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!
Chris Fahy, now living in Thomaston with his wife, children's book author Davene Fahy, was born in Philadelphia and moved to Maine to write in 1972. His writing runs the gamut from horror/thriller to sci-fi/fantasy, poetry, short stories, and a do-it-yourself book.
Fiction includes: The Compost Heap (1970), Greengroundtown (1978/2000; stories), Nightflyer (1982/2000), One Day in the Short Happy Life of Anna Banana and other Maine stories (1988; stories; won Maine Arts Commission Fiction Competition 1987), Dream House (1987), Eternal Bliss (1988/2000), The Lyssa Syndrome (1990/2000); The Fly Must Die (1993); Limerock: Maine Stories (1999), Fever 42 (2002), Breaking Point (2004), exploring possible consequences of a flawed health care system, and Chasing the Sun (2005), a novel about an aging poet, set in Maine.
His book of poetry is called The End Beginning: Poems (1978), and his home repair manual is Home Remedies: fixing up houses and apartments, mostly old, but also otherwise (1975). Fahy has had stories published in "The Twilight Zone Magazine" and in Frankenstein: The Monster Walks (1993) and Nightscreams: 22 Stories of Terror (1996; along with Rick Hautala), among others.
Fairfield -- historian, educator, and writer -- is a native Mainer who lives now in Biddeford, where he's an education consultant. He graduated from Saco's Thornton Academy in 1936 (from which he received Distinguished Alumni recognition in 1997) and from Bates College in 1943. He received a doctorate from Harvard and has taught at Bates College, Ohio University, Athens College in Greece (Fulbright Professor), and Antioch University, where he was the first director of the Antioch-Putney Graduate School (in Vermont and Ohio). He is co-founder of the Union Graduate School in Cincinnati, a university without walls, and has served as chair of the American Council of the European Graduate School and as a faculty member of The Humanist Institute. He was also founding president of the Buckeye Trail, a 1,200-mile hiking and biking trail in Ohio, and is trustee emeritus of the Maine Appalachian Trail Club, which he had served as its second president.
Among books he's written are fiction titles including Amanda's Cove: A Maine Coastal Tale (1989), Of Lobstering and Love: Trials and Triumphs (1990), and Condo Carousel: A Novel (1999, set in Miami), as well as a small book of modern fables, Seaside Fables & Other Incites (1994; ill. by Susan Amons). Books of poetry include Angles of Vision: Poetry (1993) and Doing it Over: Images in Reflection (1996). Non-fiction titles are:
Fairfield's poem 'Chime Gently, Dear Clock' is online at A-1 Poetry Archives, as is his poem 'The Refugee River'. His thoughts on pageless documentation are available in a PDF article online.
Tom Fallon has lived in Maine since childhood, is a two-time college dropout and retired Rumford paper mill worker. He's a former Maine Times poetry editor, two-time Maine Arts Commission award winner and a former director of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. His work has been published in two anthologies, Red Dust New Writing and Maine Speaks, as well as in the individual volumes Through A Stranger's Eyes, Uncensored Paper Mill and The Man on the Moon. He has two chapbooks, Atlanta's Children and In the First Place, The Maine Poems. Fallon writes free verse and likes to experiment with poetry form and is writing short stories of life in a 20th-century "real Maine paper mill." He has also introduced a new literary category. He hosts the Maine Poetry website, the Maine Literary Center with links to Maine literature websites, the Maine Literary Calendar announcing daily literary events and the official internet home page of Maine's experimental artist and writer, Bern Porter. His own webpage, Words, has poems with audio and other information, and he maintains a weblog, Maine Literature ETC., which presents his "thoughts, other writers' submissions, reviews, publication notices, literary events in Maine, submission calls, etc."
Cathryn Falwell has lived with her family in Gorham, Maine, since 1997. She was born in Kansas City, Kansas, and grew up in several states in the midwest. Before publishing children's books, she earned a BFA in printmaking from the University of Connecticut and worked for 10 years as a graphic designer in Hartford, CT. In addition to making picture books, Falwell presents programs in schools and libraries, and volunteers in youth theatre. Falwell is both an illustrator, proficient with cut paper collage, and a writer. Some of her first books bear the name of her second son, Nicky, while later books entertain as they teach about counting, geometric shapes and letters. Her book Turtle Splash! received a 2001 Lupine Honor Award. Learn more about Falwell on her website.
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Rod Farmer is a poet and essayist, publishing over 750 poems in over 150 journals, including Black Fly Review, The Cafe Review, ELF, Psychopoetica, as well as numerous articles and essays in The Humanist, Maine Historical Society Quarterly, The New England Journal of History, and others. Farmer, a Vietnam War veteran (1969-70), is also a professor of education and history at the University of Maine at Farmington, teaching middle and secondary education and the history of China, Japan, and India. Farmer has a varied work history as a farm laborer, a dump truck driver, a grocery store clerk, and a high school history and social science teacher. He received his B.S. and M.A. degrees from Central Missouri State University (1969; 1972), and his Ph.D. from the University of Missouri-Columbia (1978). Farmer has been awarded several Fullbrights, to India, Pakistan, and Israel, and two grants to study in Japan. As a professor, he's won the Maine Council for the Social Studies Award for Excellence, given to educators who have contributed to social studies in Maine.
His book of poems, Universe Essence, was published in 1986. One of Farmer's poems is available online in The Maine Scholar (Fall 1999). He also published the chapbook Red Ships in 2002. His poem "Paris" was originally published in Timber Creek Review in Summer 1996 and is now available online through Rattle. Another poem, "Once Feral," is available from The College of the Redwoods.
Farmer's home page has more information about him as well as his email address and a photo.
Farnsworth is a poet, freelance graphic artist and editor of Animus, a journal of Maine writing and images, which donates proceeds to animal welfare organizations. She's also a psychiatric technician in an acute-care mental health facility, a mom, and a Reiki Master. She has a B.A. (English, minor in Art History) from the Univ. of Souther Maine and an M.S. in Metaphysics from the American Institute of Holistic Theology. She lives in Southern Maine.
Her work has been published in The Arts Journal, Puckerbrush Review, The Aurorean, The Larcom Review, Foliage, The Cafe Review. Poetry chapbooks include Bodies of Water, Bodies of Light (2001) and Angel of the Heavenly Tailgate (2006). She also edited Grace Notes: Writings on the Spiritual Connection with our Animal Brethren (2003), a collection of poems, essays and illustrations, sales of which benefit animal rescue and welfare organizations.
Her poems For the Falling Man and The Angel's Retirement Speech are online at Writers' Almanac.
Susan Farrar was born in Massachusetts and lives now in Bethel, Maine. The self-proclaimed 81-year-old lifelong learner began taking college courses in the 1940s, earning her bachelors degree in theatre from the University of Southern Maine in 1999. She spent years traveling and studying dance before getting her degree. She owns and operates Spring Street Studio, a dance studio in Bethel; she also hopes to establish a readers' theatre to help children learn to read. She's written two children's books: Samantha on Stage (1979/1981/1990; illus. Ruth Sanderson), about 11-year-old Samantha, who's always been the best in her ballet class -- but after seeing the new Russian girl dance she begins to wonder who will get the coveted lead in the school's production of the Nutcracker ballet; and Emily and Her Cavalier (1991), a story of a young woman torn between her passion for ballet and the complications of high-school social life.
Feigon teaches in the Dept. of History & East Asian Studies at Colby College. He's also listed on the editorial board of The Journal of Contemporary China. Among his books are Chen Duxiu: Founder of the Chinese Communist Party; China Rising: The Meaning of Tiananmen (1990/1992); Demystifying Tibet: Unlocking the Secrets of the Land of the Snows (1996/1998), and Mao: A Reinterpretation (October 2002).
David Fickett lives with his wife and children in Winter Harbor, Maine. His short stories have appeared in Puckerbrush Review, The Peninsula Review, and Wilmington Blues. His first novel, Nectar, was published in 2002 by St. Martin's/Forge. The novel, set in rural Maine, crosses three generations of beekeepers to tell the story of Regina Merritt, a determined woman who is forced at a young age to choose between happiness and survival. Fickett is a member of the Peninsula Writers Group in Gouldsboro.
Fickett's story "Sensible Shoes" is online through collectedstories.com. His story "Blue Ribbon" is online in the Sept. 2000 issue of Wilmington Blues.
Rachel Field was born in New York City, grew up in western Mass., and summered as an adult on Sutton's Island, one of the Cranberry Isles off of Mount Desert. Although she died in her 40s, after an operation (see obituary), she was a prolific writer of children's and adult books, and she was the first woman to win the Newbery Medal, for Hitty: Her First Hundred Years (1929). A sequel to Hitty, titled Rachel Field's Hitty: Her First Hundred Years with New Adventures, was written by Rosemary Wells and illustrated by Susan Jeffers (1999). A Memorial Horn Book for Rachel Field was published in 1942 and is available from the Maine State Library. She's also featured in Down East Today (1938; Virginia Smith Hall), along with Mary Ellen Chase, Gladys Hasty Carroll, and Robert P. Tristram Coffin. Field's works include the following; arrangement in categories is a best guess:
The Great Cranberry Island Historical Society maintains a list of her publications.
Originally from New York and with longstanding family ties to Maine, writer, poet, translator, editor, critic and teacher Annie Finch lives in Falmouth, Maine with husband Glen Brand, an environmental activist with the Sierra Club, and their children. She is director of the Stonecoast low-residency MFA at the University of Southern Maine. Previously, she was associate professor of English and member of the graduate faculty of the creative writing program at Miami University in Ohio. Finch attended Simon's Rock Early College (Mass.), received a B.A. (English) from Yale in 1979, an M.A. (creative writing) from the University of Houston in 1986, and a Ph.D from Stanford (literature) in 1990. There is a long and detailed interview with her concerning her poetry at Able Muse (2002); a 2005 interview with her at Here Comes Everybody; and a 2001 interview about her background and writing process at Story Line Press.
Finch's poems have appeared in numerous journals including Yale Review, Kenyon Review, Prairie Schooner, Fulcrum Magazine, Poetry, Paris Review, and others, and in anthologies including The Norton Anthology of World Poetry. She has collaborated on musical and theater productions including, with composer Deborah Drattell, the opera 'Marina: A Captive Spirit' based on the life of poet Marina Tsvetaeva (2003, American Opera Productions).
Her books and chapbooks include:
Many of her poems are available online, including "Meeting the Cave" in The Cortland Review; twelve poems at Representative Poems Online; two poems in Silence: A Literary Journal (1995); a couple of poems at The Drunken Boat; and some poems from her books Calendars and Eve. Her essays "In Defense of Meter," originally published in Hellas, and "The Poetess in America," at Able Muse (Winter 2002), are also online.
Cape Elizabeth resident Claudia Finkelstein, who was born in Montreal, Quebec, was a 1966 Colby College graduate, majoring in psychology and American literature. She earned a master's degree in clinical psychology from the University of Maine. She was from 1993 until her death employed as school psychologist in the Portland School Department. She was well known as a jazz vocalist, performing throughout New England as a vocalist for the Joy Spring Jazz Quartet and with many other groups. Her novel, Imperfect Strangers, was published in 2001. Its focus is the relationship between a teenage boy, who kills a policemen during a crime, and his court appointed lawyer. She had also completed a novella, "Shuffleboard Wars," which she was expanding to novel length at the time of her death.
Jonathan Fisher -- preacher, artist, inventor, scholar, writer -- was born in Braintree, Massachusetts, and was a 1792 Harvard graduate. While at Harvard he developed his own method of shorthand that he continued to use in most of his writing. Licensed to preach in 1793, Fisher preached in Wilton, New Hampshire, before preaching in the Congregational Church in Blue Hill, Maine in 1796. He was asked to remain as the minister for the following year. He was paid $200 plus 15 cords of wood for the year and given 300 acres of woodland and a barn. His first house, which he built with the help of his congregation, was completed in 1797, with a substantial addition in 1817. This later became the ell of an addition that still stands and is open for tours.
Although he was noted for his quiet personality, Fisher had strength of character and direction that made him a force in the town. He was one of the founders of the town library (see samples of his bookplates) and was also involved in obtaining a land grant for the town academy.
His commitment to education, especially that of the clergy, prompted him to become one of the founders and long-time trustees of the Bangor Theological Seminary. Amazingly, he often walked the 40 miles from Blue Hill to Bangor when he attended trustee meetings. The seminary remembers his long years of dedicated service with its endowed chair, the Jonathan Fisher Professor of Christian Education. Journal entries and a couple of his sermons are available online.
Fisher, typical of many New England rural people, was skilled in numerous cottage industries that helped him stretch his small salary to meet his family's needs. He farmed his land and also made straw hats, bone buttons, his own medicines, and various kinds of furniture.
In addition to being talented in the practical arts, Fisher was also a gifted artist who painted in oils, (he is noted for his Blue Hill landscapes), did pencil sketches, and engraved wood blocks. One of his books, Scripture Animals; A Natural History of the Living Creatures Named in the Bible (1834/1972) is noted for its delightful illustrations. It is one of the 100 books included in the book/exhibit, The Mirror of Maine.
Other extant Fisher books/pamphlets include:
Biographical information about Fisher is online and is contained in Reverend Jonathan Fisher, of Blue Hill, Maine (1868), Memoir of Rev. Jonathan Fisher of Blue Hill, Maine (1889), Biographical Sketch of the Rev. Jonathan Fisher of Blue Hill, Maine (1945), Jonathan Fisher, Maine Parson, 1768-1847, by Mary Ellen Chase (1948), Versatile Yankee; the Art of Jonathan Fisher, 1768-1847 (1973) Versatility Yankee Style: the Cultural Diversity of Rev. Jonathan Fisher, John H. Bellamy and the Hardy family (1977), The Language of Jonathan Fisher, 1768-1847 (1985), Maine in the Early Republic: From Revolution to Statehood (1988).
More biographical information on Fisher can be found online in a short sketch by Maine writer Mary Ellen Chase. There is also a bibliography containing information on Fisher as the painter and wood block artist.
Born in Presque Isle and living in Bangor, Flewelling writes fantasy books, including Luck in the Shadows (1996), Stalking Darkness (1997), Traitor's Moon (1999), and The Bone Doll's Twin (2001), all part of the Nightrunner series. Her next book will be titled Hidden Warrior and will be published in Summer 2003. Visit Flewelling's Web site for more info about her.
Poet and playwright Hortense Flexner, called the "la grand poetess du Maine" by her friend Marguerite Yourcenar, was a thirty-plus-year summer visitor to Sutton Island, the third largest of the Cranberry Isles, off the coast of Mount Desert. Although she made only brief visits to the island after her husband's death in 1961, her emotional attachment to Sutton was so strong that both she and her husband, noted cartoonist Wyncie King (1884-1961), are buried in the Sutton Island cemetery.
Hortense Flexner was born in Louisville, Kentucky. Her family consists of many prominent people such as her uncle Abraham Flexner (1866-1959), a well-known education reformer and writer; her uncle Simon Flexner (1863-1946), a prominent medical researcher and longtime director of The Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research; her uncle Bernard Flexner (1865-1945), a noted attorney, philanthropist, and ardent Zionist; her cousin, prolific history writer James Thomas Flexner (1908-); her sister Caroline Flexner, who was a special assistant with the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration in Washington, D.C.; her sister Jennie Maas Flexner (1882-1944), the readers' adviser at the New York City Public Library and author of many books on the library and librarians; family member Eleanor Flexner, historian, who co-wrote Century of Struggle: The Woman's Rights Movement in the United States.
Flexner attended Bryn Mawr College for one year, then transferred to the University of Michigan from which she earned a B.A. (1907) and a M.A. (1910). The University of Louisville (KY) awarded her an honorary doctorate in 1971.
For a brief time after college she was employed by the Louisville Herald. She also wrote plays at this time for the Little Theatre Society of Indiana and the University of Louisville Players. After marrying Wyncie King, who had also been employed by the paper, she and King moved to Philadelphia where he was a cartoonist for the Saturday Evening Post and she was an editor. From 1926 to 1940 she taught at Bryn Mawr and later taught at Sarah Lawrence College from which she retired in 1950.
Her first book of poetry, Clouds and Cobblestones, was published in 1920. Throughout her teaching career her poetry was published in magazines such as Harper's, The Atlantic, The Masses, The New Republic, The New Yorker, and Poetry. In the 1940s she published three children's books -- Chipper (1941), The Wishing Window (1942), Puzzle Pond (1948) -- illustrated by King.
Flexner's other poetry books are:
Flexner's plays include:
In 1983, High Loft Press, Seal Harbor, Maine, published Poems for Sutton Island, 13 lyric poems, most of she wrote while staying on the island. The book is one of the significant Maine books listed in The Mirror Of Maine: One Hundred Books that Reveal the History of the State and the Life of the People (2001).
More information about Flexner's writing and life can be found on the University of Louisville's special collections site. Bryn Mawr College has a large collection drawings by Wyncie King.
Flexner's strong interest in woman's rights -- both she and King were ardent supporters of women's suffrage -- is evident in her 1913 poem "The Fire-Watchers."
Margaret Flint was born at Orono, Maine, to Helen Leavitt and Walter Flint, a professor at the University of Maine. She spent her childhood in Orono, but moved to Port Deposit, Maryland, where she attended high school and served as class president all four years. She entered the University of Maine, attending classes there for three years until her marriage to Lester Warner Jacobs.
Flint's husband's work for the Army Corps of Engineers took them to Norfolk, Virginia, where she obtained a roll-top desk that served as her writing center. The family, which eventually included six children (including daughter Eleanor Jacobs Mitchell, who died in 1999), moved to Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and Slidell, Louisiana. Her first novel, The Old Ashburn Place, earned a national prize for best novel of the year in 1937.
Flint's success was severely offset by the loss that same year of her husband to the long-term effects of WWI gassing. The cash prize of $10,000, however, enabled her to move the family back to Maine, a dream the couple had been cherishing. She renovated the former Pequawket Inn in West Baldwin, in an area which had been land-granted to her father's family after the French and Indian War.
Eight more novels and a flood of newspaper articles followed, but she never achieved her goal of self-sufficiency as a writer. People of all ages and backgrounds were attracted to her quiet hospitality, usually afternoon tea before the fire or bean supper on the porch. During WWII she was honored as a 5-star Mother. Her correspondence to and from these five children in the armed services formed the novel Dress Right, Dress.
Flint was active in social and civic affairs, taking notes for characters and dramatic scenes during town and Grange meetings. Some of these sketches are among her papers preserved in the library at Colby College in Waterville, Maine.
As a novelist, her forte was psychological insights into family and neighborhood relationships. She was also noted for her ability to convey the speech patterns of the small region between Sebago Lake and the New Hampshire border, the setting for most of her stories. Her essays on family life, the character of Maine, and on national events as they impacted local life appeared regularly in several Maine newspapers and in The Christian Science Monitor. A life-long member of the Christian Science church, she also wrote inspirational articles for the church's periodicals.
Books include:
Note: This biography of Margaret Flint Jacobs was prepared by her granddaughter, Sara Mitchell Gallant, librarian at Waldoboro, Maine
Flora grew up on a poultry farm in Union, where her mother, A. Carman Clark, lived until her death in 2005. Flora, who attended the University of Maine but graduated from Tufts (1971) and Northeastern Univ. (Law, 1976), now lives in a planned community in West Concord, Mass with her husband, lawyer Kenneth Cohen. They have two sons, Max and Jake.
Flora has written 15 mysteries, including her Thea Kozak series, Chosen for Death (1994), Death in a Funhouse Mirror (1995), Death at the Wheel (1996), An Educated Death (1997/1999), Death in Paradise (1998/2000), and Liberty or Death (2003); and a police procedural set along the Maine coast, Playing God: A Joe Burgess Mystery (2006). Flora has also published a book under her given name, Katharine Clark, called Steal Away (1998), as well as another under the name Kate Clark Flora, Silent Buddy (1995), about Ross McIntyre, a small town high school biology teacher in Maine. In 2006, she and Joseph K. Loughlin of the Portland Police Dept. published a non-fiction book, Finding Amy: The True Story of Murder in Maine, about an unusual police investigation that resulted in the imprisonment of a 'psychopath' who murdered a young Biddeford woman in 2001." She co-edited Seasmoke: Crime Stories by New England Writers (2006), along with Ruth McCarty, and Susan Oleksiw.
Flora's Web site is called Kate's Lair. Flora has taught mystery writing at the Cambridge Center for Adult Ed. and at the Cape Cod Writer's Conference. She frequently speaks on Sisters-in-Crime panels and to library organisations. In fact, her brother John Clark is a Maine librarian.
Poet Richard Foerster was born in the Bronx, attended Fordham University and the University of Virginia, and moved to York Beach, Maine, in the mid-1980s. Since then he's published five books of poetry: Sudden Harbor (1992), Patterns of Descent (1993), Trillium (1998; #46 of the American Poets Continuum series), Double Going (2002), and The Burning of Troy (2006). You can read (or hear) three poems from Trillium in Cortland Review, May 1998 issue. Poetry Daily provides a summary of Patterns of Descent, as well as a photo of and biographical info about Foerster. The Electronic Poetry Center also has a paragraph on Patterns.
Foerster was editor of Chelsea literary magazine from 1994 to 2001 and currently edits Chautauqua Literary Journal. He is the recipient of Yaddo and MacDowell Colony fellowships, an NEA creative writing fellowship (1995), a Maine Arts Commission fellowship (1997), and was the 2000-2001 Amy Lowell Traveling Scholar. Besides his books, he's published poems in The Best American Poetry, Gettysburg Review, Southwest Review, New England Review, Shenandoah, Poetry magazine, and Southern Review.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, Elizabeth Foster was the daughter of writer and playwright Maximilian Foster. She was educated at Miss Porter's School, Art Students League of America, and Columbia University. She was a freelance writer who published mostly novels and short stories; her stories were published in Redbook, Good Housekeeping, Home and Garden, and Trout and Stream.
Her most important Maine-related book is The Islanders (1946), in which she wrote about her maternal grandfather, Frederick Stoever Dickson, and the multi-generational family experiences at the summer place he built on a Rangely Lake island. Her novels with a Maine setting include Singing Beach (1941), Dirigo Point (1943), and The House at Noddy Cove (1947; juvenile). Her other fiction titles are The Days Between (1942); Gigi, The Story of a Merry-Go-Round Horse (1943/1984; juvenile); Gigi in America (1945/1984; juvenile), set in Old Orchard Beach; and Children of the Mist (1961), biographical fiction about Lady Elizabeth Foster (1758-1824) and her relationship with the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire.
Foster is buried in the family plot in Evergreen Cemetery, Rangeley.
The Rev. Dr. Sarah Fougler, a Harpswell resident since 1984, is pastor of the Congregational Church of Boothbay Harbor. Ordained in 1979, she is a graduate of Princeton Theological Seminary (Master of Divinity) and Boston University (Doctor of Ministry). She earned her undergraduate degree from Hofstra University. She is the author of two books. The first, published in 1999, is Yards of Purple: Stories of Advent. In 2003 she published a novel titled No Revenge So Complete. More biographical information is available through the Boothbay Reigster.
Journalist, editor, memoirist, and sailor Tom Froncek lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife Ellen, and sails out of Mere Point. Before living in Maine, the Fronceks lived in Rockland County in New York's Hudson River Valley. Froncek grew up in Wisconsin, among other places.
Froncek is the author of A Splendid Madness: A Man, A Boat, A Love Story (2004), an account of his late blooming love affair with sailing. His other books include Home Again, Home Again: A Son's Memoir (1996), about his ambivalent relationship with his father, Walter; Paying the Price: Freedom of Expression in Turkey, a 39-page booklet written by Lois Whitman and Froncek in 1989 after the two traveled to Turkey on a Helsinki Watch mission in October 1988 (skip down to 3rd paragraph under 'Turkey'); Take Away One: The True Story of a Mother Forced to Kidnap Her Own Child (1985), about a child custody kidnapping involving an American mother and a Yugoslav father. Home Again, Home Again and Take Away One were both included in Reader's Digest Condensed Books volumes.
He's edited Sail, Steam And Splendour: A Picture History Of Life Aboard The Transatlantic Liners, written by Byron S. Miller (1977); The City of Washington: An Illustrated History, by The Junior League of Washington (1977/1992); Voices from the Wilderness: The Frontiersman's Own Story (1974/1983; wrote introduction), a collection of 27 accounts by frontiersmen and plainsmen that cover 'The Appalachians and beyond 1755-1825' and 'The Missouri and beyond 1808-1870'; The Northmen, published as part of Time Life's Emergence of Man series (1974); The Horizon Book of the Arts of Russia (1970); and The Horizon Book of the Arts of China (1969).
Froncek's articles have appeared in American Heritage, Good Old Boat, The Christian Science Monitor, The Village Voice, and The Country Journal, among others. He has been a member of The International Freedom-to-Publish Committee of the Association of American Publishers.
Carolyn Gage, a lesbian-feminist playwright, performer, director, and activist, was born in Richmond, Virginia, and now lives in Portland, Maine. She received both her B.A. and M.A. in Theatre Arts from Portland State University in Portland, Oregon, in 1982 and 1984 respectively. She has taught Playwriting and Lesbian Poetry in the University of Southern Maine Continuing Eduction Program, and since 1999 has toured regularly as a lecturer, workshop presenter, and resident artist at colleges and universities. She was visiting professor at Bates College in 1998-1999 and adjunct professor at the Univ. of Southern Maine in 1998. She was also founder and director of Cauldron & Labrys Productions in Portland, Maine (2001-2005), director and resident playwright for the League of Lesbian Actors in Santa Rosa, CA (1992-1993), and founder and artistic director for other theatre companies from 1985 to 1991.
Gage tours in her award-winning, one-woman show, The Second Coming of Joan of Arc, which has been the subject of a feature on National Public Radio, and was produced in Brazil in 2002. She's received a number of grants and awards, including the Oregon Playwrights Award from the Oregon Institute of Literary Arts, awards from the Maine Arts Commission and the Oregon Arts Commission, and a research grant in 2002-2003 from the Maine Women Writers' Collection at the University of New England. In 2002, she received the Jeanine Rae Award for the Advancement of Women's Culture from Women in the Arts; former recipients include Audre Lorde, June Jordan, and Nikki Giovanni. The University of Oregon has her personal papers in its Special Collections Archive. More biographical and bibliographical information is available through Gage's website. There's a lengthy interview with Gage in off our backs (Jan/Feb 2002), in which she discusses her play about Joan of Arc and other works.
Gage has published four books about lesbian theatre (one forthcoming), a book of meditations, and dozens of dramatic works. She's also been published in the Dramatists Guild Quarterly, Sinister Wisdom, Lesbian Ethics, The Lesbian Review of Books, The Harvard Gay and Lesbian Review, The Michigan Quarterly Review, and off our backs.
Her books are:
Plays, musicals, and one-woman shows (besides adaptations) include:
Roy Gallant was born in Portland, Maine, where he attended Deering High School. After navigating B-24s in World War II, he attended Bowdoin College, majoring in English, minoring in philosophy and science, and receiving a B.A. in 1948. He attended Columbia University, studying journalism and earning an M.S. (1949).
Gallant, called "one of the deans of American science writers for children" by School Library Journal has had many jobs that involve both writing and science: staff writer for Science Illustrated and Boys' Life (1949-1951); managing editor with Scholastic Teacher (1953-1956); author-in-residence at Doubleday & Company (1956-1958); instructor in writing at Columbia University (1958); executive editor, Aldus Books, London (1959-1962); editor-in-chief, Natural History Press (1962-1965); lecturer in astronomy, Hackley School (Tarrytown, New York; 1969-1970); and member of the faculty at the American Museum of Natural History Hayden Planetarium in NYC (1970). Gallant also worked in military intelligence in Tokyo during the Korean War and was a faculty member at the Psychological Warfare School in Fort Riley, Kansas (now the U.S. Army John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School in Fort Bragg, NC).
In the early 1970s, Gallant returned to Maine to live in a large house on a lake near Rangeley. He has taught at the University of Southern Maine and in the natural sciences division at the Maine College of Art, and since 1979 has been director of USM's Southworth Planetarium in Portland. Recently he has written a number of articles about his travels in 1992 to Siberia, where he became the first American ever to visit the Tunguska site of the 1908 meteorite catastrophe; he's also visited the Sikhote-Alin, Chinge, and Pallas meteorite sites there.
Gallant's first book, Exploring the Moon, was published in 1955. Since then he has written numerous science books, including textbooks for elementary school, high school, and college. Besides his books, he contributes articles to magazines and encyclopedias.
Gallant's books include:
His article, "Sikhote-Alin Revisited," is available online, as well as his January 1999 Sky & Telescope article entitled "Saga of the Lump."
You can reach Gallant at rgallant@usm.maine.edu. There is more information on Gallant through The University of Mississippi de Grummond Collection, where some of his papers are held. Gallant's home page provides a photograph of him.
Belfast resident Henry Garfield has published a series of young adult books (ages 12+) featuring Cyrus "Moondog" Nygerski, a California bus driver who claims to be a werewolf. Garfield, who moved back to Maine in 2000 after living 16 years in San Diego (you can read his goodbye letter to his San Diego neighbourhood of Normal Heights online), grew up in Blue Hill, spent a year at the University of Maine, and had his first writing job at the Ellsworth American newspaper. Besides writing books, he's also a part-time teacher at Unity College. He's a great-great-grandson of U.S. president James A. Garfield.
His books are Moondog (1995); Room 13 (1997; described as "a literary ghost story and crime novel with a werewolf....The tale of a young woman who battles a force of ultimate evil in a small California town classroom"); Tartabull's Throw (2001; review of Tartabull), a mystery/suspense thriller set during the 1967 baseball season, when the Boston Red Sox battled three other teams for the American League pennant -- in this book, Cyrus meets up with Cassandra, who lives on Deer Isle, Maine; and The Last Voyage of John Cabot (2004), a young adult historical novel. A number of his columns for Village Soup, an online community newsletter for Camden/Rockland and Belfast, are available.
Doctor, playwright, and poet Andrew J. (Andy) Gay, Jr. was born in Alabama and received his medical degree from the University of Alabama in 1955. A neuro-ophthalmologist, professor, and researcher, he was an editor of Clinical Concepts in Neuroophthalmology (1967) and was one of two writers of Eye Movement Disorders (1974). He was president of the New England Ophthalmological Society for five years. He and his wife Jeanine moved to 70-acre Fern Hill Farm in Belfast, Maine in 1971 where Gay practiced medicine until his retirement in 1991. His play, Caitlin, based on the life of Caitlin Thomas, widow of poet Dylan Thomas, was telecast on Maine Public Television. Some of his poetry was published on the website Apples and Oranges, which has ceased publication. He published two books of poetry, Greylight (1995) and A Butterfly Careless (2001). His poems also appear in A Spring Poetry Reading (The Little Letterpress, Searsport, 1982), along with other Belfast-area poets.
aka Teresa (Terry) Gerritsen, was born and raised in San Diego, CA,
received her B.A. in Anthropology from Stanford University (1975)
and her M.D. from the University of California, San Francisco.
She completed her internal medicine residency in Honolulu, Hawaii
along with her husband, also a physician. Gerritsen retired as
an internist to spend more time with her family and
to write. Gerritsen has her own web site, which provides biographical
information, photos, info about her books, and page of "creepy biological facts."
Mystery Ink Online's website offers a Sept. 2001
interview with Gerritsen. Bookreporter provides an August 2002
essay by Gerritsen about being a writer of medical thrillers. The Boston Globe offers a profile
of Gerritsen (Sept. 2006), focusing on her shift from writing Harlequins to writing best-selling thrillers.
Her books, which are romance novels and mystery/thrillers, include:
Her play, "Adrift," became a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week. Gerritsen also has stories in several romance trilogies:
Impulse: Three
Complete Novels (2000; with
books by Barbara Delinsky and Linda Howard); Heatwave (2000,
with stories by Gerritsen, Linda Lael Miller and Barbara Delinsky); and
Stolen Memories (2001, with stories by Gerritsen, Jayne Ann
Krentz and Stella Cameron).
Gibbons is a prolific writer/illustrator of children's non-fiction books. She was born in Oak Park IL and grew up in Illinois, receiving a BFA from the Univ. of Illinois; now she and her husband, Kent Ancliffe, and their dog and cats live in Corinth, VT most of the year in a solar house on 300 acres, and since 1986 they've spent several months of the year at a farmhouse on Matinicus Island in Maine. Gibbons has been awarded the Washington Post Children's Book Guild Award for overall contribution to children's nonfiction. More information on Gibbons is available through her website.
Books Gibbons has written and illustrated include:
Books Gibbons has illustrated for other authors include: The Mouse in My House (1979; by Catherine Chase); Hot and Cold (1979; by Catherine Chase); My Balloon (1979; by Catherine Chase); Pete, the Wet Pet (1981; by Catherine Chase); The Mouse at the Show (1981; by Donna L. Pape); Good Junk (1981; by Judith A. Enderle); and Cars and How They Go (1983; by Joanna Cole).
Born in New Brunswick, NJ, Dorothy Gilman has lived in upstate New York and in Norwalk, Connecticut, spending summers in Albuquerque, N.M. She now lives in Westport, Conn., and Portland, Maine. Gilman started out writing fiction for children and young adults, under her former married name, Dorothy Gilman Butters, then turned to writing for adults, most famously her mysteries starring the retired widow turned CIA agent, Mrs. Emily Pollifax. Angela Lansbury plays Mrs. Pollifax in the CBS movie "The Amazing Mrs. Pollifax."
(many of which are available on audio cassette)
John Gold, an Ohio native who was raised in New Hampshire and who has lived in Maine since 1985, has written several non-fiction children's books. He received a bachelor's in zoology from the University of New Hampshire in 1984, and he's also a graduate of UNH's journalism program. He worked for years as a journalist, including 13 years as a reporter and wire editor with the Journal Tribune in Biddeford. He also worked as an editor for Maine Today, the online division of the Portland Newspapers, and is a contributor and web master for the sailing magazine Points East. He now heads the Web design division of Custom Communications, the company he co-owns with his wife, Susan Gold.
Gold is president of Saco Bay Trails, a nonprofit group dedicated to preserving and maintaining trails open to the public in the Saco area.
John Gold's books include:
Susan Dudley Gold, a Maine native who currently lives in Saco, has has written more than two dozen children's and young adults' books and two books on Maine history. She and her husband, John Gold, own and operate Custom Communications, a Web design and desktop publishing business in Saco, which has published books on history and poetry. Previously, she's worked as a reporter for a daily newspaper, as managing editor of a statewide business magazine, and as a freelance journalist. She attended Brandeis University and the University of Southern Maine, graduating with a B.A. in English.
In 2001, Gold received a Jefferson Award for community service in recognition of her work with a chronic pain support group, which she founded when she was diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis in 1992.
Gold's books (some written as Susan Dudley Morrison) include:
Fantasy novelist and artist Terry Goodkind was born in Omaha, Nebraska. In 1983 he moved to Mount Desert Island where he built the house in which he and his wife Jeri live. Prior to the publication of his successful series Sword of Truth, Goodkind was employed as a carpenter, violin-maker, hypnotherapist, wildlife artist, and artifacts restorer.
His first novel, Wizard's First Rule, was auctioned in 1994 for the highest price paid for a first fantasy novel to that date. The central characters of the novel and all other novels in the series are Richard Cypher (Lord Rahl) and Kahlan Amnell (Mother Confessor), a strong female character whom Richard first meets when she is fleeing assassins from her home country. Throughout the series, Richard, who learns of and accepts his wizard heritage, and Kahlan fight the evil forces that threatened their land and people. Other books in the Sword of Truth series are Stone of Tears (1995); Blood of the Fold (1996); Temple of the Winds (1997); Soul of the Fire (1999); Faith of the Fallen (2000); The Pillars of Creation (2001); Debt of Bones (2001), revised edition of a novella which first appeared in Legends, a 1998 fantasy anthology; Naked Empire (2003); Chainfire (2005); and Phantom (2006).
Extensive interviews, reviews, letters are located on Prophets Inc., Goodkind's website.
Henry (sometimes spelled Henri) Gosselin, of Harpswell, Maine, writes historical novels and worked for many years a a journalist. A retired editor of the Church World, Maine's Catholic weekly, in retirement he's written two historical novels. The first, George Washington's French-Canadian Spy (1999), is based on his relative, Clement Gosselin, a Revolutionary War spy. The book details the story of Major Clement Gosselin's seven-year odyssey from La Pocatiere, Quebec to the Battle of Yorktown. Henry Gosselin himself is a Korean War veteran, having served as Sergeant Major of the First Battalion of the 5th Regimental Combat Team. After the war, he became a steadfast pacifist. Gosselin's second historical novel, based on a relative on his mother's side of the family, is Eustache Lambert: Donné Extraordinaire - Dedicating his Life in the Service of the Huron Missions (2001; review of Lambert).
Gosselin, who received degrees from St. Anselm's in New Hampshire and in journalism from Boston University, worked as editor of the Lisbon Enterprise and the Maine Sunday News in Lewiston before buying a share of Skowhegan's Somerset Reporter, which he edited for over a decade, then becoming editor of the Church World. Gosselin has received Catholic Press Association Awards and two honorary degrees (from St. Joseph's College in Maine and from St. Anselm's).
For more information on his books, check Gosselin's website and for more on Gosselin, read Juliana L'Heureux's article about him in The Franco-American Connection.
Gould lived in Gorham (previously in Lisbon Falls) and for years wrote a weekly column for the Christian Science Monitor, which provides an April 2001 interview with Gould on its website. Gould gathered 50 years of those columns for his book Dispatches from Maine: 1942-1992 (1994).
Among his other books -- there are more than 30 -- are:
The Christian Science Monitor provides an annotated bibliography of the works listed above, as well as Gould's own exegesis of his life.
Grant, who lives in Rockport, was born in Norfolk, Va., attended the Univ. of Virginia, and served in the U.S. Coast Guard. He was a contributing editor of Down East magazine, writes for the Camden Herald, and chaired the literature panel of the Maine Arts Commission. He generally writes science fiction and fantasy books, though his 1996 Tex & Molly in the Afterlife broke new ground for him. Set in "Dublin," Maine (fictitious place similar to Belfast), it's a Vonnegut-like tale of aging hippies contemplating mortality. It's also been described as just the thing for someone who thinks there should be more light fiction about witches.
His other books include Another Green World (2006; excerpted; title is the name of a 1975 Brian Eno album); Kaspian Lost (1999/2001); In the Land of Winter (1997); Through the Heart (1991); Views from the Oldest House (1989); Rumors of Spring (1987), and Saraband of Lost Time (1985).
He has two children with Maine novelist Elizabeth Hand.
Wisconsin native Sarah Graves has lived in Connecticut and moved to Eastport, Maine, after researching her first novel here. She's written a mystery series starring Ex-Wall Street wizard and heroine Jacobia Tiptree, now transplanted to Eastport, Maine.
Books include:
Graves has her own website, with info on her books, excerpts, a photo, and brief biographical information. A Nov. 1998 interview with Graves is available through The Mystery Reader, a 2005 interview at Bookreporter, and a profile of Graves from June 2004 through the Boston Globe.
Gray was born in Bar Harbor, Maine, daughter of a lobster fisherman. She lives in the small fishing village of Birch Harbor, Maine, with her husband, Bob, a lobster fisherman, their two children, and a fox hound.
Gray's stories, often set along the Maine coast, have appeared in horror anthologies such as: Femmes de la Brume, Objet d'Evil, Extremes 3: Terror on the High Seas, Be Mine, The Book of Monsters, CHIMERAWORLD #1, and The Blackest Death, Vol. II.
Gray has teamed up with fellow Maine author Mark Edward Hall to co-author the chapbook ghost story The Ruby Necklace (which can be ordered at http://www.tmgray.tk), and has written another chapbook, Pianissimo, with Susanne S. Brydenbaugh. She has also co-authored the historical vampire novel, White Meat, with British writer Mark West.
Several of Gray's stories have been recommended for the Horror Writers Association's Bram Stoker Award. Her story "Beyond the Mist" (published in Extremes 3) received an honorable mention in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror (15th edition, ed. Ellen Datlow and Terri Windling).
Gray's article about writing horror, "Oh, Those Weird Ideas," is online at ReallyScary.com. A January 2004 interview with Gray is available at Chronicle of the Eternal Night. Gray (with other HWA Mainers) appears in The Portland Phoenix article "The Frighteners: The Horror Writers Association of New England Comes to Town." Gray updates her weblog periodically.
Gray is the author of the following novels: The Ravenous (2004; excerpt here), Mr. Crisper (2004), and Ghosts of Eden (2005). She's also published Feast of Faust, a mega-collection of 45 of her finest horror stories.
Greenlaw, a Connecticut native, grew up Topsham, Maine, the daughter of a Bath Iron Works executive, and lives now in Isle au Haut, where she works hauling lobster. She began her ocean fishing career while attending Colby College, from which she graduated in 1983 with an English major, earning money working summers on fishing boats. After college, she worked her way from cook and deckhand to captain of a swordfishing boat by 1986. Her role in a boating incident was portrayed by Sebastian Junger in his book The Perfect Storm, which was made into a movie in 2000, with Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio playing the role of Greenlaw. Junger describes Greenlaw as "one of the best captains, period, on the entire East Coast." Her boat, the Hannah Boden, was the sister ship to the Andrea Gail, which disappeared in the disastrous 1991 storm that was the focus of Junger's bestseller.
After her mention in Junger's book, Greenlaw was approached to write the book that became The Hungry Ocean (1999), whose title is taken from a Shakespearean sonnet, and which tells the story of one month-long swordfishing trip east of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland. The book become a national bestseller. An online reading group guide to The Hungry Ocean provides a summary, discussion questions, and a brief biography.
Greenlaw got out of the swordfishing business in the late 1990s when the owner of her boat decided to get out, due to increasing regulations, and she now lobsters from waters near her Maine island home.
Her second book was The Lobster Chronicles: Life on a Very Small Island (2002), her personal observations, reflections, and opinions on a season of lobster fishing. An excerpt is available through Mostly Fiction. In 2004 she published All Fishermen Are Liars: True Tales from the Dry Dock Bar. Linda Greenlaw and her mother, Martha Greenlaw, have co-written Recipes From A Very Small Island (2005), with more than 100 classic New England recipes, colorful photos, and anecdotes on seaside life, eating, etc. In 2007, Greenlaw published Slipknot, the first in a mystery series featuring marine investigator Jane Bunker.
The Christian Science Monitor featured her in one of the few articles about Greenlaw to offer original information. There are also numerous interviews with Greenlaw available online, including this Sept. 2002 profile of her in the New York Times (free registration required).
Richard Grossinger, born in New York City, lives in Kensington, California and summers in Manset, outside of Southwest Harbor, Maine. He also taught anthropology for a while at the University of Maine. Grossinger attended the Horace Mann School in Riverdale, NY (class of 1962), graduated from Amherst College in 1966 and received his Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Michigan in 1975; his dissertation was titled "The Strategy and Ideology of Lobster Fishing on the Back Side of Mt. Desert Island, Hancock County, Maine." As the grandson of Jennie Grossinger, he was the supposed heir apparent to the famed Catskill resort called Grossinger's Hotel, the subject of his memoir Out of Babylon: Ghosts of Grossinger's.
Grossinger and his wife, the poet and novelist Lindy Hough, co-founded Io, an alternative college literary magazine, when they were at Smith and Amherst colleges in 1964; the magazine -- the forerunner of magazines such as Whole Earth Review, New Age, and Gnosis -- was a counter-cultural mix of literature, science, and history. The 1971 'Baseball Issue' (Io #10) contains one of Stephen King's first print appearances, "Brooklyn August." Grossinger and Hough also co-founded North Atlantic Books during their college years; in 1984 they incorporated it along with the Society for the Study of Native Arts and Sciences, a 501(c)(3) non-profit educational organization. It operates from Berkeley, California, with Grossinger and Hough as co-publishers and Hough as editorial director.
Grossinger's books -- many of which can apparently be described as one bookseller summed up The Book of Being Born Again Into the World: "typical of Grossinger's dense, magical prose which synthesizes anthropology, popular culture, autobiography and travelogue" -- include:
He's edited anthologies and other books, including:
The Io journal issues (ranging in length from 150-300+ pp.) are also available. Some topics:
In an interview with Jeffrey Mishlove ('Thinking Aloud'), Grossinger talks about the mystery of incarnation (1991) and in another interview in the same series he talks about the mystery of creation (1990); both are available in VHS tape format.
Novelist, essayist, and critic Grumbach, born in New York City, lives in Sargentville, Maine, but does not consider herself a Maine writer. She has a degree in philosophy from New York University and an M.A. in Medieval Literature from Cornell (1940).
In the early 1940s, Grumbach worked for Mademoiselle magazine as a proofreader and for Architectural Forum in jobs from proofreader to associate editor. In 1943, she joined the Navy as a WAVES officer. After the war, she and her husband eventually settled in Albany, NY, where, in 1957, she began teaching English at the Albany Academy for Girls, and from 1960-1971 was an English professor at the College of Saint Rose. She left her husband in 1971, taking a job as literary editor and columnist for The New Republic in Washington, D.C. After the magazine was sold in 1973, she taught at American University as a professor of American literature and wrote columns for the New York Times Book Review and for the Saturday Review. In the mid-1980s, she and her business and life partner, Sybil Pike, opened a used bookstore called Wayward Books, which they moved to Sargentville, Maine in 1990. More biographical information is available through the New York Public Library.
Her novels include Chamber Music (1979), The Missing Person (1981), The Ladies (1984), The Magician's Girl (1987), and The Book of Knowledge (1995).
Other books are The Spoil of Flowers; The Short Throat, the Tender Mouth; and The Company She Kept (1967; about writer Mary McCarthy); and memoirs Coming into the Endzone; Extra Innings (1993); Fifty Days of Solitude (1994), Life in a Day (1996); The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and An Epiphany (1999), and the Pleasure of Their Company (2000). A chapter of Life in a Day is available through the Washington Post.
