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!
Barbara Damrosch is a professional landscape designer who nows makes some of her living raising and selling organic produce on the farm she shares with husband Eliot Coleman, Four Seasons Farm in Harborside (Cape Rosier), Maine.
Her publications include Theme Gardens (1982/2001); The Garden Primer (1988/2003), a classic organic gardening manual; and a yearly gardener's calendar since 1992. She also wrote the introduction and did the drawings for Gardener's Latin (by Bill Neal), and wrote the foreword to Helen Nearing's Simple Food for the Good Life (1980/1999).
Damrosch appeared on the PBS series "The Victory Garden" for two years. Together, she and Coleman hosted The Learning Channel show "Gardening Naturally" in the 1990s; their videos are still available. An article on Damrosch and Coleman that appeared in People, Places, Plants magazine in Spring 1997 is available on-line, as well as another article from the same magazine, titled 'The Contrary Garden,' about 4-season gardening. Damrosch and Coleman were featured in the Sept/Oct. 1998 issue of Hope magazine. The couple also answered gardening questions in American Homestyle and Gardening magazine for several years, and they both give numerous gardening talks. They were keynote speakers for the 19th Guelph Organic Conference held in Canada in January 2000.
Davis lives in East Blue Hill with her husband, who together have six children and four grand-children. For nearly 20 years and over 10 books she was published in NY and elsewhere. In 1993, she founded the publishing company, Heartsong Books; her Website offers publishing tips; a catalog; a list of inspirational people, books, and movies; and links to peace-oriented sites. Davis is also a lay-healer and community caregiver (see the Neighborcare Story on her Web site). Previously, she worked as a teacher, an editor, a counselour, and a cafe owner.
Davis's children's books include Grandma's Secret Letter (1982), The Best Way to Ripton (1982), Rickety Witch (1984), The Rinky-Dink Cafe (1988), Something Magic (1991; picture book inspired by visits to Isle au Haut), A Garden of Whales (1993; winner of the Vermont Publishers Award), and Glory! to the Flowers: a celebration (1995). Roots of Peace, Seeds of Hope: A Journey for Peacemakers (1993) is a book for all ages.
Books for adults include Choices of a Growing Woman (1981/93), and Caring in Remembered Ways: The Fruit of Seeing Deeply (1999), a book celebrating compassion as a way of life "for all of us who want to nourish each other in ways we can feel." Caring is a 15-years-later companion to Choices and the second in a trilogy of "one woman's life" unfolding.
Davis is now happy to be writing once again for young people; she's working on a high-interest, low-readability series for middle readers.
Born in Portland (some sources say Bangor), Owen Davis lived in Bangor until he was 15 years old, when his family moved to Kentucky. He attended the University of Tennessee for a year and then transferred to Harvard where he majored in geology. He left Harvard before completing his degree and worked as a geologist and mining engineer.
In 1895 Davis went to New York City to work in the theater. His first successful play was Through the Breakers which was produced in 1899. This was the beginning of one of the most prolific American theater careers. He is reported to have written between 200 and 300 plays; the exact number is difficult to determine as he used a variety of pseudonyms such as Arthur Lamb, Martin Hurly, Walter Lawrence, George Walker, and John Oliver. In addition, most of his plays were not published in book form and are therefore difficult to locate. Even the Library of Congress lists only thirty-seven entries for Davis' dramas, screen adaptations, and books. His early plays were called "ten-twenty-thirty" melodramas and were named after the price of the seats. As the majority of the people in the audience were immigrants with limited English skills, Davis stressed visual effects rather than dialogue.
Between 1901 and 1934, there was at least one Owen Davis play produced in New York each season. Despite popular success and financial rewards from plays such as Nellie the Beautiful Cloak Model (1906), Davis began to write more realistic dramas after 1910. His first play to earn critical praise was The Detour (1921). Two years later, Icebound, which explores the quarrelsome relationships of the "icebound" Veazie, Maine, Jordan family, was awarded the Pulitzer Prize. Davis was subsequently elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters (now called the American Academy of Arts and Letters).
Davis wrote film and radio scripts as well as plays in the 1930s. He also dramatized Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby (1926), Buck's The Good Earth (1932), and Wharton's Ethan Frome (1936). During this time he is reported to have had strong connections to the Lakewood Summer Theater, known at the time as Broadway in Maine, in Skowhegan, Maine. In the late 1930s, Davis left Hollywood to return to the New York stage. His last play, No Way Out, was produced in 1941.
Davis worked diligently to promote copyright laws for both films and plays. He served as president of both the Authors League of America and the American Dramatists Guild, one of the League's divisions. Both organizations still exist. Davis wrote two autobiographies, I'd Like to Do It Again (1931) and My First Fifty Years in the Theatre: the Plays, the Players, the Theatrical Managers and the Theatre Itself as One Man Saw Them in the Fifty Years between 1897 and 1947 (1950).
Born in Vassalboro and an 1887 graduate of Colby, Holman Day was a poet, a novelist, and a filmmaker, as well as a correspondent for the "Lewiston Sun" for years. He produced over 25 books, whose titles include:
An example of Day's poetry is available here.
Carol Dean, who lives in Winthrop, Maine with her husband John, studied with the Institute of Children's Literature. She's written a couple of children's books, both llustrated by Maine artist and arts educator Sandra Dunn, who lives in Chelsea: The Henhouse: A True Story of Growing Up on a Maine Farm (2003) and The Live Bale of Hay: A Real Maine Adventure (2005), based on an incident in Carol's childhood.
Sis Deans was born and raised in Portland and lives now on a farm in Gorham with her husband and three daughters. She was a degree in animal medical technology, and she has worked in the Mercy Hospital operating room for over many years. Most of her books are for children and young adults.
Deans' books include:
Deland was born in Allegheny, Pa. (as was Gertrude Stein, in 1872), and was raised by her uncle and his wife, who lived in Manchester, Pa, which became the fictional "Old Chester" of her stories. She attended Pelham Priory School in New Rochelle, NY, and studied design at Cooper Union (NYC) for a year, and she was for a short time a drawing instructor at what is now Hunter College. Deland married Lorin Fuller Deland in 1880 and they lived in Kennebunkport, Maine (summers), and in Cambridge, Mass. She was awarded an honorary degree from Bowdoin College in 1931.
The Delands became involved in the plight of unwed mothers and took into their home about 60 women and infants in the psace of 4 years. During this time, Deland began writing for greeting-card companies.
Deland's first published work was a poem, "The Succory," which appeared in Harpers magazine. Her first book was The Old Garden and other verses (1886), which is her only volume of poetry. Her story "Many Waters" (1905) is available online through The University of Virginia, as is much of her other writing.
Deland's novels and short story collections include:
During World War I, Deland did relief work in France and received the Legion of Honor. She was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1926. Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers (Univ. of Nebraska - Lincoln) links to an online photo of Deland. The Kennebunkport Historical Society has a collection of Deland's books.
Tom DeMarco, who lives in Camden, has written two novels, a collection of short stories, and several non-fiction books, as well as hundreds of articles and essays in his fields of management and the system development process. He is a principal of the Atlantic Systems Guild, a computer systems think tank with offices in New York and London. In addition to his business and writing careers, he's also a certified emergency medical technician.
DeMarco -- who earned a BSEE degree from Cornell University, an M.S. from Columbia University, and a diplome from the University of Paris at the Sorbonne -- began his computing career with Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he participated in the 1ESS project (see 1965). He was later responsible for distributed on-line banking systems installed in Europe, and he has lectured and consulted throughout the Americas, Europe, Africa, Australia and the Far East.
Most of the biographical summary above is from DeMarco's web site, which provides much more information.
DeMarco's books include:
Available online is an April 1998 article in the Cutter IT Journal by DeMarco and Tim Lister entitled "Both Sides Always Lose: Litigation of Software-Intensive Contracts," as well as first chapters of Peopleware , Slack, and Dark Harbor House.
Tom Desjardin was born and raised in Maine. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Florida State University, and did his doctoral work in American History at the University of Maine at Orono. He's worked as a National Parks interpreter, giving programs on the Gettysburg battlefield. His first published work was Stand Firm, Ye Boys of Maine: The 20th Maine at Little Round Top (1995/2001), the story of the 20th Maine Infantry (and the 15th and 47th Alabama) from June 21 through July 10, 1863. His interest in the topic grew from a visit to Gettysburg as a boy, and his doctoral dissertation is also based on the same. Chapter Six of Stand Firm, about Joshua Chamberlain, is online. Other books are Joshua L. Chamberlain (1999), a biography of Chamberlain; These Honored Dead: How The Story Of Gettysburg Shaped American Memory (2003); and Through a Howling Wilderness: Benedict Arnold's March to Quebec, 1775 (2006), a history of Benedict Arnold's 200-mile march through northern Maine.
His 1996 Presentation on Little Round Top is available online. Desjardin also wrote the foreword for Abbott and Ellis Spear's The 20th Maine at Fredericksburg: The Conflicting Account of Gen. Joshua Chamberlain and Gen. Ellis Spear (1995). And he's created a set of troop position maps of the Gettysburg battlefield for the Friends of the National Parks at Gettysburg. A photo of Desjardin is available on the Greystone History.Com web site.
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.
Dietz, born in Pittsburgh, a graduate of New York University and a long-time resident of Rockport, lived in Maine for more than 40 years. During his early working years, he was a foreign correspondent in Paris and a copywriter in New York. In his middle years he gained recognition for his many magazine articles on fishing and hunting for Coast Fisherman, Outdoors Maine, and Down East, which he helped establish. In the 1950s he published the popular Jeff White series in which the action was also focused on hunting and fishing. His most popular book was Andre The Seal (1975). It was the story of a Rockport Harbor orphan seal whose feeding times became a local tourist attraction for many summers. The book was the source for the film 'Andre' (1995). In 1977 Dietz wrote the text for Night Train at Wiscasset Station: An Unforgettable Portrait of Maine and Its People, which is considered one of the classic Maine books. Reissued in 1998, the book combines Dietz's words with Kosti Ruohomaa's (1914-1961) black and white photographs of ordinary rural and fishing industry Mainers.
Dietz's other books are The Story of Boothbay c1937, Camden Hills. An Informal History of the Camden-Rockport Region (1947), The Allagash (1968, 1978, 2001), originally published as part of the 'Rivers of America' series, and Touch of Wildness; a Maine Woods Journal (1970).
The Jeff White series titles are Jeff White: Young Woodsman (c1949/1979); Jeff White: Young Guide (1951, 1979); Jeff White, Young Trapper (1951); Jeff White, Young Lumberjack (1952); and Jeff White: Forest Fire Fighter (1954).
Other juveniles, all with Maine settings, are Pines for the King's Navy (1955); Full Fathom Five (1958), illustrated by his wife artist Denny Winters; Wilderness River (1961); The Savage Summer (1964), also illustrated by Denny Winter; and The Year of the Big Cat (1970).
Dionetti has lived in York, ME, since 1978. She's a touring artist, teaching in schools throughout the state and at writers' conferences throughout northern New England. Details of Dionetti's speaking availability and her contact info are online. She's written 4 picture books: Thalia Brown and the Blue Bug (1979), The Day Eli Went Looking For Bear (1980), Coal Mine Peaches (1991; illus. Anita Riggio), Painting the Wind: A Story of Vincent van Gogh (1996/1997; illus. Kevin Hawkes), and she's published a chapter book, Mice to the Rescue (1995; illus. Carol Newsom).
South Portlander Kathy DiPhilippo, a Maine resident since she was three months old, was born in Lynn, Massachusetts. She is a 1986 graduate of South Portland High School and a 1990 graduate of the University of New Hampshire with a degree in hotel administration. She was previously employed as Vice President of Credit Services for a food industry credit reporting agency, as a bank commercial loan underwriter, and as the credit manager for a major seafood importer located in New York.
She is the historian for the South Portland Historical Society and writes a weekly column, "A Window on the Past," for The South Portland Sentry. Her first book, South Portland: A Nostalgic Look At Our Neighborhood Stores, is a unique local history publication. It's the story of the city's 20th-century neighborhoods by means of a street-by-street history of retail businesses as seen through historic photographs, resident remembrances, and in-depth research.
Anne Wescott Dodd lives in Brunswick, Maine, and is chair of the Dept. of Education at Bates College in Lewiston. She received her B.A. from Univ. of Maine in history and government, her M.A. from California State Univ at Los Angeles in English and American Studies, and her Ed.D. in educational leadership from Univ. of Maine. She's taught at Univ. of Maine, Augusta; Colby College; and as a secondary school teacher in Maine and California, including a position as principal of Freeport Middle School. Dodd is also co-editor of the Journal of Maine Education.
Dodd has published over 100 articles on education, language arts, and other topics, as well as these books: From Images to Words: A Visual Approach to Writing (1986); Practical Strategies for Taming the Paper and People Problems in Teaching (1987); A Handbook for Substitute Teachers (1989); Beachcombing and Beachcrafting (1989); A Parent's Guide to Innovative Education: Working with Teachers, Schools and Your Children for Real Learning (1992); Footprints and Shadows (1992; children's book; illus. Henri Sorensen); Parents as Partners in Learning: Their Beliefs About Effective Practices for Teaching and Learning High School English (1994); Making Our High Schools Better: How Parents and Teachers Can Work Together (1999/2000; with Jean L. Konzal; multiple Amazon reviews of Making Our High Schools Better); and The Story of the Sea Glass (1999; children's picture book, which takes place on a Maine island; illus. Mary Beth Owens), which won the Golden Trap Award from the Maine Island Libraries Association.
Jim Dodson was raised in the Carolinas but moved to New England in the 1980s to become a senior writer for Yankee Magazine. Previously, he had been a reporter for the Washington Post and a political journalist and a Sunday magazine writer at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Dodson earned his reputation as a sports writer as contributing editor and regular columnist for Golf magazine and golf editor for Departures magazine, winning the Golf Writers of America Award in 1995. Dodson now lives in Topsham, Maine.
His book Final Rounds: A Father, a Son, the Golf Journey of a Lifetime, which was published in 1996, chronicles a golfing trip Dodson and his ailing father made to Scotland. "It is combination autobiography, biography, travelogue and painless history of golf," says William David Barry in his review of Final Rounds in the Portland newspaper. A small excerpt is available at Bantam Dell.
His next book, about fly-fishing instead of golf, and primarily about his relationship with his daughter instead of his father, Faithful Travelers: A Father, a Daughter, a Fly-Fishing Journey of the Heart (1998), tells the story of a six-week, cross-country trip Dodson makes with his 7-year-old daughter Maggie and their 13-year-old deaf golden retriever, Amos, soon after he finds himself divorced. This book has been made into a movie starring David James Elliott as Dodson. Faithful Travelers is reviewed in Forbes magazine, and an excerpt from Faithful Travelers is also online.
In 1999, Dodson co-wrote an autobiography of Arnold Palmer with the golfing legend himself, titled A Golfer's Life; the April 1999 issue of Golf magazine contains an article written by Dobson about Palmer's career.
He's also written Ben Hogan (2004), a biography of the golfer who won four U.S. Opens, and five of the six major tournaments in a single season.
Dodson published The Dewsweepers: Seasons in Golf and Friendship in 2001, a story about seven friends who golf early (sweeping the dew) at a local golf course, and in 2003, The Road to Somewhere: Travels With a Young Boy in an Old World, his account of a trip through England, Holland, Belgium, France, Italy and Greece with his 10-year-old son, Jack. His Beautiful Madness: One Man's Journey Through Other People's Gardens (2006) recounts a year spent traveling to various gardens around the world and spending time with fanatical gardeners.
Playwright and short story writer Dan Domench, who lives now in Hope, Maine, moved to Portland, Maine in 1979 after living in San Francisco, Iowa City, Los Angeles, and the village of Rochester in northern Alberta, Canada. A second generation American, the son of a Basque father and an Irish mother, he grew up in the San Joaquin Valley of California. While writing, he has worked in a lumber mill, bar tended, drove a mail truck, owned a rock music booking agency, picked fruit, operated a forklift, assembled farm equipment, and assisted released prisoners to maintain their terms of parole.
His stories are regularly published in Colin Sargent's magazine Portland Monthly, and he's included in the anthology of Maine short stories titled Inside Vacationland: New Fiction from the Real Maine (1985), edited by Maine writer Mark Melnicove; he's also been published in Puckerbrush and the USM literary magazine. His chapbook Three American One-Act Monologues (1983) was praised on the back cover by Raymond Carver and Robert Haas; his drama titled Broken Circle was premiered at Moulton Theatre at Westbrook College (1982); he wrote screenplays for the film production companies of Mark Rosenthal and Lawrence Konner; and a showcase of his monologues was produced off-broadway at the Westside Theater. Domench collaborated with Maine musician Peter Gallway on two musicals, 'Testify' (1984) and 'Sonny's Wedding' (1986), and he served as Theater Director of The Maine Festival for 1982 and 1983. He also created and performed a series of pieces for Maine Public Radio's 'All Things Considered' (1987). Domench and Maine political cartoonist Steve Meyers have co-written a graphic novel for older children, titled Freedom Dogs. In 2005, his audiobook Hold Me Fast was published, with 10 monologues/stories performed by various artists; excerpts are here.
C[harles] Stewart Doty earned his Ph.D. at Ohio State in 1964. A professor of history at the University of Maine from 1964-1996 and chair of the history department from 1986-1992, he taught Modern French, European, and Franco-American History. He received the university's 1994 Presidential Research and Creative Achievement Award (citation is to a PDF document). Granted emeritus status when he retired in 1996, Doty now resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
Doty's articles and book reviews have appeared in journals such as The American Review of Canadian Studies, The Journal of American History, Quebec Studies Journal, and Journal of Contemporary History.
His published books include The Industrial Revolution (1969), Western Civilization: Recent Interpretations, editor of both volumes (1973); and From Cultural Rebellion to Counterrevolution: The Politics of Maurice Barres (1976). In 1985 he used the manuscripts from the Federal Writers Project's life histories as the source for The First Franco-Americans: New England Life Histories from the Federal Writers' Project, 1938-1939. Doty also wrote the introduction for Maine, A Peopled Landscape: Salt Documentary Photography, 1978-1995 (1995; information about Salt). Doty's Acadian Hard Times: The Farm Security Administration in Maine's St. John Valley, 1940-1943 (1991/1996) is included in The Mirror of Maine, a list of 100 significant Maine books. In 2002 Doty collaborated with Dale Mudge and Hebert John Benally to publish Photographing Navajos: John Collier Jr. on the Reservation, 1948-1953 (citation is to a 33-page PDF document). Anthropological photographer Collier was also one of the photographers whose work is published in Acadian Hard Times.
Freelance writer Vicki Doudera grew up in Norfolk, Mass. She attended Hamilton College (Clinton, NY), graduating in 1983 with a B.A. in Comparative Literature, minoring in French. From 1986-1998, she and her husband Ed operated the Blackberry Inn Bed-and-Breakfast in Camden, Maine; they live now in Camden with three children, two cats, a dog, and a rat named George.
Doudera has contributed dozens of articles to major publications: Yankee (including "Money Does Grow on Trees" in the April 2002 issue), Parenting, Readers Digest, The Old Farmer's Almanac (including "Grow Vegetables Your Neighbors Won't Recognize" in the 2003 edition, and "Who In the World Was Fly Rod Crosby?" in the 2002 edition), The Gardener's Companion (including "Welcome to the New American Lawn" in the Summer 2002 issue), Maine Boats & Harbors, and others. Her first book, Moving to Maine: The Essential Guide to Get You There, was published by Down East in 2000. A second title, Where to Retire in Maine, will be published in late 2003. She is also working on a detective novel.
Jane Gerow Dudley, writer and naturalist, was a New Jersey native who lived in
Maine from the mid-1960s until the early 1990s. She contributed to numerous publications
as journalist, columnist and poet, including the Maine Times,
Sandy Dunn is an artist, arts educator, and children's book illustrator who lives in Chelsea, Maine with her husband, photographer Steven Dunn. She has a BFA and a B.S. in Art from the University of Southern Maine and has studied art at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts School, Whitelands College in London, Round Top Center for the Arts, and the Maine College of Art. She's worked as an art instructor in public schools for more than 15 years and also offers private lessons and workshops. Her paintings (watercolors and acrylics) have been exhibited in shows around Maine.
She's illustrated the following books:
She also wrote and illustrated Orville Wonders Why (1997), a picture book about differences between an ostrich and an eagle.
Children's book writer, poet, and essayist Sandra Dutton was born in Springfield, Missouri, grew up in Norwood, Ohio, and moved to Boothbay Harbor after many visits as a summer visitor. Her sea captain ancestors settled in Bath in the 1840s. Dutton has a Master's in Creative Writing and a Ph.D. in Rhetoric & Composition; she taught writing and literature at the University of Louisville and the New York Institute of Technology. While living in Louisville in the 1980s, she founded, published, and edited The River City Review. More on Dutton at her website.
Dutton's works for children include:
Sandra Dutton is available for school and library visits. She has a slide show on the creation of her picture book The Cinnamon Hen's Autumn Day.
Tom Easton is a theoretical biologist, science-fiction and textbook writer, book reviewer, and professor at Thomas College in Waterville, Maine. He earned his B.A. in biology at Colby College (1966) and a Ph.D. in theoretical biology at the University of Chicago (1972). His family is from Lincolnville; Easton lives now in Belfast and enjoys trout-fishing, wine-making, gardening, and snow-shoeing. For more information and a photo, check Easton's web site. Information about Easton's courses at Thomas College (including anatomy, anthropology, ecology, science and technology) are also on line.
Besides articles in Astronomy, Consumer Reports, and other magazines; a series of articles in the on-line Tomorrowsf; and The Reference Library column he's published in Analog since 1979, Easton has published a number of books:
Eckstorm, both author and ornithologst, was born Fannie Pearson Hardy in Brewer, Maine, and graduated from Smith College in 1888; at Smith, she founded the college Audubon Society. She was for a short time (1889-1891) superintendent of schools in Brewer, the first woman to hold such a position in Maine, and then briefly worked as a reader for Boston's DC Heath publishing company. She married the Rev. Jacob A. Eckstorm of Chicago in 1893, and they moved to Eastport, Maine; in 1898, the Eckstorms moved to a pastorate in Providence, RI, where Fannie was widowed in 1899. Eckstorm and her two children moved back to Brewer following her husband's death. She contributed articles to Bird-Lore and the Auk, before publishing her first two books in 1901.
Eckstorm founded Brewer's public library in 1908 and was active in the suffragette movement and in Republican politics. Her books and articles were often concerned with the Penobscot Valley of Maine. There's a section on Eckstorm in Jeff Hollingsworth's Magnificent Mainers (1995) and an article on her in the March 1955 "New England Quarterly," titled "Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, Maine Woods Historian." There is also an entry on Eckstorm in Famous American Women: A Biographical Dictionary from Colonial Times to the Present (ed. Robert McHenry, 1983). Besides her books below, Eckstorm also wrote a widely note critique on Thoreau's Maine Woods (1908), contributed to Louis C. Hatch's Maine: A History (1919), and wrote articles on Indian legends. Books include:
Elizabeth Elder, who lives in Cape Elizabeth, is a poet, short story writer, and the author of two children's books. A Skidmore College alumna (1967), she's worked as a teacher, and with a number of Maine newspapers, including as editor of South Portland Sentry and The Coastal Journal (Bath/Brunswick), as features editor of The Times Record (Brunswick), as a reporter for the Boothbay Register and as correspondent for Kennebec Journal (Augusta). She also is a former co-owner of the East Boothbay store.
Her books are Watching a River Freeze: Selections from Coastal Maine (2000), a collection of short stories set in Maine; Considering Louis: Mathematically Possible Poems (2000), poetry for children; Christmas with Alice-Ems (2000); and When I'm With You (2003), a children's picture book, illustrated by Leslie Mansmann of North Yarmouth.
Born in Portland, Edward H. Elwell was a journalist and writer. Joseph Griffin in The Press of Maine (1872) wrote that in 1848 Elwell and Edwin Plummer started publishing the Northern Pioneer, a weekly literary paper. In the same year Elwell and some other investors then combined the Northern Pioneer with the Transcript. Elwell was also one of the newly created newspaper's editors. On the Henry D. Thoreau web site is a Portland Transcript review of an 1851 Thoreau lecture. The web site refers to it as 'the best-written and most insightful review of any Thoreau lecture.' The review is presumed to have been written by either Elwell or his fellow editor Erastus E. Gould.
In 1858 and in a follow-up trip in 1878 Elwell reported on the observations of a group of newspaper men who had visited Aroostook County to promote people moving there. In contrast to the laudatory comments about Thoreau, Elwell makes negative statements about the St. John Valley French settlers. His observations were published in Aroostook: With Some Account of the Excursions Thither of the Editors of Maine, in the Years 1858 and 1878, and of the Colony of Swedes, Settled in the Town of New Sweden (1878).
His other published work includes Fraternity Papers (1886), a collection of ten papers he presented at the Portland Fraternity Club; a novel, The Boys of Thirty-Five, A Story of a Seaport Town (1884); and five new chapters he wrote for the second edition of John S.C. Abbott's The History of Maine (1892). Elwell's Portland and Vicinity (1876, 1881, 1888), an illustrated guide to the Portland area, was re-issued in a facsimile edition by Greater Portland Landmarks in 1975.
Emerson, born in rural Liberty, New York, lives in Wilton, Maine, and has written over 20 historical and contemporary romances, historical mysteries, children's books, and non-fiction works of history. She has a B.A. from Bates College and an M.A. from Old Dominion University (Virginia). She's an active member of Sisters in Crime. Emerson's Web site contains more information about her.
Her works include:
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Ted Enslin was born in Chester, Pennsylvania, to parents who were both classical scholars. Enslin studied musical composition privately in Massachusetts at an early age with Francis Judd Cooke and with the great Nadia Boulanger, who recognised his writing talent. He also attended the New England Conservatory of Music. Enslin moved to Temple, Maine in 1960, and with his second wife, Alison Jane Jose (married 1969), to the coastal Washington County village of Milbridge in the 1970s. Besides his long and prolific career as a writer, Enslin has also supported himself by making homemade walking sticks.
While very well-respected by critics and by other poets, Enslin's career has been one of relative obscurity, partly because he is not a self-promoter and he has no academic affiliation. Enslin doesn't see himself as a regional writer, although the Maine landscape has influenced his poems. Enslin's poems are musical, and indeed he has commented "I've often said that I like to be considered as a composer who happens to use words instead of notes." He's also said that "For me, poetry and music are one art. The greatest compliment that anyone could pay me: 'He was a composer who happened to use words.'" Many of Enslin's books and poems have been published by small presses, including Pentagram Press in Markesan, Wisc., and Salt-Works Press of Vineyard Haven, Mass. Wikipedia has more info about Enslin. Ten of Enslins's poems are online at Poetry Project, and three more poems are here.
Besides the Hart Crane prize for To Come, To Have Become, Enslin also won the Niemann Award in 1955 for his weekly newspaper column, "Six Miles Square." New York University's Fales Library/Special Collections holds 3.5 linear feet of Enslin's correspondence and manuscripts from 1955-1975.
Enslin's works include:
Abbie Evans, noted poet of the natural world, was born in Bristol, Maine and moved to Camden as a teenager. When she was 18, she experienced a serious illness that affected her eyesight and she was unable to read or write for ten years. She spent much of her time observing the natural world as she wandered through the woods and fields in the town. Her frequent companion was Edna St. Vincent Millay whom Evans met when she was Millay's Sunday school teacher.
When Evans was 28, she enrolled at Radcliffe College where she earned both her undergraduate and graduate degrees. She taught English after graduation and then was a Red Cross volunteer during World War I. After the war she was a social worker and then returned to the teaching profession. Although she lived in Philadelphia, she spent her summer vacations in Maine.
Her first book of poetry, Outcrop, with a forward by Edna St. Vincent Millay, was published in 1928. Her other poetry collections are Bright North (1938), Fact of Crystal (1961), and Collected Poems (1970). The last was published in honor of her 90th birthday.
Bowdoin College recognized Evans' literary contribution when it granted her an honorary degree in 1961. Three years later the Library of Congress included her in its series Archive of Recorded Poetry and Literature. On the recording, titled "Abbie Huston Evans Reading Her Poems in the Recording Laboratory, Jan. 22, 1964," Evans reads poems from her first three collections.
In 1982, the year of Evans' 100th birthday, Down East honored Evans by publishing a feature story on her in the February issue. Mary C. Jane wrote the article titled "Nourished on the ‘mountain's flinty bread.'"
Evans' poem "The Stone Wall" is available online.
Born in Allentown, Pennsylvania, Everman was a 1968 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Northwestern University. A freelance writer for any years, Everman received a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Fiction in 1978. The following year he was selected as an artist in residence with the Wisconsin Arts Board. In addition to his writing career, he taught at University of Wisconsin, Edgewood College, and Madison Area Technical College. He continued his formal education at the State University of New York Buffalo where he earned his M.A. (1985) and PhD (1988). He was a recipient of the Butler Prize for Critical Writing in 1985. An article about a memorial service for Everman, held on Oct. 1, 2004, is available online.
In 1987 he accepted an English department appointment at the University of Maine in Orono. Among the courses he taught were American and European fiction, critical theory, Stephen King, and popular culture. He was also one of the original distance learning professors and received the Friends of Distance Education Achievement Award in 2002. Everman was also a jazz fan who played trumpet in a number of bands and also wrote reviews and published interviews.
His books include: Orion, a novel (1975); Who Says This? The Authority of the Author, the Discourse, and the Reader (1988); Jerzy Kosinski: The Literature of Violation (1991); The Harry and Sylvia Stories (1992); Cult Horror Films: From Attack of the 50 Foot Woman to Zombies of Mora Tau (1993); Cult Science Fiction From the Amazing Colossal Man to Yog -- the Monster from Space (1995). Forthcoming is The Adventure and Other Harry and Sylvia Stories. Waterman also published over 200 short stories, reviews, and essays. A book review Everman wrote about Ray Federman's novel Aunt Rachel's Fur is available at the Iowa Review.
