Neil Rolde’s 2006 book, Continental Liar from the State of Maine, is a biography of James G. Blaine, the Maine politician who dominated the American political stage from just before the Civil War and almost until the twentieth century. A former Maine politician himself, Rolde is a prize-winning historian and author of Unsettled Past, Unsettled Future: The Story of Maine Indians; The Interrupted Forest: A History of Maine’s Wildlands; Maine, Down East and Different; and many other books. A former Board member of the Maine Humanities Council, Rolde won the Constance H. Carlson Public Humanities Prize in 2005.
This talk was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series. We welcome your feedback on this Neil Rolde podcast.
The Steel Wave is the second novel in what will be a trilogy of World War II stories by Jeff Shaara, who has also written about the Civil War, the American Revolution, the Mexican War, and the first World War. Shaara is the son of the late Michael Shaara, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Killer Angels, and got his start as a novelist when he was asked to write both a sequel and a prequel to his father’s bestseller.
This talk was part of the Portland Public Library’s Brown Bag Lecture Series. We welcome your feedback on this Jeff Shaara podcast.
David Scott Kastan is the Old Dominion Foundation Professor in the Humanities and Chair of the English Department at Columbia University. He specializes in 16th- and 17th-century literature and culture, Shakespeare, and the history of the book. He is the first American to serve as General Editor of the Arden Shakespeare, and he also served as General Editor of the 5-volume Oxford Encyclopedia of British Literature, which was published in 2006. Kastan is presently working on a book called The Invention of English Literature, a project for which he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 2004.
This talk was part of the Portland Public Library’s Poetry Festival in April, 2008. We welcome your feedback on this Poetry Festival events.
Believing Shakespeare: Religion in Shakespeare’s World and in his Plays[ 59:26 ]Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (7809)
Three poets whose work has been published by the small, Maine-based Moon Pie Press, read together as part of the Portland Public Library’s Poetry Festival in April, 2008.
Alice N. Persons, founder of Moon Pie Press, is a sometime English teacher and an adjunct instructor of business law at the University of Southern Maine. A Maine resident since 1983, she volunteers for animal welfare organizations and also works with Port Veritas, a spoken word collective in Portland. Six of her poems have been featured on Garrison Keillor’s The Writer’s Almanac on NPR. Her first two chapbooks were Be Careful What You Wish For (2003) and Never Say Never (2004); in June 2007, Sheltering Pines Press published her third, Don’t Be A Stranger.
Michael Macklin of Portland works as a carpenter, edits reviews for the Cafe Review, and dreams of spending time at the ancient monastery of the island of Sceilig Mhichil off the west coast of Ireland. He received his MFA from Vermont College. He has published poems in the Cafe Review, The Aurorean, Animus, Rattle and other journals, and several anthologies. He owes a great deal to the support of his wife Donna and his son Gabriel, a hip-hop DJ.
Kevin Sweeney has degrees from California (PA) State College and the University of Massachusetts. He is the chair of the English Department at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland, where he has been for more than twenty years. He is a native of Pittsburgh and dreams of retiring someday to be an old gringo in Mexico, watching Steelers games via satellite. Kevin lives in South Portland with his wife and pets. He has been on a diet, with lapses, for 46 years.
Michael C. Connolly and Kevin Stoehr are the editors of John Ford in Focus, a collection of essays that offers a comprehensive examination of Ford’s life and career, revealing the frequent intersections between Ford’s personal life and artistic vision, including his roots in Portland. Stoehr is associate professor of humanities at Boston University and lives in Boston, Massachusetts. Connolly teaches History and Political Science at Saint Joseph’s College of Maine. He is the author of They Change Their Sky: The Irish in Maine.
Patricia Hagge and Annie Finch opened the library’s 2008 Poetry Festival with this reading. Hagge earned her MFA from the Stonecoast MFA program. She serves on the boards of SPACE Gallery and The Telling Room. Finch, who directs the Stonecoast program, is a professor of English at the University of Southern Maine.
This reading was part of the Portland Public Library’s Poetry Festival in April, 2008. We welcome your feedback on this Poetry Festival events.
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.
Neil Rolde’s 2006 book, Continental Liar from the State of Maine, is a biography of James G. Blaine, the Maine politician who dominated the American political stage from just before the Civil War and almost until the twentieth century. A former Maine politician himself, Rolde is a prize-winning historian and author of Unsettled Past, Unsettled Future: The Story of Maine Indians; The Interrupted Forest: A History of Maine’s Wildlands; Maine, Down East and Different; and many other books. A former Board member of the Maine Humanities Council, Rolde won the Constance H. Carlson Public Humanities Prize in 2005.
