Maine Humanities Council

For the kick-off of the new season of the Portland Public Library’s brown-bag lunch series, Pulitzer Prize winning author, Richard Russo, came back to Portland to read from his new novel That Old Cape Magic. Despite being a Yankees fan, Russo lives in Coastal Maine. Here, Russo reads a colorful chapter of his newly released and critically acclaimed novel.

This talk was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series. We welcome your feedback on this Richard Russo podcast.

 

 Richard Russo [35:03m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1286)

Thin Blue Lines is a project of Portland’s Arts & Equity Initiative. The project brings local poets and photographers together with Portland police officers and detectives to create poems and photographs that increase the public’s knowledge and appreciation of police work. The first product of this collaboration was a calendar that was sold as a fundraiser for the family of Sgt. Rob Johnsey, who died of an accidental gun discharge in May of 2008.

This recording is from a reading that the participants—poets and police officer-poets—gave at the Portland Public Library. To learn more about this project, or to obtain a copy of the 2009 calendar, please visit Arts & Equity online.

 

 Thin Blue Lines [48:38m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (380)

Chris Bohjalian is the author of eleven novels, including the New York Times bestsellers The Double Bind, Before You Know Kindness, The Law of Similars, and Midwives. Bohjalian won the New England Book Award in 2002. His work has been translated into 25 languages and has sold over three and a half million copies. He lives in Vermont, where he has been a Sunday columnist for the Burlington Free Press since 1992. In this excerpt from his reading in Portland, Bohjalian comments on the state of reading in the U.S., shares an anecdote from a previous book tour, and explains the inspiration for his World War II love story, Skeletons at the Feast.

This reading was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series, sponsored by Martin’s Point Health Care. Please feel free to add your comments below.

 

 Chris Bohjalian [16:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (218)

Samuel Sewall, the only judge to publicly repent his decision to condemn twenty people to death as witches in 1692, is the subject of Eve LaPlante’s new biography, Salem Witch Judge: The Life and Repentance of Samuel Sewall (HarperOne, 2007). LaPlante counts Sewall as her sixth great-grandfather, a family connection that gave her access to rare documents not previously available. Using these papers, as well as Sewall’s extensive personal diaries and letters, she vividly recreates Sewall’s life and times. LaPlante is the author of two previous books, Seized (a multidisciplinary exploration of temporal lobe epilepsy) and American Jezebel (a biography of Anne Hutchinson), and essays for The Atlantic, the New York Times, Ladies’ Home Journal, Gourmet, and Boston.

This talk was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series. We welcome your feedback on this Eve LaPlante reading.

 

 Eve LaPlante [43:44m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (373)

Linda Greenlaw’s three books about life as a commercial fisherman—The Hungry Ocean (1999), The Lobster Chronicles (2002), and All Fishermen Are Liars (2004)—have climbed as high as #2 on the New York Times bestseller list. Her first novel, Slipknot, began a mystery series whose second installment is Fisherman’s Bend (2008). Before becoming a writer, Greenlaw was the captain of a sword boat, the career that earned her a prominent role in Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm and a portrayal in the subsequent film. She now lives on Isle au Haut, where she captains a lobster boat.

This talk was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series.We welcome your feedback on this Linda Greenlaw podcast.

 

 Linda Greenlaw [31:19m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (415)

Miriam Colwell was born in Prospect Harbor in 1917 and still lives in the house built by her great-great-grandfather in 1817. She is the author of Wind Off the Water (1945), Day of the Trumpet (1947), and Young (1955). As a small town resident and long-time postmistress, she has watched change upon change wash over the fabled coast for nearly nine decades. She explores those themes in her fourth novel, Contentment Cove (Islandport Press, 2008), which is set in a Down East coastal village in the 1950s, when social clashes and changing values were starting to tear at the fabric of Maine’s traditional way of life.

This talk was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series. We welcome your feedback on this Miriam Colwell podcast.

 

 Miram Colwell [42:34m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (286)