Wonder what writers really think about? Get ready for a literary extravaganza! The Maine Festival of the Book, brought to you by Maine Reads brings together writers and readers to enjoy readings, panel discussions, book signings, and performances. With the exception of Opening Night and Youth Outreach, festival events are first-come, first-served, un-ticketed seating, and are free. Almost 2000 people attended this year’s three-day event. In its four years of existence, the Maine Festival of the Book has featured more than 200 authors, including five Pulitzer Prize winners.
For more information about The Maine Festival of the Book and to join the mailing list for 2012, check out Maine Read’s website.
Melissa Coleman, author of This Life Is In Your Hands, Susan Conley, author of The Foremost Good Fortune and Caitlin Shetterly, author of Made For You and Me read from their debut novels and talk about their personal paths: one through cancer, one through the recession, and one back to the land.
The Maine Festival of the Book is an annual festival brought to you by Maine Reads with support from the Maine Humanities Council.
Tim O’Brien has been hailed as “the best American writer of his generation” (San Francisco Examiner). A Vietnam veteran, he is the author of eight books. He received the National Book Award in Fiction in 1979 for his novel Going After Cacciato. In 2005 The Things They Carried was named by The New York Times as one of the twenty best books of the last quarter century. It received the Chicago Tribune Heartland Award in fiction and was a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. The French edition of The Things They Carried received the prestigious Prix du Meilleur Livre Etranger, and the title story was selected by John Updike for inclusion in The Best American Short Stories of the Century. In the Lake of the Woods, published in 1994, was chosen by Time magazine as the best novel of that year. The book also received the James Fenimore Cooper Prize from the Society of American Historians and was selected as one of the ten best books of the year by The New York Times. Tim O’Brien’s other works include If I Die in a Combat Zone, Northern Lights, Tomcat in Love and July, July. His short fiction, which received the National Magazine Award, has appeared in numerous journals, including The New Yorker, Atlantic, Esquire, Playboy, and Harper’s.
Wonder what writers really think about? Get ready for a literary extravaganza! The Maine Festival of the Book, brought to you by Maine Reads brings together writers and readers to enjoy readings, panel discussions, book signings, and performances. With the exception of Opening Night and Youth Outreach, festival events are first-come, first-served, un-ticketed seating, and are free. Almost 2000 people attended this year’s three-day event. In its four years of existence, the Maine Festival of the Book has featured more than 200 authors, including four Pulitzer Prize winners.
For more information about The Maine Festival of the Book and to join the mailing list for 2011, check out Maine Read’s website.
This lectured entitled “Franco-American Women’s Words in Maine” featured author, Rhea Côté Robbins, reading from works in progress as well as from previously published titles weaving stories of the French woman’s life on the landscapes in Maine. Trudy Chambers Price was unable to attend, but pieces of her works were also read.
The Maine Festival of the Book is an annual festival brought to you by Maine Reads with support from the Maine Humanities Council.
Denise Pendleton, Maine Humanities Council’s Program Director of Born To Read and poet, sat down at the Belfast Free Library with two of Maine’s best-known poets, Elizabeth Garber and Dawn Potter. In addition to reading from their memoirs, the poets spoke about why they turned to prose and how their poetry background has influenced their current writing. Elizabeth W. Garber is the author of two collections of poetry and is currently writing a memoir, The Architect’s Daughter, about growing up in a modern glass house in the 1960’s. Her chapter “Stones” won the Maine Writer’s and Publishers Alliance 2009 Literary Award for unpublished Non-Fiction. She was voted 2009 Best Writer in Waldo County in a Reader’s Poll conducted by The Village Soup/Republican Journal. Dawn Potter is the author of two collections of poetry and, most recently, a memoir, Tracing Paradise: Two Years in Harmony with John Milton. It recounts her project of copying out every word of John Milton’s epic poem Paradise Lost while living an everyday life in the central Maine town of Harmony. According to writer Sam Pickering “Potter writes beautifully. . . . [Her book] made me ponder my life as well as literature, as a good book should but few books do.”
Poets Writing Memoir: A Conversation with Elizabeth Garber and Dawn Potter[ 1:18:14 ]Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (7456)
Ann Hood is the author, most recently, of The Knitting Circle and Comfort: A Journey Through Grief. Both new books deal with the loss of her 5-year old daughter, one through fiction and one through memoir. In this talk, she compares the two approaches and recalls episodes—both tragic and very, very funny—from her life. Hood is the author of seven other novels and a collection of short stories.
One of the highlights of each 10-day residency in the Stonecoast MFA program is the “flash reading” by faculty members. Each writer gets three minutes in which to share his or her work before introducing the next writer in the queue.
The flash reading from the winter residency in January 2009 began with Jaed Coffin reading an excerpt from his memoir, A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants. The next reader was David Durham, who read from his forthcoming novel The Other Land. Annie Finch shared one poem from her collection Calendars, and another from her new manuscript, American Witch. Poet Jeffrey Harrison read “Ivan Ilyich at the Lake” and “Shaking Off the Snow.” This reading continues in the next episode of the podcast.
Please be aware that the content in these audio files does not necessarily reflect the views, opinions, or policies of the Maine Humanities Council or any organization with which the Maine Humanities Council is affiliated. Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in the podcast do not necessarily reflect those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Wonder what writers really think about? Get ready for a literary extravaganza! The Maine Festival of the Book, brought to you by Maine Reads brings together writers and readers to enjoy readings, panel discussions, book signings, and performances. With the exception of Opening Night and Youth Outreach, festival events are first-come, first-served, un-ticketed seating, and are free. Almost 2000 people attended this year’s three-day event. In its four years of existence, the Maine Festival of the Book has featured more than 200 authors, including five Pulitzer Prize winners.
There and Back: The Journey to Write a Memoir [ 1:04:47 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (4033)
