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!
Poet, novelist, short story writer, essayist, and teacher Ira Sadoff lives in Hallowell with his wife Linda Christ, an attorney. He is Dana Professor of Poetry at Colby College, where he's taught since 1977. Sadoff was born in Brooklyn, NY, on 7 March 1945, raised in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn, earned a B.A. from Cornell University in industrial and labor relations (1966) and an M.F.A. in 1968 from the University of Oregon. He taught at Hobart & Smith Colleges (NY), Antioch College, and Hampshire College before Colby, and co-founded the mostly poetry Seneca Review in 1970 with James Crenner. He's got a website at Colby with his c.v. as well as information on his books and his classes.
Books include: Settling Down (1975); Palm Reading in Winter (1978); Maine: Nine Poems (1981); Uncoupling (1982), a novel; A Northern Calendar (1982); Emotional Traffic: Poems (1989/90); An Ira Sadoff Reader: Selected Poetry and Prose (1992), a collection of stories, poems, and essays; Grazing: Poems (1998), and Barter (2003). Sadoff won the Poetry Society of America George Bogin Memorial Award in 1996 and the American Poetry Review Jerome J. Shestack Prize in 1997. His article on neo-formalism appears in the Jan/Feb 1990 issue of American Poetry Review. His poem 'The Quake' is online at the Univ. of Illinois Press, and his story 'The Tragic Stiletto of Trabzon' (1996) is online at Ploughshares literary journal. An article about poetry, from 'Trafficking in the Radiant: The Spiritualization of American Poetry,' is at American Poetry Review, July/Aug. 2005.
Maine native Kevin St. Jarre (born 26 July 1968) was raised in Madawaska, lived for a while in Rochester, NH, and in 2006 moved, with his wife, Jennifer, and three children, back to Madawaska to teach social studies at Fort Kent Community High School. He worked in U.S. Army intelligence for six years, stationed and serving in Germany, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq. He has served on the Madawaska Board of Selectmen and was town manager for the Town of Grand Isle. He earned an English degree at the University of Maine at Fort Kent in 1997. Other jobs have included print journalist, corporate technical trainer, and high school teacher at Caribou High School (ME) and at Noble High School in North Berwick, ME. He presents workshops at education forums and on topics such as leadership, learning communities, data collection, standards and rubrics, time and resource management, etc.
St. Jarre is a novelist, poet, short story writer, and author of works of narrative non-fiction. Night Stalkers, the first novel in a three-book series -- military thrillers whose milieu is the war on terror -- was published under the pen name Michael Hawke in 2005. It features a Special Ops night-fighting aviation force. The second title in the series is Night Stalkers: Coercion (2005), the third is Night Stalkers: Homefront (2006). More information about the Night Stalkers series and St. Jarre is available in a Jan. 2005 Portsmouth Herald article and on St. Jarre's website.
Lyla (Smith) St. Louis spent her childhood on a farm in Town Hill, which is located near Bar Harbor. After graduating from high school, she worked as a secretary and cashier until her 1943 marriage to Thomas St. Louis. In 1948 they moved to Freeport, where she lived until her death on 6 May 2006 . From 1965 until her retirement in June 2000, she worked as a teacher's assistant in the Freeport school system. She also loved painting watercolors and was an enthusiast of the Southwestern U.S.
St. Louis wrote articles for newspapers and for Down East magazine. Her one published book, A Warden's Way: The Life of Lyle Smith, Maine's 'Flying Warden' (also issued as A Warden's Way: The Life of Lyle Smith of Mount Desert Island), published in 1991, is a biography about her father who was a game warden on Mt. Desert.
Michael Sanders (born 17 Aug. 1961), who lives in Brunswick, was editor at various publishers before turning to writing as a primary career; even then, he also imported rugs from Russia and Ukraine, writing novels about the experience, and worked as a bookseller.
Sanders has published three books. His first, the critically acclaimed The Yard: Building a Destroyer at Bath Iron Works (1999), charts the construction of the Navy fighting ship USS Donald Cook from design to dedication at Maine's BIW shipyard. Sanders talked about the book on the PBS Show 'The New Hour' in January 2000.
His second is a food-focused memoir titled From Here, You Can't See Paris: Seasons of a French Village and its Restaurant (2002), about a year spent with his wife and young daughter learning food secrets from the chef/owners of Le Recreation restaurant in the tiny and remote French village of Les Arques. The book tells the story of a community where the traditions of food, cooking and rural life are maintained. Chapter one and some reviews are available on Sanders' website, along with biographical and other information.
The third is Families of the Vine: Seasons Among the Winemakers of Southwest France, which relates his experience of two years spent among French winemakers and vineyards.
Colin Sargent -- a native Portlander who lives in Portland and Kennebunk Beach with his wife, Nancy, and son, Colin -- is founding editor and publisher of Portland Magazine (est. 1985). He graduated from the U.S. Naval Academy, winning the Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize in 1976 while a midshipman. In 1981 he became the youngest Navy officer to edit Approach Magazine, the Navy's flying magazine, where he worked with contributors such as Tom Wolfe and published influential early studies on wind shear. He earned his MFA degree in creative writing from USM's Stonecoast program.
Sargent has written three books of poetry, two of which were published with National Endowment for the Arts grants: Luftwaffe Snowshoes (1984); Blush (1987); and Undertow (1994). His play, One Hundred Percent American Girl, won the 2002 Acorn School for the Performing Art's Maine Playwrights Contest. He also received the 2003 Individual Artist Fellowship grant for poetry awarded by the Maine Arts Commission.
More info on Sargent is available on his website.
Ruth Sargent, who lives on Peaks Island (off of Portland), began her career as a photo-journalist for the Portland newspapers and is credited with ten published books and over 125 published magazine and newspaper articles. Her speaking availability and contact information is available online.
Books for children include:
Books for adults include:
Sarton was born Eleanor Marie Sarton in Wondelgem, Belgium, and emigrated to the U.S. with her family in 1916, settling in Massachusetts. Sarton lived in New Hampshire as an adult, moving to York, Maine, in 1973, where she lived until the end of her life. A comprehensive Sarton bibliography is found on the Celebration of Women Writers page, as is a biographical sketch. Poetry magazine produced a lengthy article on Sarton in March 2000, and Sojourner's magazine provides a short death notice.
In 1997 Margot Peters came out with a biography of Sarton, called simply May Sarton. Maine poet Constance Hunting has also edited two books about Sarton, May Sarton, Woman and Poet (1982) and A Celebration for May Sarton: Essays and Speeches from the National Conference "May Sarton at 80" (1994).
A May Sarton Bibliography:
: The Single Hound (?/1991), The Bridge of Years (1946/1985), Shadow of a Man (1950/1982), A Shower of Summer Days (1952/1995), Faithful Are the Wounds (1955/1985/1997), The Birth of the Grandfather (1957/1989), The Fur Person (1957/1978/1983), The Small Room (1961/1976), Joanna & Ulysses (?/1987), The Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing (1965/1993), Miss Pickthorn & Mr. Hare (1968), The Poet & the Donkey (1969/1984/1996), Kinds of Love (1970/1994), As We Are Now (1973/1992), Crucial Conversations (1975/1994), A Reckoning (1978/1981/1997), Anger (1982/1986/1996), The Magnificent Spinster (1985/1989/1995), The Education of Harriet Hatfield (1989/1993).
: Encounter in April, Inner Landscape, The Lion & the Rose, The Land of Silence, In Time Like Air, Cloud Stone Sun Vine, A Private Mythology (?/1996), As Does New Hampshire (1967), A Grain of Mustard Seed (1971/1987), A Durable Fire (1972), Collected Poems 1930-1973 (1974), Selected Poems of May Sarton (1978), Halfway to Silence (1980), Letters from Maine: Poems (1984/1997), The Silence Now (1988/1990; includes earlier uncollected poems as well as new poems), Collected Poems 1930-1993 (1993), Coming into Eighty: New Poems (1994/1997).
: Punch's Secret (1974), A Walk Through the Woods (1976).
: I Knew A Phoenix: Sketches for an Autobiography (1959/1996), Plant Dreaming Deep (1968/1996), Journal of a Solitude (1973/1992), A World of Light: Portraits & Celebrations (1976/1988), The House by the Sea (1977/1981/1996), Recovering: A Journal (1980), Writings on Writing (1980), May Sarton--A Self-Portrait (1982), At Seventy: A Journal (1984/1993), Letters to May (1986; by Eleanor Mabel Sarton), After the Stroke: A Journal (1988/1990), Honey in the Hive: Judith Matlack 1898-1982 (1988), Conversations with May Sarton, ed. Earl Ingersoll (1991), Sarton Selected: An Anthology of the Journals, Novels, and Poems of May Sarton (1991), Endgame: A Journal of the Seventy-Ninth Year (1992/1996), May Sarton: Among the Usual Days: A Portrait, Unpublished Poems, Letters, Journals, and Photographs (1993; ed. Susan Sherman), Encore: A Journal of the Eightieth Year (1993/1995), From May Sarton's Well: Writings of May Sarton (1994/1999), At Eighty-Two: A Journal (1996/1997), Selected Letters: 1916-1954 (Vol 1) (1997), Dear Juliette: Letters of May Sarton to Juliette Huxley (1999).
This mystery writer, whose sleuth is lesbian ex-nun/writer Brigid Donovan, sets her books in Maine: Murder is Relative (1990; set in Quebec City, rural Maine, and Manhattan), Murder is Germaine (1991; set in Maine and the country of Panama) and Murder is Material (1994; set in Maine). She's also written another, non-series book, I Never Read Thoreau: A Mystery Novel (1996), set on small Monte Cassino island off the coast of Maine. It's part mystery, part history, party introspection, and involves the smuggling of illegal aliens into Canada.
Maine author and wilderness historian Sawtell has lived in Brownville all his life. Since 1982, he's written over 25 non-fiction books, including:
Sawtell is a basketball fan, and former player and coach; he edits and writes a column for Maine RoundBall Online Magazine.
Ruth Sawyer (nee Ruth Durand) was born in Boston and raised in New York but summered in Maine and eventually moved to Hancock, Maine, where she died in 1970 after a long and prolific writing career. She studied folklore and storytelling a Columbia University (B.S. 1904), and began the first storytelling program for children at the New York Public Library. Sawyer married physician Albert Durand, and their daughter Margaret (Peggy) married Robert McCloskey.
Sawyer's most common story was a folktale retelling or a Christmas story. She won the Newbery Medal in 1937 for her book Roller Skates and was awarded the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal in 1965 for her contribution to children's literature. In addition to the children's books below, Sawyer also wrote The Way of the Storyteller (1942/1962/1966/1969/1976), a handbook for storytellers.
Sawyer's books include:
The College of St. Catherine Libraries (MN) maintains an archive of some of Ruth Sawyer's books, letters, manuscripts, recordings, etc.
Maine labor historian Charles Scontras was born in Buffalo, New York, and spent his childhood and adolescence in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. His undergraduate degree is from the University of New Hampshire. He earned both his Masters and Ph.D. in history at the University of Maine, Orono. Since 1966 he has focused on the history of the working men and women in Maine industries. In a March 2003 review in the Maine Sunday Telegram, historian William David Barry refers to Scontras' work as "substantive, readable books" and to Scontras as "an engaging writer focused on exciting, sometimes violent occurrences." Now living in Cape Elizabeth, Scontras taught for 36 years at the University of Maine in the History and Political Science Departments. He is currently a Research Associate at the University's Bureau of Labor Education.
His writing includes:
Parts One, Two, and Three of his 12-page pamphlet titled 'Déjà vu: The Maintenance of Way Workers and the Maine Central Railroad, 1901' can be found on the website for the BMWE Journal, the official news publication of the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees, AFL-CIO. His article on Maine lobstering, 'Maine Lobstermen and the Labor Movement: The Lobster Fishermen's International Protective Association, 1907', was published in the January 1990 issue of Labor's Heritage, a George Meany Center for Labor Studies publication.
Marjorie Sharmat, a popular children's writer, was born in Portland, Maine (grew up on Dartmouth Street), and knew from childhood she wanted to be a writer. Practicality prevailed, however, when, after graduating from Deering High School in 1946, she attended Westbrook Junior College, now the University of New England's Portland campus, and majored in merchandising. After graduating in 1948, she worked in retail and advertising. She also wrote greeting card copy. During the early 1950s, she was employed by Yale University in its libraries.
In 1957, she married Mitchell Sharmat with whom she later wrote the "Olivia Sharp, Agent for Secrets" series. Like Lynn Plourde, she became interested in children's books when she started to read them to her own children. Her first book, Rex, was published in 1967. Most of Sharmat's books are either picture books or Easy Readers. She has great insight into children's concerns and uses a gentle touch of humor to calm their fears. She also writes for middle graders, young adults and has published movie and television show novelizations.
In addition to the Olivia Sharp series, Sharmat wrote four other series, one of which is "The Kids on the Bus," a mystery series. The second series, "Nate the Great," focuses on the adventures of a boy detective and has been translated into several other languages. In a 1983 interview, Sharmat revealed Nate is named for her father. She collaborated with her sons, Andrew and Craig, in writing several of the books in the two series. "Maggie Marmelstein" is a series for middle graders. A later series is "Genghis Khan," republished in paperback as the "Duz Shedd Stories." It focuses on movie star dog Duz whose screen name is Genghis Khan.
Sharmat used the pen name Wendy Andrews for three books: Are We There Yet? (1985); Supergirl Storybook: Based on the Motion Picture Supergirl (1984); and Vacation Fever! (1984).
Until 1975, the Sharmat family lived in Westchester County, New York. They then moved to Tucson, Arizona. Gila Monsters Meet You at the Airport (1983) was influenced by children's statements and questions about what the family would find when they arrived in the Southwest.
Sharmat is not only a popular children's writer, she is also the recipient of many awards. A film adaptation of Nate the Great Goes Undercover won the 1974 Los Angeles International Children's Film Festival Award. Some of the organizations that have praised her writing are the Children's Book Council, Child Study Association, International Reading Association, Parents' Choice, and the National Council of Social Studies. She is featured in a 24-page children's book, Marjorie Weinman Sharmat (Children's Author series; 2004) by Jill C. Wheeler. Her papers are in the de Grummond Collection at the University of Southern Mississippi.
Sharmat's works include:
Sarah Sherman (aka Sarah Sherman Brewer and Sarah Sherman McGrail) lives on Southport Island in mid-coast Maine, where she was born and raised. She founded the Midcoast Maine Fishermen's Wives Association. She received her B.A. in English from the University of Maine at Augusta in 2007.
Brewer's written two local histories of the Boothbay/Southport area: Southport, the War Years: An Island Remembers (1996) and Heroes Among Us: A History of Boothbay Region's Veterans During the Second World War (1999). An excerpt from Heroes Among Us is available from the April 22, 1999 Boothbay Register. Brewer's father, Maurice Sherman, is a WWII veteran. She's also published a children's book, The Littlest Tugboat (2005), through her own publishing company, Cozy Harbor Press. The book, a story of Tommy, the smallest tug working out of Bath Iron Works, is illustrated by James Taliana, who lives in Boothbay Harbor. Cozy Harbor Press also published Harbor Journal, Vol. 1: A New Collection of Writing and Images by 37 Imaginative Mainers, a compilation of essays, nonfiction, poetry, art, photography, fiction, reviews, etc.
A 1963 Skidmore College graduate, Shetterly is a Blue Hill resident. She was a writer for the now defunct Maine Times and has been a contributor to Aubudon Magazine. Five of her poems have been published in the Beloit Poetry Journal.
Her first book, The New Year's Owl: Encounters With Animals, People & The Land They Share, was published in 1986. In The Dward Wizard of Uxmal (1990), Shetterly retells a Mayan legend. That same year she also published The Tinker of Salt Cove, which is based on the life of an itinerant tinker whose appearance in Sullivan, Maine, raised questions and concerns among the residents. Native American legends were the source for her next two books; a Pacific Northwest creation story was retold in Raven's Light (1991) and a Maine Passamaquoddy legend was the basis for Muwin and the Magic Hare (1993).
In Shelterwood: Discovering the Forest (1999; ill. by Rebecca Haley McCall of Bue Hill), a young girl learns about trees and the beauty of the forest when she visits her grandfather. The National Science Teachers' Association named it one of the Outstanding Children's Science Books 2000. Both The Maine Woods (a publication of the Forest Ecology Network) and the Ellsworth American published articles on how and why Shetterly wrote Shelterwood.
Poet Betsy Sholl spent her childhood in Brick Town, New Jersey and has been a Maine resident since 1983. She earned her undergraduate degree in English in 1967 from Bucknell University. Sholl was a Woodrow Wilson Fellow at the University of Rochester and has an MFA (1989) from Vermont College. In 1973 she was one of the founding members of Alice James Books, a poetry cooperative, which has been located at the University of Maine in Farmington since 1994. A Portland resident, she teaches at the University of Southern Maine and in the Vermont College MFA in Writing program, and has taught at Stonecoast Summer Writers' Conference in Freeport and at The Frost Place in New Hampshire. She was Bucknell University's poet-in-residence for the 2002 spring semester and was named Maine's poet laureate (a 5-year position) in 2006.
Sholl's poetry books included Changing Faces (1974), Appalachian Winter (1978), Rooms Overhead (1986), The Red Line (1992), which won the University of Pittsburgh 1991 Associated Writing Programs Award for Poetry; Pick a Card (1991) Maine Arts Commission Chapbook award; Don't Explain (1997), winner of the University of Wisconsin's 1997 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry; Coastal Bop (2001), one of 21 chapbooks published in the series 'Walking to Windward', and Late Psalm (2004). In addition to the monographs, Sholl's work has been published in several anthologies such as The Eloquent Edge: 15 Maine Women Writers (1989), Letters to America: Contemporary American Poetry on Race (1995), Boomer Girls (1999), and The Extraordinary Tide (2001). She and 15 other women write of their experiences in Appalachia in Joyce Dyer's Bloodroot: Reflections on Place by Appalachian Women Writers (1998).
Her poetry appears in numerous literary magazines such as Alaska Quarterly, Sou'Wester, Kenyon Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Prairie Schooner, Field, Ploughshares and Third Coast.
Sholl's poem 'Shore Walk with Monk' is at Walking To Windward and her poem 'At the Public Market' at Tom Fallon's poetry site (scroll all the way down the page). Her poem "To Walt Whitman in Heaven" was read on the Writer's Almanac in August 2004 (scroll down).
Shulman's 1995 autobiography, Drinking the Rain, reflects on her summers spent in a primitive cabin on a Maine island and was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and won the Body Mind Spirit Award of Excellence. Her most recent autobiographical work is titled A Good Enough Daughter (1999/2000). Shulman's first novel, Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen (1972/1997), established her as a feminist writer, exploring the cultural and sexual atmosphere of the 1950s from a woman's point of view. When her essay "A Marriage Agreement," advocating that spouses share childcare and housework equally, was published in 1969, it was very controversial; her 1998 essay "The Marriage Disagreement" reflects on the original. For more information about Shulman, check her website.
Shulman grew up in Ohio and moved to New York at age 20. She's taught writing and literature at a number of universities, including NYU, Yale, the New School, and the Universities of Colorado, Arizona, and Hawaii. Before writing Memoirs... she produced the children's books Bosley on the Number Line (1970), Awake or Asleep (1971), and Finders Keepers (1971). Since Memoirs..., she's written, besides her autobiography, the novels Burning Questions (1978), On the Stroll (1981), and In Every Woman's Life (1987). Shulman also writes on anarchist Emma Goldman and in 1996 edited Red Emma Speaks: An Emma Goldman Reader. NYU published a 10/97 press release on Shulman, which includes some biographical material, most of it repeated here.
Ocean Park (Saco) resident Bill Silliker, Jr., was a wildlife and nature photographer and writer. He wrote a monthly column, 'The Maine Camera Hunter,' for The Maine Sportsman magazine and the monthly 'The Camera Hunter' column for the ezine NaturePhotographers.net. Silliker also wrote articles for Nature Photographer, Outdoor Photographer, and other magazines.
His photography appeared in many publications, including Backpacker, Down East, Field & Stream, National Geographic Society, Outdoor Life, Sports Afield, as well as the publications of nature and sporting organizations. He also taught wildlife and nature photography at L.L. Bean's Outdoor Discovery Schools. From 1995-1997, he hosted and co-produced the Maine Public TV nature show called 'Special Places.' Silliker and videographer Steve Pulos owned P.S. Hemingway video production company, which produced several videos, including 'You Just Have To Love Bears,' 'Maine's Magnificent Moose,' 'Loons of the Northern Forest,' 'Sea Birds of the Maine Coast' and 'The Story of Baxter State Park: Nature At Peace.'
Silliker was a board member of the North American Nature Photography Association (NANPA), the Outdoor Writers Association of America, and the Friends of Rachel Carson National Wildlife Refuge. Silliker's website, The Camera Hunter, features his photographs and much more information about him. Silliker was also co-founder and editor of Wildlife Watcher, an image-rich site to help people plan succecssful wildlife viewing trips.
He's author and photographer of the following books:
He's photographer only for:
He's co-author only of:
A number of Silliker's Nature Photographers online magazine columns are available, including an April 2002 column on black bear encounters, an Oct. 2001 column titled 'Save The Earth With Your Camera', a March 2002 column on moose, and many more.
Aleda Dorothy Knowlton (Dot) Simpson grew up on Criehaven Island off the coast of Maine. Later in life, she lived on Gay's Island off Friendship/Cushing with her longtime companion Elizabeth Ogilvie.
After her death, Ogilvie and Simpson's niece (also named Dorothy Simpson) published The Island's True Child: A Memoir of Growing Up on Criehaven (2003), based on Simpson's unpublished journals dating to 1930. Simpson's other books include The Maine Islands in Story and Legend (1960/1987), and six novels for young adults based on island life: Island In The Bay (1956); The Honest Dollar (1957); A Lesson For Janie (1958); A Matter Of Pride (1959); New Horizons (1961); and Visitor from the Sea (1965).
Elizabeth Oakes Smith, the daughter of David and Sophia Prince, was born in North Yarmouth, Maine. At sixteen, she married Seba Smith, 31, a Portland newspaper editor who is best known for his fictional character Major Jack Dowling. The Smith household was a busy place, as not only did they have six sons, they also provided board and room to many of the newspapers' apprentices and printers. In addition to all her domestic responsibilities, Elizabeth also contributed poems and sketches to the Eastern Argus and acted as editor when her husband was in Boston on book publishing business. Her writing was either published anonymously or over the initial "E."
By the late 1830s, the Smiths experienced bankruptcy as the result of bad investments and the 1837 financial panic. Elizabeth's first novel, Riches Without Wings, or The Cleveland Family (1838), focuses on the panic's effect on the characters' lives. The Smiths then moved to New York City to board with family members and to continue their writing careers. Now identifying herself as either Mrs. Seba Smith or the pseudonymous Ernest Helfenstein, Elizabeth contributed poems and stories to a number of popular magazines such as Godey's Lady's Book and Graham's Magazine.
During the 1840s, Smith continued to published poetry and articles in literary magazines. Her poem "Heloise to Abelard" is available on line. Her second novel, The Western Captive, was published as a two-part series in the New World magazine in 1842. She also published Jack Spanker and The Mermaid (1843), The Poetical Writings of Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1845),) and The Salamander: a Legend for Christmas, Found Amongst The Papers of The Late Ernest Helfenstein (1848), a supernatural tale and her third novel. The Dandelion (1843), The Moss Cup (n.d.), and The True Child (1845) are children's stories.
Smith became a public proponent for women's rights with the publication of "Woman and Her Needs," first published as a series of newspaper articles in the New York Tribune and then as a pamphlet in 1851. Full text of the ten women's rights articles can be found on the Elizabeth Oakes Smith web site, which also provides a Smith chronology, portrait reproductions, and a bibliography.
During the 1850s, she continued her book publishing but also lectured extensively throughout the eastern United States on women's rights, religious issues and abolition. Books published during the decade were The Lover's Gift: or Tributes to the Beautiful (1850), a poetry gift book; Shadow Land, or The Seer (1852), whose subject was dreams; Hints on Dress and Beauty (c.1851); The Newsboy (1854), a novel set in New York City slums; and Bertha and Lily; or, The Parsonage of Beech Glen, A Romance (1854), a fictional treatment of social and religious problems.
During the 1860s Smith wrote dime novels for the Beadle publishing company. "Dime novels" was the popular name for several series of cheap -- ten-cents each -- paperbacks that contain sensational, exciting tales. Smith's best-known dime novels are Black Hollow (1864); Bald Eagle: or, The Last of the Ramapaughs: a Romance of Revolutionary Times (1867); and The Sagamore of Saco (1868).
Although Smith wrote an autobiography, A Human Life, it was never published. In 1924, the Lewiston (Maine) Journal Company published Selections from the Autobiography of Elizabeth Oakes Smith, edited by Mary Alice Wyman.
Writer and photographer Mason Smith lives in Cape Elizabeth and has written books about seafaring history. These include Confederates Downeast: Confederate Operations In and Around Maine (1985); Four Short Blasts: The Gale of 1898 and the Loss of the Steamer Portland (1998), with Peter Dow Bachelder; and Spies Ashore: The German World War II Landings in North America (2000). One of those who perished on the steamer Portland was Jes Jessen Schmidt, the brother of Smith's grandfather, Hans Schmidt; Jes Schmidt was returning from a trip to Denmark with his wife and children. For more detailed information online about the sinking of the Portland, check out John Richardson's 'Ship of Doom' article.
Smith also edited Keep Your Courage and Don't Worry About the Future: The Letters of a Maine Family (2001). Smith's Asian photographs, displayed at the Univ. of Southern Maine in 2005, are online.
Seba Smith was born in the log cabin his father built in Buckfield, Maine, which was then the frontier, on 14 Sept. 1792. He also lived in Bridgton and as an adult in Boothbay Harbor before he and his wife moved to New York City around 1840. He was a very successful and popular political satirist prior to the Civil War. He wrote under the pen name of Major Jack Downing, who was supposed to be a close friend of Andrew Jackson, and who satirized Washington politics, including nationalism and Manifest Destiny. An 1818 graduate of Bowdoin, Smith was a journalist and newspaper publisher in Portland from 1820-1838, associated with The Daily Courier (1929-), The Family Reader (1829-1832?), The Eastern Argus, and the Downing Gazette (1834-36), and and then, after 1839, in New York, associated with Emerson's United States Magazine (aka Emerson's Magazine and Putnam's Monthly, 1854, and The Great Republic, 1859). Much of what Smith wrote was in verse (read or listen to his poem/lyric "Stratton Mountain Tragedy" on line), but some argue that he probably felt that his masterpiece was a mathematical work on which he spent the last days of his life. He died on 29 July 1868 in Patchogue, Long Island, NY. Gale's Dictionary of Literary Biography (Volume 243: The American Renaissance in New England, Fourth Series, 2001) has an extensive section on Smith.
Seba Smith's published works include:
Charles Augustus Davis was well-known as an imitator of Smith, writing and publishing his own Jack Downing letters in the New York Daily Advertiser beginning in July 1833. His letters were more anti-Jackson than Smith's, not as humourous or as 'New-Englandy', but more attune to the details of current political events.
Smith's wife was Elizabeth Oakes Smith (1806-1893), who was born near North Yarmouth, Maine. The Smiths married in 1823 and had six sons. Elizabeth Smith was also a writer, sometimes using the pen name of Ernest Helfenstein; you can learn more about her and her husband at the Elizabeth Smith website.
Poet, educator, and politician Wilbert Snow, as he was commonly known, was born on White Head Island, St. George, Maine, on 6 April 1884. His father, Forrest Alvin Snow, a coast watcher in the U.S. Life Saving Service, was stationed there. Although he loved and valued the Maine coast, returned to it regularly, and made it almost the sole focus of his poetry, Wilbert Snow knew, from a young age, he would need to leave it.
Snow, elected to Phi Beta Kappa, was one of the student speakers at his 1907 Bowdoin College graduation. He then studied at Columbia University and received a Master of Arts degree in 1910. With the exceptions of the time he spent in Seward Peninsula, Alaska, as a teacher and reindeer agent (1911-1912), and his service as a U.S. Army artillery captain during World War II, Snow's primary career was teaching English at a number of colleges and universities; the list includes New York University, Bowdoin College, Williams College, Reed College, University of Utah, and Indiana University. In 1921 he began a thirty-one year teaching career at Wesleyan University. During his last year of teaching, he was also a U.S. State Department lecturer in Europe and Asia. Upon his retirement in 1952, he was honored with the title of Professor Emeritus. In addition to the Emeritus title, Snow received honorary degrees from Wesleyan, Marietta College, Nassau College, University of Maine, and Bowdoin College (Litt.D., 1973).
Snow had an intense interest in politics. Middleton, Connecticut recognized his long-term service on its school board by naming a school after Snow He was also an active member of the Democratic town committee. The highlight of his political career was his election as Connecticut's Lieutenant Governor in 1945-1946. He also served as Governor for 12 days in 1947 when the then-governor, Raymond Baldwin, resigned before the end of his term to become a U.S. Senator.
Snow's published writing includes Maine Coast (1923), Inner Harbor: More Maine Coast poems (1926), Down East (1932), Selected Poems (1936), Before the Wind (1938), Maine Tides (1940), Sonnets to Steve, and Other Poems (1957), Spruce Head: Selections from the Poetry of Wilbert Snow (1958), and The Collected Poems of Wilbert Snow (1963, 1973, 2nd ed.) His autobiography, Codline's Child, was published in 1973. Snow also wrote the foreword for Elizabeth Danforth's Firewood, and other verse (1950).
As stated before, his birthplace, White Head Island, always remained a special place for Wilbert Snow. His son, Nicholas Snow, published a brief and touching remembrance of his father's last visit to the island in mid-summer 1977. Snow died on September 28, 1997 at Spruce Island, Maine, his summer home. The article, 'Snow on Snow,' was published in the 1989 Island Journal, the annual publication of the Island Institute. Delaware University Library owns a small collection of letters Snow wrote to Homer Woodbridge, a fellow Wesleyan professor, and provides biographical information about Snow. Snow, in some of the letters, writes about his friendship with poet Robert Frost. There's more info about Snow in Gale's Contemporary Authors (2002).
Don Snyder, now a resident of Scarborough, Maine, and New Brunswick, was born in Hatfield, Pennsylvania, on 11 Aug. 1950, one of twins, to a mother who died days later of complications from the pregnancy. He was raised in Bangor, graduated from Colby College in 1972, and worked as editor of the Bar Harbor Times, as reporter for a Portland weekly, and as a freelance writer. After achieving his dream of participating in the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop, he took a one-year job teaching writing at Colby, which was followed the next year by a one-year teaching job at the University of Maine at Orono. In 1989, he was hired for a tenure-track English and creative writing position at Colgate University (Hamilton, NY). When he failed to get tenure in 1992, he and his family -- wife Colleen, daughters Erin, Nell, and Cara (then in utero), and son Jack -- moved back to Maine and went on food stamps and he took jobs as a greenskeeper, construction laborer, house painter, and cottage caretaker for summer people. His big writing and financial break came with the Harper's magazine publication in Nov. 1995 of an excerpt from his journal, which expanded to become The Cliff Walk: A Memoir of a Job Lost and a Life Found, published in 1997.
Snyder's twin, David, is an ordained Lutheran minister and past executive director of Habitat for Humanity in Portland, Maine.
Edgar Allen Beem provides a long profile on Don Snyder in the Boston Globe, 1999. Besides writing memoirs and novels, Snyder also teaches screenwriting, fiction writing and nonfiction prose in the low residence MFA program at Western Connecticut University.
Snyder's memoirs are The Cliff Walk: A Memoir of a Job Lost and a Life Found (1997), which recounts the story of his life's unraveling after he lost the job at Colgate and Of Time and Memory: A Mother's Story (1999), about his mother's life, his parents' courtship, and the mystery surrounding her death. The New York Times reviewed Cliff Walk, and provides a Cliff Walk excerpt, and the Colby College magazine also has a Cliff Walk review. Of Time and Memory is reviewed in the New York Times.
Snyder's other books are a biography, A Soldier's Disgrace (1987), in which he tries to restore the lost honor of a Maine man convicted of treason after the Korean War; and novels Veterans Park (1987), about a pitching phenom who passes through the minors in rural Maine and falls in love with free-spirited daughter of local potato farmer; From the Point (1988), a novel of the relationships among friends and family during the summer of 1967; Fallen Angel (2001), a Christmas-time tale of redemption, which became a Hallmark Hall of Fame TV show; Night Crossing (2001), a suspense novel of terrorism, set in Omagh (Ireland) in the aftermath of an actual car bombing that killed 29 people and injured 330 in August 1998; and Winter Dreams (2004), a story of love and golf about a young man raised in a Benedictine orphanage. An excerpt of Night Crossing is online.
Debra Spark, who lives in North Yarmouth, Maine, and is a professor of English at Colby College, was born outside Boston, received a B.A. in philosophy from Yale University (1984) and an MFA in fiction writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop (1986). She has spent most of her professional life as a professor and freelance editor and writer. Besides teaching at Colby, she has been director of its creative writing program from Sept. 2000 through June 2005. She is also an instructor in the MFA Program at Warren Wilson College, and she's lectured in writing at Tufts University, Emerson College, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison, among other schools. Her husband, Garry Mitchell, is a painter who teaches art studio at Colby. More info on Spark is available in Gale's Contemporary Authors Online, 2002.
Spark's biography and cv are available on Colby's website.
Spark is a short story writer, essayist, reviewer, and novelist. Her work has appeared in Ploughshares, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Yankee, Food and Wine, Down East, and others. Her essay, 'Last Things,' about her younger sister's death from breast cancer, is online at Ploughshares; it's also included in the book Sorrow's Company: Writers on Loss and Grief (ed. DeWitt Henry, 2001). Spark's books include:
Spark's witty essay about writing groups, 'Little Women Writers,' is online. She also conducted an interview with Maine author Monica Wood for the reading group guide for Wood's novel Secret Language.
Julia Spencer-Fleming lives in Buxton in a large 1800s farmhouse with three children, her husband, and their dog. Raised in a military family, she was born on Plattsburgh Air Force Base (NY) and spent most of her childhood moving around. She studied acting and history at Ithaca College, received her JD from the University of Maine School of Law, and has worked full-time as a Portland area attorney.
Her debut novel, a police procedural mystery titled In the Bleak Midwinter (2002), won the 2001 Malice Domestic Award for Best First Traditional Mystery and the 2003 Anthony Award for Best First Novel. It's an atmospheric upstate New York thriller set in fictional small town Miller Kills, featuring newly ordained Episcopal priest Clare Fergusson, and involving an abandoned newborn baby left on the church steps. The mystery is well reviewed by Harriet Klausner. The second book in the series, A Fountain Filled With Blood, was published in 2003; Clare Fergusson tries to solve the murder of a gay man in a small upstate New York town. The third (2004) is titled Out of the Deep I Cry (excerpted), with the focus on town gossip about Clare's ambiguous relationship with the married Sheriff Russ Van Alstyne, and the disappearance of the doctor of the town's free clinic. To Darkness and To Death is the fourth (2005), set in the summer estates of the Adirondacks, which takes place in the course of just one day. The fifth, All Mortal Flesh, came out in 2006.
More information on the book and Spencer-Fleming's author appearances is available on her website. An interview with Spencer-Fleming, from Jan. 2004, is available at Sisters in Crime.
Born in Calais, Maine, Prescott was a well-known mainstream writer who wrote detective stories, science fiction, and romance tales. Her first major magazine sale was to the Atlantic Monthly, a detective story called "In the Cellar" (1859). Some of her stories are included in The Amber Gods and Other Stories, which was re-published in 1989, ed. by Alfred Bendixen. Spofford lived most of her adult life in Newburyport and Amesbury, MA. She married Newburyport lawyer Richard S. Spofford in 1865.
Spofford's works include the following:
An article about Spofford and her work is available through the Classic Mystery and Detection site. There is an entry on Spofford in Famous American Women: A Biographical Dictionary from Colonial Times to the Present (ed. Robert McHenry, 1983). Some of Spofford's poems are available through Poets Corner.
Bath resident Maureen P. Stanton spent her childhood years in Walpole, Massachusetts. She has an undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts and also a M.F.A. from Ohio State University. She is noted for her creative nonfiction and is the recipient of a number of prizes and awards. She was listed as a notable essayist in Best American Essays 1998. She received the second place award in the 2000 Sante Fe Writers Project Literary Contest. In 2001 she received a fellowship grant from the Maine Arts Commission. Stanton has also been nominated twice for a Pushcart Prize.
One of Stanton's creative nonfiction works, " Romancing the Light" is available online.
Ann Stephens, one of the most widely read 19th-century American writers, was born in Humphreysville, Connecticut. In 1831 she and Edward Stephens married and moved to Portland, Maine. Three years later they began publishing Portland Magazine. Edward was the publisher and Ann, the editor/writer. More information about Ann's responsibilities can be found in Gwen Thompson's article "Ann S. Stephens and the First Portland Magazine," which was printed in the September 1994 issue of the current Portland Magazine. In 1836 Ann published her first book, The Portland Sketch Book, a collection of local writers' work.
In 1837 the Stephens moved to New York City where Ann began her long career as a magazine writer and editor. She was associated with Ladies' Companion, Graham's Magazine, and Peterson's Magazine.
In 1856, Stephens started her own magazine, Mrs. Stephens' Illustrated New Monthly. Two years later, however, it merged with Peterson's. Stephens wrote mostly historical and romantic melodramas that first appeared in serial form in the above magazines and other popular women's publications. Many of the stories were then published in book form that Stephens' numerous avid readers quickly purchased.
Stephens met Edgar Allan Poe, editor of Graham's Magazine, when she was on the periodical's staff in 1841 and 1842. Poe later mentioned her and her work in The Literati of New York City, a series published in Godey's Lady's Book in 1846.
Stephens was the author of the first dime novel Beadle & Adams Company published when the company reissued her 1839 serial, Malaeska: The Indian Wife of the White Hunter (1860) in book form. It is reported to have sold over 300,000 copies. Stephens, like Elizabeth Oakes Smith, became one of the publisher's stable of writers. Malaeska's text and illustrations are located on the Beadle & Adams web site. A brief excerpt from Sybil Chase; or, The Valley Ranche. A Tale of California Life. Dime Novel No. 21 (1861), plus biographical information on Stephens, are also available on the site. Brief descriptions of Stephens' Beadle novels (1,3,21,45,56,63,70), among others', can be found on the dime novel site.
In addition to her novels and short stories, Stephens also wrote verse and literary reviews. One of her poems, "The Cable, " was set to the music of "The Star Spangled Banner." She was one of several contemporaries of Melville who found little worth in The Confidence Man (1857).
Stephens used the pseudonym Jonathan Slick when she wrote a series of sketches focusing on an imaginary Yankee's experience in New York City. Edward Stephens published them under the title High Life in New York. By Jonathan Slick, Esq. of Weathersfield, Connecticut. A Series of Letters to Mr. Zephariah Slick, Justice of the Peace, and Deacon of the Church over to Weathersfield, in the State of Connecticut. (1843).
Other Stephens' titles include:
Discussion of Stephens' importance and influence on American literature can be found in Women Vernacular Humorists in Nineteenth-Century America: Ann Stephens, Francis [i.e. Frances] Whitcher, and Marietta Holley (1988) and Hired Pens: Professional Writers in America's Golden Age of Print (1997). Another excellent print source of information is Notable American Women.
Stephens was born on a farm on Upton Ridge, in Norway, Maine, graduated from Bowdoin College in 1869 (putting himself through college by working and through oratory contest winnings), and taught at the Norway Liberal Institute. In 1871, he married his second cousin, Christine Newell Stephens (1846-1911), with whom he had two daughters, Edna and Janet. Both attended college and Edna later became a physician in Massachusetts. Christine Stephens worked as a teacher, club-woman and writer of short stories for various juvenile publications. Stephens' second wife, Minne Plummer from South Paris, was a well-known opera singer (Madame Scalar). The Norway Advertiser Democrat published an article on Stephens in April 1999. For biographical information, consult The World of C.A. Stephens by Ronald G. Whitney (1976/1996).
Stephens' writing career began when he had stories about his early years published in a magazine called Our Young Folks; eventually, Stephens published over 25 articles in this magazine. When he began writing for a living, he changed his surname from Stevens to Stephens, so as not to embarrass his family should he fail. After a few years of having articles and stories published in various magazines, Stephens found a home for himself at The Youth's Companion in 1871, where he eventually became assistant editor and worked for 60 years as traveling correspondent. To facilitate writing accurate medical columns in Youth's Companion, Stephens pursued and received his Doctor of Medicine from Boston University in 1887, and later built a biological laboratory in his Norway home, a mansion near Lake Penneseewassee, across from where the entrance to Norway Lake Park is today. Stephens' keen scientific interest was in physical immortality.
Stephens published over 2,500 articles and 30 books, many set in the rural Maine of the mid-nineteenth century and involving fictionalized local personalities. Often his articles were published anonymously or using pseudonyms, including Zu Behfel, Stinson Jarvis, Marcus Vanderpool, Henrietta Crosby, Charlotte H. Smith, and Charles Adams (who wrote tales about "Waynor" Maine). Two bibliographical works, both by Louise Harris, are Comprehensive Bibliography of C.A. Stephens (1965) and Star of the Youth's Companion (1969; an annotated chronological listing of his stories).
Stephens' works include:
Bowdoin College's Library Special Collections and Archives has biographical information on Stephens (most of it appears here) and a description of the 2,350 manuscripts and drafts of Stephens' books, speeches, and articles, in Bowdoin's archival collection.
The Friends of C.A. Stephens was established in 1994 (the 150th anniversary of his birth) and has each year since then had a book of Stephens' re-published. The group has also bought a 20 acre parcel of land located off the Greenwood Road in Norway, believed to be Stephens' childhood playground, the Tom's Fort location mentioned in his writing.
Although he has travelled extensively and lived in Portugal, Ireland, England, Holland, and Malta, Stevens is a native Mainer, born in Smithfield, and he and his wife Stella are current residents. Stevens is very prolific, publishing over 500 stories, poems, textbook articles, translations, and books during his writing career, on a variety of topics; book titles include those listed below. Detailed descriptions and a photo of Stevens are found on Stevens' publisher's Web page.
Born in Virginia but "a Mainer by inclination," Stinnett wrote the 'Room with a View' column in Down East magazine each month for 26 years, reflecting on Maine life or his own life lived on a private island -- Hamloaf Island -- in Casco Bay, near Brunswick. Stinnett was the founding editor of Travel and Leisure magazine, editor of Holiday magazine (editor-in-chief, 1967-1970), and a past president of the Society of American Travel Writers. He also wrote pieces for The Atlantic Monthly, Realities, and The Saturday Evening Post. The writer he most admired was E.B. White.
Books include Will Not Run Feb. 22nd. (1956), Out of the Red (1960), Back to Abnormal (1963), Grand and Private Pleasures (1977), One Man's Island (1984; collections of " Room with a View" columns), Slightly Offshore: More Reflections on Contemporary Life from a Small Maine Island (1992; more "Room with a View" columns). He wrote the preface for Herman Silverman's Michener and Me: A Memoir (1999).
Candice Stover is a Maine native who now lives on Mount Desert Island and is an adjunct faculty member at the College of the Atlantic. She received her B.A. from Northeastern University (1974) and her M.S. from Pennsylvania State University (1976). Her first collection of poems, Holding Patterns, won the Maine Chapbook Award in 1994; her second, Another Stopping Place (2002) is a collection of travel-inspired poems focusing on the art of paying attention. It's part of a four-volume series called Walking to Windward, published by Oyster River Press. Other poems have been published in The Beloit Poetry Journal, Hope magazine, the Puckerbush Review, and The Christian Science Monitor, among others. She's also worked as a reporter for the Boston Globe, has travelled extensively and taught in New Zealand and China, and designs writing workshops. Her short poem "This Compost" is available online.
Known for her first novel, the anti-slavery Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852) -- which was an immediate sensation, fanning the pro- and anti-slavery flames that eventually gave rise to the Civil War -- Stowe also wrote The Pearl of Orr's Island: A Story of the Coast of Maine (1862/2001). Sarah Orne Jewett wrote, in the second preface to her collection of short stories, Deephaven (1893 edition), that The Pearl was a work that influenced her in her youth and helped her "see with new eyes" how she could incorporate her locality into her writing.
Stowe was born in Litchfield, CT, and grew up in a family that prized education and morality. She taught at her sister Catharine's school from 1827-1832, and then at Western Female Institute in Cincinnati (founded by sister Catharine). Harriet married Calvin E. Stowe in 1836, when he was a professor at Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. She wrote stories and sketches to earn money after they were married, and in 1850 the Stowes moved to Brunswick, Maine (63 Federal Street), after her husband was appointed Professor of Natural and Revealed Religion at Bowdoin College; this is where she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin -- which was first published serially in National Era (1851-1852) -- and The Pearl. The Stowes lived in Andover, Mass., from 1852-1864, and after 1864 in Hartford, Connecticut. Her husband died in 1866 but Stowe remained in Hartford, raising their seven children, until her death in 1896, although she travelled widely in the U.S. and abroad.
Stowe's works include:
Stowe also wrote poems, some of which are available online; here's "The Crocus," and six others are on the same site. Her article, "Sojourner Truth, The Libyan Sibyl" (in The Atlantic Monthly, April 1863) is available through UVA.
Two good biographical pages on Stowe are Stowe on the Celebration of Women Site and the Sunshine to Women page on Stowe. There's also lots of biographical information about Stowe's early life and about other family members available through UVA's full-text posting of "The Girlhood of Harriet Beecher Stowe," written by Stowe's son and grandson, and through a page called "The Beechers of Hartford," which has a paragraph on each of five Beechers, including HBS and Charlotte Gilman Perkins. Stowe's son wrote her biography in 1889: Life of Harriet Beecher Stowe, compiled from her letters and journals by her son, Charles Edward Stowe.
Lyn Sudlow, a highly respected Civil War historian, is the director of the Falmouth Memorial Library. Prior to being employed by the town of Falmouth, she was the children's librarian at the McArthur Public Library, Biddeford. In 1989 she published Notable Maine Children's Authors and Illustrators, a 21-page booklet on the state's most significant children's authors. Sudlow wrote a 64-page record of the Falmouth library's history, The Falmouth Memorial Library's First 50 Years (2002), to accompany the library's 50th anniversary celebration.
Peaks Island's Fifth Maine Regiment Center is the subject of her 1992 book, The Fifth Maine Regiment Community Building: a History. Her latest book, A Vast Army of Women: Maine's Uncounted Forces in the American Civil War (2000) has received high praise for the throughness of her research.
Children's book writer Ruth Freeman Swain was born in Bryn Mawr, PA, and lives now in East Blue Hill, Maine. She graduated from Vassar College (A.B., 1973). Besides writing, she's also worked at book stores, sold antique jewelry, and was a nursery school teacher. Her books, non-fiction for children, include Bedtime! (1999, illus. Cat Bowman Smith), a picture book that's a 'quirky, informative look at beds through the ages'; Hairdo, What We Do and Did to Our Hair (2002, illus. Cat Bowman Smith); How Sweet It Is (and Was): A History of Candy (2003, illus. John O'Brien); and Underwear: What We Wear Under There, a history of underwear (2008, illus. John O'Brien).
Illustator Melissa Sweet was born in Wyckoff, NJ, and now lives in Rockport, where she serves on the town's conservation commission. She attended Endicott College and Kansas City Art Institute. Her website provides examples of her illustrations, contact info, a brief biographical sketch.
Sweet has illustrated numerous books for children, as well as several cookbooks and journals, notecards, and novelty items.
Her books for children include:
She's illustrated the following cookbooks:
She also illustrated Notes from Home: 20 Canadian Writers Share Their Thoughts of Home (2003), ed. by Cobi Ladner.
She wrote and illustrated Carmine: A Little More Red (2005).
