of the Lynnfield (MA) Beacon, a trade labor journal, in 1989, and editor of The Northeast News Service (MA) from 1989-1996 (editor emeritus since 1996). He's published occasional essays in newspapers including the Daily Item (Lynn, MA), the North Shore Sunday (Danvers, MA), the Salem (MA) Evening News, and The Bridgton (ME) News. Bollen initiated a lawsuit -- eventually joined by more than a dozen plaintiffs -- against the Justice Dept. to overturn a prohibition on compensation for freelance writing and speaking for all federal employees; the U.S. Supreme Court agreed and overturned the ban in 1995.
Bollen contributed a biography of folk artist Woody Guthrie to the Postmaster General (1980), which helped result in a commemorative postage stamp of Guthrie as part of the Folk Musicians series.
His books include A Handbook of Great Labor Quotations (1983); Nuclear Voices: A Book of Quotations and Perspectives (1986); Great Labor Quotations: Sourcebook and Reader (2000, an update of his 1983 edition); and Frank Talk -- The Wit & Wisdom of Barney Frank (2006).
Short story writer, novelist, editor, teacher, and gardening writer Fred Bonnie was born on 11 October 1945 in Bridgton, Maine, but spent much of his life near Birmingham, AL, where he moved in 1974 to become gardening editor for Southern Living magazine. He attended the University of Maine in Portland, the University of New Hampshire, Universite de Nice, Harvard University, and Jefferson State Junior College; received a B.A. from the University of Vermont in 1971; and earned an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (Richard North Patterson was a classmate).
Besides writer and editor, jobs included milkman, caddy, cook, factory worker, house painter, landscaper, teacher (taught fiction writing, University of Alabama Special Studies, 1978-1982), Harvard University and University of Vermont library staffer, salesman, janitor, and literary journal editor and publisher (Isinglass Review, 1968-1974). During the late 1980s, he conducted readings regularly in a bookstore/cafe called NewsBreak in Birmingham. He also helped organize the Birmingham Southern College Writing Today conference annually.
More biographical information in his obituary and more on his involvement in the writing world (and a photo) in The Southerner. Bonnie died on 13 May 2000.
Gardening books include:
Fiction includes:
One of Bonnie's stories, 'All You Can Eat Night,' is online in The Southerner, Summer 2000.
Philip Booth, born on 8 Oct. 1925 in Hanover, NH, was a poet who lived in Castine -- in a house that's been his family for five generations. He was named a Fellow in the Academy of American Poets in 1983. A Dartmouth graduate, with a Master's degree from Columbia University, Booth served in the Air Force in WWII and taught English at Syracuse University. He was one of Robert Frost's last students. He died at age 81 in Hanover, NH, of complications of Alzheimer's in July 2007. His books, most of which are poetry, include:
Read Booth's poem 'Long Afternoons in Dakota' online and his poem 'Post-Equinox Spectra' in Beloit Poetry Journal (Fall 1997). More on Booth at the Academy of American Poets.
Borthwick, a pseudonym for Jean Scott Creighton, lives in Thomaston, Maine, and is the author of mystery novels set in Maine and featuring professor and amateur sleuth Sarah Deane and love interest Dr. Alex McKenzie. She has a master's degree, has lectured in English at Indiana University, taught at Maine middle and high schools, and currently teaches a short story course at Coastal Senior College in Thomaston.
Borthwick's books include:
Her daughter is Margaret S. Creighton, who writes history books, including The Colors of Courage: Gettysburg's Forgotten History (2004), Iron Men, Wooden Women: Gender and Seafaring in the Atlantic World, 1700-1920 (1996, with Lisa Norling), and Rites and Passages: The Experience of American Whaling, 1830-1870 (1995).
Roland 'RJ' Botelho was born on 12 Oct. 1947 in Rhode Island and raised there, later moving to Massachusetts, and then to Maine more than 20 years ago. He and his wife, Elizabeth, live in Perry, Maine, with assorted pets in a hand-hewn log cabin surrounded by forest and wildlife. Botelho completed undergrad work at the University of Rhode Island and at Providence College, studying computer programming and business administration. He also attended Johnson and Wales culinary arts college; he and his wife opened Rolando's restaurant in Eastport, where they lived and worked for ten years before moving away. Other jobs have included real estate agent, carpenter, and antiques dealer. He now works as a nutritionist and cook for the local (Perry) school union.
Botelho writes children's fantasy/science fiction stories about a boy with special abilities. The first book in his G.A.R.T.H. (Genetically Altered Radically Transformed Human) series was published in August 2004; the second G.A.R.T.H. book, The Colorado Incidents, in 2005; and the third, Downeast Maine: A New Beginning, in 2006. More reviews are available at Publish America (the publisher).
Gerry Boyle, a Colby College graduate, was born in Chicago, raised in Rhode Island, and now lives in China, Maine. He worked as a journalist and columnist with the Rumford Falls Times and then with the Morning Sentinel (Waterville), until 1999. He became editor of the Colby College magazine in 2000.
Boyle's crime novels, which feature a reporter/sleuth, Jack McMorrow, are
Boyle's website offers more info about Boyle and the Jack Morrow series.
Born on 23 Sept. 1901 on Long Island, New York, Gerald (Jerry) Brace was a writer and teacher who maintained a summer residence on Deer Isle. He earned his undergraduate degree at Amherst College and graduate degrees at Harvard. After teaching at Dartmouth and Mount Holyoke, Brace spent the rest of his teaching career at Boston University. He died (scroll down) in Blue Hill, Maine, in July 1978. His son, C. Loring Brace IV, is a prominent biological anthropologist (more at Wikipedia).
Most of Brace's novels are set in New England. They include:
In addition to his fiction, Brace published literary works such as The Age of the Novel (1957) and The Stuff of Fiction (1969). In 1976 he published his autobiography, Days That Were, which included his own illustrations. He was an experienced sailor and published a book about sailing titled Between Wind and Water in 1966. A recently published biography, Gerald Warner Brace: Writer, Sailor, Teacher, written by former graduate assistant and friend Charlotte Holt Lindgren, provides insights into a prolific writer whose work is now little known.
His property in Deer Isle is available for rental.
Kate Braestrup grew up in Washington, D.C. and is the daughter of the noted writer/journalist (editor of The Wilson Quarterly)Peter Braestrup (1929-1997). Kate's grandfather, Carl Bjorn Braestrup (1897-1982), worked on the Manhattan Project and co-invented a cobalt-therapy machine used for cancer treatment.
Kate met her husband, James Andrew 'Drew' Griffith, when they were both students at the Corcoran School of Art (now the Corcoran College of Art + Design). They were married in 1985 and moved to Maine in the late 1980s when the Maine State Police hired Griffith. In 1996 he was killed in a vehicle accident while on duty.
Braestrup has published two books:
Braestrup lives now in Lincolnville with husband, Simon van der Ven, an art teacher at Camden Hills Regional High School, and their six children. She is a graduate of Bangor Theological Seminary and a community minister affiliated with the First Universalist Church in Rockland (where she was ordained in June 2004), and serves as chaplain for the Maine Warden Service. Her sermon, 'Heaven,' (2004) is online (and worth reading). She was one of the readers at the May 1999 memorial service for Philip Conkling's (q.v.) wife Jamien.
Born in Portland, Maine, on 19 April 1938 (1937?), Ann Brahms published autobiographical articles in Greater Portland, Down East, and Good Old Days in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Prior to that, she and her husband Paul co-authored Puppy Ed: Training Your Dog at an Early Age (1981/1986), a highly regarded book that has been recommended by the association that places puppies with families who begin the young dogs' training as guide dogs for the blind. Brahms, one of Martin Dibner's (q.v.) writing students, published her first novel, The Burying Point in 1991. It, like her other novels, Cloak of Darkness (1992) and Run for Your Life (1993), is a romantic suspense novel set in Maine. After many years of trying to find a publisher for her autobiography, Brahms self-published The Key Is Under the Flower Pot (1999), the story of her childhood and adolescence in Portland's West End. Her memoir, Nana's House: A Memoir (2003), is the story of her family in the 1970s. There's a July 2003 interview with Brahms online at aroundmaine.com (with photo).
Franklyn Branley, who wrote or co-wrote over 140 science books for children, was born on 5 June 1915 in New Rochelle, N.Y. He attended New Paltz Normal School in New Paltz, N.Y. (now SUNY at New Paltz) and also received degrees in education from New York University and Teachers College at Columbia University. He lived in Sag Harbor, NY, for many years, moving to Thornton Oaks retirement community in Brunswick, Maine in 1998. He died in Brunswick on 5 May 2002; an obituary is available through the New York Times.
Branley was an astronomer by training, working at Hayden Planetarium in NYC from 1957 to 1972 (chairman from 1968-1972). He also taught science, from kindergarten through college, in New York schools, and it was while he was teaching at New Jersey's State Teachers College in 1960 that he began introducing area kindergarteners to the basics of science, writing Mickey's Magnet (1956), Rusty Rings A Bell (1957), and Timmy and the Tin Can Telephone (1959) to both provide information and capture the imaginations of his young learners. These books led to his immensely popular (and still reprinted) 'Let's-Read- and-Find-Out Science' series for very young readers (ages 4-9).
Branley's books -- including the Let's Read and Find Out series, the Mysteries series, the Experiments series, the Book For You series, and the Planets series -- include those listed below.
Earl Brechlin (born 25 July 1954), a registered Maine Guide, lives in Bar Harbor with his wife and is a former editor of the Bar Harbor Times, founding editor of the Mount Desert Islander, and past president of both the Maine Press Association and the New England Press Association. Brechlin is also an adjunct faculty member at the College of the Atlantic. He earned an A.S. in Forestry and an A.S. in Resource Business Management from the University of Maine.
His books, all non-fiction, include Bygone Coastal Maine: A Postcard Tour from Kittery to Camden (2004), another collection of historic postcards with full captions; Bygone Boston: A Postcard Tour of Beantown (2003), an historic picture postcard book; Bygone Bar Harbor: A Postcard Tour of Mount Desert Island and Acadia National Park (2002), An Adventure Guide to Maine (1999), A Pocket Guide to Hiking on Mount Desert Island (1996; maps by Ruth Ann Hill), A Pocket Guide to Paddling the Waters of Mount Desert Island (1996; maps by Ruth Ann Hill), Bar Harbor Fire Department, 100 years of History, 1881-1981 (1981), and a pocket hiking guide titled 12 Walks on Mount Desert Island.
Kelly Briggs, a children's book author and illustrator, was born in Rockland and raised in Camden, where she lives now with her husband, Donald, and two sons. Her roots go deep: Briggs' great-great-grandfather, William Gill, was mayor of Camden in the late 1800s.
Her first book was Island Alphabet: An ABC of Maine Islands (1995), which was chosen by Yankee Magazine as one of its 100 classic New England children's books. Background on Island and an interview with Briggs about the writing and illustrating of the book is available online. Her second is Lighthouse Lullabye (2001), a soothing bedtime story about a lighthouse keeper's family life, 100 years ago, on a seaside farm during a snowy winter; the story was inspired by the Williams family, who kept Boon Island Light (off Cape Neddick) glowing in the 19th century. Both books are appropriate for children aged 4-8.
Born in Brooklyn, NY, on 23 May 1910, Margaret Wise Brown, first as an editor and then as a writer, had a significant role in the creation of the twentieth-century picture book. A number of her books, such as Good Night Moon (1947) and The Runaway Bunny (1942), are considered children's classics.
Most of her dreamy and solitary childhood was lived in Whitestone Landing, Long Island, NY. Brown's family often spent their summer vacations in Maine. After graduating from Hollins College (VA) in 1932, Brown was a student in a Columbia University writers course. She then enrolled in a teacher program at the innovative Bank Street School. She quickly learned teaching was not what she wanted to do. She remained at the school, however, as a member of its publication staff. The school's 'here-and-now' philosophy, which focused on children's sensory experiences of the world, was a major influence on her writing.
In 1938 she became the editor for the newly created children's department of W.R. Scott publishers. She continued as editor until 1941 when she began her full-time writing career during which she published over 100 books.
Brown used three pseudonyms: Timothy Hay, playfully chosen for Horses (1947); Golden MacDonald (the name of an elderly Maine handyman Brown knew) used for all books published for Doubleday editor Margaret Lesser; and Juniper Sage (influenced by Junipero Serra's name) for her collaborations with Edith Thacher Hurd.
In 1943 Brown purchased a former quarry master's house on Vinalhaven Island, Maine, as a summer place where she entertained many writer and illustrator friends. In fact, a small island seen from her property was the inspiration for The Little Island (1946) for which Leonard Weisgard's illustrations received a Caldecott Medal. On the day she was to be released from a Nice, France, hospital after a successful appendectomy, 13 Nov. 1952, she died unexpectedly from an embolism. Her ashes were brought to Maine and scattered in the ocean off Vinalhaven. A simple stone marker on her island property commemorates her life.
More biographical information is available online.
Books published during Brown's lifetime include:
As Brown left many unfinished manuscripts when she died, her books are still being published years after her death. Some posthumous offerings include Nibble, Nibble (1959, 2007), a picture book of five poems about rabbits, Another Important Book (1999), a picture book showing kids the important things about being ages 1-6, Robin's Room (2002, illus. Steve Johnson and Lou Fancher), My World of Color (2002, illus. Loretta Krupinski), Sailor Boy Jig (2002), Sheep Don't Count Sheep (2003), about a lamb having trouble falling asleep until his mother tells him to count butterflies, Sneakers, the Seaside Cat (2003), The Fierce Yellow Pumpkin (2003), and A Child is Born (2003; ill. Floyd Cooper; board book).
The Waterboro Public Library also has Litle Donkey Close Your Eyes, Home for a Bunny, The Steamroller, Sleepy ABC, and Three Orphan Kittens.
Two Brown bibliographies are available online, one from Bev Dittberner and another from the Margaret Wise Brown Web Resource. Rebecca Platzner has written an insightful study of The Dead Bird (1958; illustrated by Remy Charlip).
Biographical sources include Margaret Wise Brown: Awakened by the Moon (1992/1999) by Leonard S. Marcus. Juvenile titles are Carol Greene's Margaret Wise Brown -- Author of Goodnight Moon (1993) and Margaret, Frank, and Andy: Three Writers' Stories (1996) by Cynthia Rylant. In addition, Joan W. Blos adapted some Brown personal notes and published them as The Days Before Now: An Autobiographical Note by Margaret Wise Brown (1994). Her papers are at Hollins College.
Humorist/satirist Browne -- known popularly as Artemus Ward -- was born on 26 April 1834 in Waterford Flat, Maine, but lived most of his short life in Ohio, working as a columnist and writer for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. All of his writing was published under the name of Artemus Ward. Browne got to know Mark Twain while briefly in Virginia (other sources say it was in Nevada), at a time when Browne was in his heyday and was able to offer encouragement to fellow-humorist Twain (see notes on Twain's 1871 lecture on Browne). Browne was the humorist and showman of his day, performing monologues on stage and writing books filled with comical misspellings. He lectured across the U.S. and overseas, dying of tuberculosis in Southampton, England, on 23 Jan. 1867 at the age of 33.
A letter Browne wrote to Punch magazine is available on line. Books about him include Artemus Ward (Charles Farrar Browne): A Biography and Bibliography, by Don Carlos Seitz (1919/1974) and Comic Relief: The Life and Laughter of Artemus Ward, by John Pullen (q.v.) (1983). Sprague's Journal of Maine History from 1919 carries an article on Browne by Charles Waterman.
The Artemus Ward books -- all of which are available online in full at Project Gutenberg -- include:
More info on Browne at Wikipedia.
Non-fiction writer Jane Brox grew up on a farm in Dracut, Mass., in the Merrimack Valley, received a B.A. in English Lit (1978) from Colby College and an M.F.A. in poetry from Warren Wilson College, lived on Nantucket and in Cambridge, and eventually moved back to the farm to help her family with it and the farmstand. In June 2004, she moved to Harpswell, Maine. For many years she taught creative writing at the Harvard Extension School in Cambridge; she now teaches in Lesley College's low-residency MFA program.
Her books include Here and Nowhere Else: Late Seasons of a Farm and Its Family (1995), about her return to the family farm after years away; Five Thousand Days Like This One: An American Family History (1999), a history of her family and generations who worked on the farm, using primary sources; and Clearing Land: Legacies of an American Farm (2004), about 'local food issues, land usage, and the dying off of small family New England farms.' Her work has also been included in Best American Essays, The Norton Book of Nature Writing, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Fiction Grant, the 1996 Winship/PEN New England Award for Here and Nowhere Else, and a literature fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in 1994. Five Thousand Days was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her essays appear in The American Scholar, the Boston Sunday Globe, CommonWealth, The Georgia Review, and the New England Review.
A 2004 New York Times article about Brox is accompanied by a photo of her family's farmhouse. Jessa Crispin at Bookslut interviewed Brox in Jan. 2005. Brox was also briefly interviewed for the public radio programme 'Living on Earth' in 1997. A short essay of Brox's is online at the Colby Magazine website.
James E. 'Jim' Brunelle (born 16 June 1935) had an early career in radio journalism at New England, New York and Washington stations. In the mid 1960s he joined the Maine Broadcasting System radio and televisions stations as a statehouse reporter and political commentator. Four years later he became a print journalist for the Guy Gannett papers in Portland, Waterville, and Augusta. His reporting in both print and the media has earned him several news reporting awards. He lives in Cape Elizabeth, Maine.
In addition to his newspaper work, he has edited/written four books, all of which reflect his interest in Maine history and social culture:
A 1997 article of Brunelle's, 'The reign in Maine. (effect of term limits in Maine Legislature),' is available at Amazon.
Now a resident of Islesford on Little Cranberry Island off Maine, where he had summered since 1946, Bryan was born in the Bronx on 13 July 1923, a child of immigrants from the West Indies island of Antigua. He attended The Cooper Union Art School, where scholarships were awarded for talent and not determined by race, and after service in World War II, went on to earn a degree in philosophy from Columbia University and win a Fulbright Scholarship for art studies in Europe. He taught art at Queens College-CUNY, Lafayette College, and Dartmouth College (1973-1985) before leaving academic life to concentrate full time on his own work.
Bryan's books were first published in the 1960s, and since then he's illustrated more than thirty-five books, many of them texts he also wrote, retold, or selected. His work has been richly acclaimed and highly honored: Beat the Story Drum, Pum-Pum won the Coretta Scott King Award, and four more of his titles have been selected Coretta Scott King Honor Books: All Night, All Day: A Children's First Book of African American Spirituals; Ashley Bryan's ABC of African American Poetry; Lion and the Ostrich Chicks and Other African Folk Poems; and What a Morning! The Christmas Story in Black Spirituals. Sing to the Sun won the 1992 Maine Lupine Award. Bryan's books, as Kirkus Reviews observed, are meant 'to be read aloud, with bits of
