WEB MAGAZINE
CONTRIBUTORS
David Adams was born in Cleveland, Ohio. He received an MFA from
Bowling Green State University. He is currently an assistant professor of
English at the University of Maine, where he directs the new Engineering
Communication Project. His most recent book of poetry, Evidence of Love,
was published in 2004 by Finishing Line Press. He co-edited, with Linda
Wagner-Martin, Over West: Selected Poetry and Prose of Frederick Eckman
(1999, National Poetry Foundation). His suite of poems about 9/11,
“September Songs,” is being set to music for voice and orchestra by the
composer Margaret Brouwer.
Nahrain Al-Mousawi is a doctorate student in Comparative Literature
at UCLA. She has published work in various literary publications like
Adirondack Review, Fireweed, Nidus, and Rattle.
Joshua Caine Anchors is a native of Old Town, Maine. He is presently
completing a book about the intersections of nature and culture in Maine's
Franco-American communities.
Stephen Allen is a retired journalist who lives in Belfast, Maine,
with his wife/editor Neva and their two cats, Nikki and Misty.
Burndett Andres left office management in New Jersey in 2002 and
retired with her partner to Cherryfield, Maine. A diarist all her life, she
has been writing for many years for her own pleasure and the amusement of
family and friends. Since moving to Maine, her time is divided between
restoring an 1840 house and keeping a daily journal, which she is presently
organizing into Maine, At Last, the book that will tell the tale.
Richard Arsenault is a Maine native of thirty-two years and currently resides
in Biddeford. He has been writing since the age of eight and loves the arts. The
expression and interpretation of life through words has always been a source
of great enjoyment. He also enjoys writing music, mountain climbing, and
nature in general as a source of inspiration and peace.
Patrick Shawn Bagley earned his BFA in Creative Writing from the
University of Maine at Farmington and is now pursuing an MFA. He has been a
factory worker, shoe salesman, substitute teacher, shylock, bookstore
manager, and personal caregiver for mentally retarded adults. Currently, he
works as the editorial assistant at Alice James Books. He is also the editor
of The Maine Poetry Review. Bagley’s writing has appeared or is
forthcoming in Animus, Off the Coast, The Iconoclast, The Sandy River
Review, Wolf Moon Press Journal, The Peninsula Review, Neologisms, Kumquat
Meringue, and the anthology Reflections on Maine (Rainbow Press,
1998).
Danny P. Barbare lives in Greenville, S.C. and works as a custodian
in an elementary school. Recently he read some of his poems to the students.
He has attended school at Greenville Technical College. He likes to go on
long walks in the mountains of N.C. and visit Carl Sandburg's home as well
as Thomas Wolfe's home. The statue that inspired the title Look Homeward
Angel is located in nearby Hendersonville, N.C.
Warren Bell grew up in Massachusetts. In 1971, he
came up to Maine to take one of those summer jobs over in Wiscasset, digging
bloodworms on the tides for three cents a worm—enough for a campsite and
living essentials. He fell in love with Maine that summer and has been here
ever since, moving from job to job until starting his own business in 1987.
He now lives in Pownal with his wife and the youngest of their three sons.
Alice Bolstridge, a retired English Teacher, has published fiction,
poetry, and creative nonfiction in a wide variety of other literary
magazines and anthologies: Out of Line (forthcoming 1-05); Maine
Voices, The Wilderness Society; IntricateWeave, Iris Editions;
Sleeping with Dionysus, Crossing Press; Nimrod (finalist Pablo
Neruda Poetry Contest, 1998); Passager (1995 Passager Poet Award);
Licking River Review (Best of Issue Poetry Prize, 1991); Cimarron
Review; Animus; The Maine Scholar; and many others.
Mr. Bradshaw is a programmer who plans on winning a lottery and
sailing through life in a hammock. Till then he is still looking for things
to put into a biography. Maybe someone could toss in a donation, a past life
maybe. If you have one, or any other interesting chapter that you would like
to donate to his biography, you can reach him at
bobbybradshw@yahoo.com. Previous
poems of his can be found at Stirring, Slow Trains, Blue
Fifth Review, and The Green Tricycle, among other publications.
Scott Brooks is a counselor for the state of Wisconsin and works with
the disabled. He has a strong interest in trying to express our
inter-relatedness with nature and how our natural surroundings inspire. He
is involved in painting as well as writing poetry and hopes to have a
completed book of poetry within the next year.
Todd Buell is a 2003 graduate of Bowdoin College. After spending two
years teaching in Austria, he is beginning an MA program in Political
Science, with a focus on Europe, at the University of North Carolina at
Chapel Hill.
Cynthia Carney, a Maine native, is the Senior Copy Editor for
L.L.Bean in Freeport, Maine. A graduate of the University of Southern Maine,
she is also the immediate past state president of Maine Media Women. Her
editing expands into the realm of freelance for various catalogers and ad
agencies in midcoast and southern Maine, including Thos. Moser
Cabinetmakers. In her "spare time," she writes poetry and children's
stories.
Alexis B. Peirce Caudell currently calls Maine her home
although she has lived in both the Deep South and intermountain West and is
proud to be a citizen of the United Kingdom. When she isn’t moving, she can
be found walking with her dog and browsing the shelves of libraries for the
next great read.
Christine Caya is currently a student in the MFA program at Florida
International University and Fiction Editor for Gulf Stream Magazine.
She was recently a Finalist in Glimmertrain’s 2003 Fiction Open,
received Honorable Mention for the 2003 & 2004 Josephine Friedman Award for
Fiction, and First Place for the 2004 Lewis and Rhoda Kurzweil Award for
Non-Fiction. Her work is also forthcoming in the literary journal Florida
Humanities. She was born and raised in Lyman, Maine.
Robert M. Chute, native of Maine. Father an
inn keeper, mother
a school teacher. Educated at Fryeburg Academy, UMO, and The Johns Hopkins
Univ. Professor Emeritus of Biology, Bates College. Research in Parasitology
and Limnology. Poems in print in various journals living and dead, including
Ascent, Beloit Poetry Journal, BOMB, Cafe Review, The Cape Rock, The
Fiddlehead, Kansas Quarterly, The Literary Review, Nebo, N. Dakota Review,
Prism, Texas Review. Seven chap books. Chad Walsh Prize from Beloit
Poetry Journal. Maine State chap book award. Current publication a three-language reprint of Thirteen Moons: English, French, Passamquoddy.
Alan Clark’s play for voices, Guerrero, and an accompanying
story, Heart’s Blood, were published as a single volume in Mexico in
1999. Each has had productions, sponsored by the Mexican government, in both
Spanish and English. His stage plays, The Beast and The End of It,
premiered in 2000 at the Camden Opera House. Mr. Clark’s paintings,
drawings, and prints have been widely exhibited in both this country and in
Mexico, most recently at the Farnsworth Art Museum in 2004 (Blood and Stone:
Paintings by Alan Clark). In September, 2005, at the Caldbeck Gallery in
Rockland, Maine, he will have an exhibition of printed images together with
poems and excerpts from other writings, called: Woman By a Pool: Pages
From a Book. He has work forthcoming in The Caribbean Writer. A
selection of prints and original paintings may be seen at
www.alanclarkart.com
John Clark grew up on a chicken farm in coastal
Maine. The fertile soil of Sennebec Hill Farm nurtured three published
authors, John, his sister Kate Flora and his mother, A. Carman Clark. He is
the library systems specialist for the Maine State Library in addition to
being the Internet editor for Behavioral and Social Sciences Librarian,
a peer reviewed journal published by Haworth Press. His passions include
writing fantasy novels, and he has just begun writing short stories in the
dark fiction/mystery genre. John lives with his wife, Beth in Hartland.
Lisa Clark, a graduate of Cony High School,
currently resides in the Bronx where she attends Fordham University. A
senior, Lisa is majoring in Communications and English.
Jim Correale recently moved to Maine after having lived most of his life
in Boston. For twenty years he worked with young people as a teacher and
counselor. He has also been writing for most of his life, including a weekly
newspaper column for a year. Currently he is working as a reporter in the
Portland area while continuing to write creatively in his free time.
H. R. Coursen’s thirty-first book of
poetry Maine Seasons, with photographs by John Schwartz, will appear
this spring from JustWrite. His Shakespeare Translated has just been
published by Lang. His twenty-second novel The Wilderness will appear
in the summer of 2005.
Donald Crane, now seventy years old, retired to
the Down East coast near Milbridge after a career in public relations and
fund raising. He has had poems published, or accepted for publication, in
Maine-based magazines such as the Cafe Review, the Maine Times,
Off The Coast, and Puckerbrush Review.
Nancy Brady Cunningham is the author of five books
about meditation, celebration, and ritual. She has taught yoga, meditation,
and relaxation for over thirty years. Her poetry has been published in such
journals as Concrete Wolf, black bough, The Comstock Review,
and a number of anthologies. Nancy and her husband Ed summer in Wayne,
Maine, in a little cabin on Dexter Pond
Dan Desrochers is a long time summer visitor who
decided to make the move permanently in the late Eighties. He now resides in
South Thomaston with one foot in the Lincoln area. He is working on a
Liberal arts degree with an English Major at UMA. Writing is rather new to
him, but he feels that starting at a later age merely gives him more
experiences to write from. He and his wife Jean are planning a move to the
Lincoln area in the near future, where they have a second residence, and
recreational rental property. They both enjoy the observance of nature and
the north woods.
Rick Doyle is a trial lawyer from Bucksport whose poems have been
published widely. A one-act play, Regalia, was selected as a winner
in the 2001 Maine Playwrights’ Contest.
Anne Emidy is a mechanical engineer and has worked
in several industries in Maine. In 1996 she founded a consulting and
technical writing firm. When events catch her attention Anne gets caught up
in creative writing, as time allows. She lives with her husband and
seven-year-old son on a lakeshore in central Maine.
Christopher Fahy is the author of eleven books, among them the
collection Limerock: Maine Stories and the novel Fever 42. He
has won the Maine Arts Commission Fiction Competition and a grand prize in
the International Poetry Competition sponsored by Atlanta Review. He
lives in Thomaston.
Tom Fallon, Maine poet, short story writer, webmaster
of Maine Poetry, online Maine poets’ resource, moderator
of the Maine Writing discussion group, fervently promotes
Maine literature in the schools.
Kate Flora is a Maine native and the author of six books in the
Thea Kozak series, featuring tall, tough, chip-on-her shoulder
consultant Kozak and her state trooper significant other, Andre Lemieux. As
Katharine Clark, she is the author of the suspense novel Steal Away.
A lapsed attorney and full-time writer, Flora has taught writing for the
Brown Learning Community, the Maine Writers and Publisher's Alliance, and at
the Cape Cod Writer's Conference. Currently, she teaches for Grub Street.
She is a past president of the mystery writers' organization, Sisters in
Crime. With two other authors, she has formed Level Best Books, a publishing
cooperative that has published two anthologies of New England crime stories,
Undertow and Riptide. She is currently working on Finding
Amy, a true crime story about a murder in Portland. Her website is:
www.kateflora.com.
Ellen Goldsmith's No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect won
the 1997 Slapering Hol Press chapbook contest. A summer resident of Cushing,
Maine, she is a professor in the English Department of New York City College
of Technology CUNY where she founded and directs the Center for
Intergenerational Reading.
Clare Winslow Gosselin is a Mayflower descendant from the island of
North Haven. She lives with her husband in Sabattus. This mother of four is
a graduate of the University of Maine with a Bachelors Degree in English.
She received the Editor's Choice award from both the Poetry Guild and the
National Library of Poetry, and the President's Award from Iliad Press for
her poetry. She presently has a book at Goose River Press awaiting funds to
publish.
Clif Graves is a photographer, graphic artist, web designer, and computer
programmer. When the spirit moves him, he writes poetry.
Deirdre Graves is a graduate of
Bard College (class of 2000) and is an Electronic Publishing Project Editor at
Facts On File in New York City. But, she was born and raised in the
hinterlands before she made her escape.
Laurie Meunier Graves is a
writer, a reader, and a gardener. She was born in Waterville, Maine, and for
a brief time lived in the South End, a Franco-American community.
Nancy Griffin was born in Newfoundland, raised in Boston, and has
lived in Maine for more than thirty years. Until fifth grade, when the nuns
showed her a map of the world with all the nationalities and religions on
it, she thought everyone was Irish and Catholic. While she adores her
relatives, she was
greatly relieved to find the planet had a lot more diversity than she had
imagined. A former newspaper and wire service reporter, and newspaper
editor, she is now a freelance writer in Thomaston, and possibly French.
Brian Hannon grew up in Belfast and Bangor, Maine, and has worked as
a newspaper reporter and editor in three states and one former Soviet bloc
nation. He has self-published two books: an anthology of undiscovered
writers and a story collection. Current projects include an unfinished
novel, an incomplete master’s thesis, and an intended screenplay.
Sherry Hanson has published
hundreds of articles in magazines, newspapers, newsletters, and online, as
well as a short story and sixty-four poems. She has earned sixty-eight
awards for her fiction, nonfiction, and poetry, including the first Council
on National Literatures Poetry Award, in 1996, and the same award in 2001.
She has been a Writer’s Digest Finalist three times (1999, 2000, 2001).
Denny Harnish is an environmental
lawyer for the state of Maine who tries to balance his time between
protecting the environment and enjoying it, e.g., by kayaking, biking,
skiing, skating, or just walking the dog.
Ann
Hoffmann Harris lives with her husband, son, and daughter outside Seguin
among the post oaks of south Texas, where she's learned to cohabit with
scorpions. After two failed attempts to make Maine her permanent home, she
is confident the third time will be the charm. Trapped for years as an
information analyst, legal assistant, and technical writer, she at last fled
the corporate world, achieving a precarious freedom. Ann has written an
essay collection, The Exquisite Spell: Right Work and Right Place,
and is working on her
first novel.
Nancy Henry's poems have appeared in Animus, Southern
Humanities Review, Poetry International, The Hollins Critic,
Spoon River Poetry Review, and over 200 other publications in the US,
UK and AU. She is an Associate Editor of The Café Review, and teaches
English writing and literature at Southern Maine Community College. She was
a co-editor of the Maine poetry anthology A Sense of Place. Her
chapbooks Anything Can Happen and Hard were published by
MuscleHead Press. She received a Pushcart Prize nomination and an Atlanta
Review International Merit Award, and most recently was a featured reader at
the Terry Plunkett Poetry Festival.
Claire
Hersom, completing her Junior year as an English Major at the University
of Maine, Augusta, has been published in the 2004 and 2005 UMA Scholar,
the Aurorean, Off the Coast, and Wolfmoon Press Journal.
Claire has made Winthrop, Maine, her home for several years and lives there
with her two cats, Gussy O’Shea and Casper. She has read her poetry in
several local venues.
Marilis Hornidge, a freelance
writer since age eight (and a free range reader even longer), makes her
debut as a poet in Wolf Moon Press. She is the author of That Yankee Cat:
The Maine Coon (now in its third revised edition), a columnist and
features writer for several New England publications, and current president
of the mid-coast chapter of Maine Media Women
Barbara Tatham Johnson (1936–2005) was a native of New England who wrote about her observations of nature
from her rural property in Monmouth, Maine. Her writing has appeared in
The Local Voice, The Maine Times, and The Country Journal.
Joel Johnson has not yet lived all his life in Maine. Because of or in spite of
a steady diet of Disney films in childhood, he has developed a passionate
appreciation of the many and varied stories told in dark rooms with a wall
of flickering images. Armed with little more than a steady habit (addiction)
of watching movies and poor typing skills, this cinephile (cineholic) is
inflicting his insights gained from this dubious pastime on an unsuspecting
public.
Richard Evan Johnson is Barbara Tatham Johnson’s son, who came into
this world on an April morning in Boston and has always felt New England in
his blood. An architect and mystic, his poetry comes from childhood images
of Western Colorado, West Virginia, and the Capitol/ Beltway suburbs and
from a puritanical yearning for peace of mind. Richard now lives in
Maryland’s hinterland, twelve miles from both Assateague Island and the summer
vacation town of Ocean City.
Robert Alan Johnson is Barbara Tatham Johnson’s
son and grateful beneficiary of her a lifelong love of language, literature,
and time spent outdoors. He lives in suburban Boston, Massachusetts. Trained
as a journalist at West Virginia University, he also received a Masters in
Business Administration from the Boston University Graduate School of
Management. In addition to working as a healthcare performance improvement
consultant, he writes fiction and the occasional poem and essay. A frequent
visitor to the hinterlands of Maine, he has also balanced his time in Boston
and other cities over the years with forays to the hinterlands of Nebraska,
New York State, Colorado, Maryland, and West Virginia.
Sally Rowe Joy is a Maine native who lived in a number of central and
southern Maine municipalities during her growing up years, graduating from
Lewiston High School in 1961 and attending Bliss College in Lewiston for a
year. She and her husband John Fremont Joy (LHS Class of ’49 and a Lt.Col,
US Army retired) raised a son and a daughter and now have six grandchildren.
They have lived in Augusta for thirty-six years. Sally has been writing since she
could form all twenty-six letters and ask how words were spelled. Grade school essays on “What I want to be
when I grow up” always indicated that some sort of authorship was her goal.
Her published works include poetry, essays, children’s stories, fillers, and
devotionals. She works full-time as a word processor operator, edits a
bimonthly newsletter for the Kennebec Historical Society, and is a certified
lay speaker in the United Methodist Church
Lillian Baker Kennedy’s essays
and poetry have been published in Animus, The Maine Times, and
journals in several states. She co-edited and co-published A Sense of
Place: Collected Maine Poems (Bay River Press, 2002). She edits “Poetry
Corner” for Uncle Andy’s Digest, a small newspaper that is helping to
bring poetry back to the general public. She also edits Hearsay, Poetry
Written by Lawyers (www.lawyerpoetry.com).
She lives in Auburn, Maine where she practices family law, raises her sons,
and tends old roses.
Jane Lamb has been writing
profiles and features for Down East magazine and Maine Organic
Farmer and Gardener, as well as features and reviews for The
Brunswick Times Record, The Portland Press Herald, Maine Public
Broadcasting and other Maine and national publications, for more than twenty
years. Her book about outstanding Maine gardeners will be published by Down
East Books in the spring. Most recently she has had a Home Forum article in
the Christian Science Monitor. Jane moved to California in
2001after nearly a lifetime in Maine, beginning when she graduated from
Colby College in 1947.
Wayne Leach, was born in Ellsworth, Maine in 1937. Wayne has worked
at numerous jobs, including carpenter, mechanic, woodsman, mechanic,
shoe-shop and paper mill worker, truck driver, and more. He is married, has
four sons and eleven grandchildren. His first poetry book Poems of Maine,
etc. was published in April, 2000. Since then, he has three more books of
poetry to his credit and is working on the next. Wayne is semi-retired,
enjoys traveling, walking in the woods, and many kinds of music. He lives
with his wife, Pauline, two cats, a dog and several wild animals on 150
acres of woods in central Maine.
M. Kelly Lombardi, lives in a very rural and very coastal part of
Maine in a book filled, music laden, house with her dog Lucca. She lectures
on antique roses and raises about fifty different varieties of same. She
also teaches in the Sunrise Seniors College at the local university Her
specialty is contemporary Irish poets and how-to-write-poetry, she but also
teaches international poets. She goes back to Ireland each year to refresh
on the music and sit in on some of the poetry readings as well as going to
Italy where she stays at a twelfth-century Augustinian monastery and writes,
writes, writes. Ireland is her ancestral home; Italy is her spiritual one.
Kelly is a practicing and published poet as well as a teaching poet.
Chuck Marecic had a twelve year stint in Midcoast Maine that included
building a house, raising sheep, goats and whatever, getting way over-educated (Vermont Law School, JD 1998, and graduate school at UMaine from
1999-2003), and losing his ability to take life seriously. He currently
writes poetry and teaches a little English from his self-imposed exile cum
leave of absence in Koprivnica, Croatia.
Brian K. Mello was born in the
small village of Freeport, Maine. He studied writing at the Institute of
Children’s Literature in Connecticut and graduated in 2001. He has written
columns, speeches, and campaign literature, etc. He won an Honorable Mention
Award in the 2001 Writer’s Digest Writing Competition and has also written
for the Grange and things in local newspapers. He is presently engaged in
writing and submitting stories to various publications, both for children
and adults. He is a member of SCBWI and the Maine Writer’s and Publisher’s
Alliance.
Jim Mello is an aging baby boomer who lives with his blended family
of seven in Farmington. An addictions counselor by day, he pursues his
passion (obsession? addiction?) of reading about and/or listening to music,
when he's not parenting or dreaming about poetry.
Robin Merrill is president of the Maine Poets Society. She has an MFA
from Stonecoast and teaches English at Kennebec Valley Memorial High School
and Kennebec Valley Community College. Her poems have been featured on
The Writer's Almanac as well as in Margie, The Raintown
Review, and Poetry Southeast. She lives in Madison, Maine, with
the man of her dreams and their two hounds. You can visit her (and the
hounds) at www.robinmerrill.com.
Thorpe Moeckel's recent work appears or is forthcoming in Poetry,
The Southern Review, Field, The Antioch Review, Wild
Earth, and many other little magazines. He has published Meltlines,
a chapbook based on river travels in Alaska. His first full length
collection, Odd Botany, won the Cable Book Award, and appeared last
fall from Silverfish Review Press. After many years working as a river
guide, wilderness instructor for delinquent youth, and handyman from one end
of the Appalachians to the other, he lives now in the Blue Ridge of Central
Virginia, where he is busy framing houses, doing some journalism, and
exploring the rivers and woods with Sophie, his five-year-old daughter.
Liz Moser splits her time between Maryland and midcoast Maine. She
writes poetry, essays and fiction. Her work appears in Maine Times,
Down East, Northwoods Journal, The Urbanite, Potomac
Review and other publications. She has just won a fiction award at the
F. Scott Fitzgerald Literary Conference, and was the Potomac Review's
2002 Poetry Prize recipient.
Victoria Bosch Murray, 2004 Cambridge Poetry Award
recipient, teaches writing at Stonehill College in N. Easton, MA. Her work
can be seen most recently in the Dos Passos Review, Green Hills Literary
Lantern, Poets Without Borders and is forthcoming in the HazMat
Review. Host of a poetry venue in East Bridgewater, MA, she lives on
Boston's south shore, near the ocean.
Sarah Nash-Lee is assistant editor for the e-zine
Hiss Quarterly (http://www.hissquarterly.com). Currently, she resides
in Northern Ohio with her three teenagers who keep her busy, worried, and
inspired. Feel free to peruse her personal webspace (http://www.emotionalsalad.com)
for more information. She can be reached here:
jadedfeyy@yahoo.com
Aubrey Nicoll is an eighteen-year-old poet currently finishing his
final year at Morse High School. He likes artsy things like music and
writing in general but is, in fact, unable to paint. You can see him at a
poetry slam.
PJ Nights lives in Maine where she teaches astronomy and physics, two
loves passed on to her by her father. When she isn't scouring the shelves
for more to read at The Gulf of Maine Bookstore, her projects include a
poetry
collaboration with graphic artist Joseph Barbaccia and coediting (with CE
Laine and Dorothy Mienko ) The Women of the Web anthology available
soon from Sun Rising Press. Her poem "from wives and mothers" was nominated
for a
2004 Pushcart prize by Blue Fifth Review.
Abbie Nixon grew up in South China, Maine, and currently lives in
downtown Farmington. She is a newspaper editor.
Noreen O’Brien, while not a native Mainer (her
father is, though we can’t figure out how deep these roots go), did take her
first steps in Wiscasset. She hopes this counts for something as she is
completely in love with the state and can’t imagine living anywhere else
since moving here four years ago. Noreen publishes a subscription-based
newsletter devoted to the women writers of Maine, Maine-ly Women
Wordsmiths. She also writes a weekly birding column for Rockland’s
Courier Gazette, developed enough local interest that she has begun
publishing a newsletter all about birds, Ammodramus, the Latin name
for one of her favorite group of birds, sparrows. When she’s lucky enough to
find paying work, she freelances as a writer and a copy editor for authors
and publishers, as well as newspapers. Words and birds—that’s what Noreen is
all about. Her email address is womenwordsmiths@tds.net.
Rachel Palmer lives in Orono, Maine, with her husband, Michael, with
whom she shares, among other things, a passion for political philosophy. She
studies the poetry of Anna Akhmatova, and tries to live a simple life of
love and appreciation, forever in awe of the strength and delicacy of the
world.
Chad Parenteau is an award-winning poet and
occasional freelance writer currently living in South Boston. His poetry has
appeared in Fledgling, Meanie, can we have our ball back?,
Shampoo, the Poetribe anthology, and is forthcoming in Main
Street Rag. His first chapbook, Self-Portrait In Fire, was
published last March. Those interested in a copy can email him at
chad@thecia.net.
Mary Parmley is a writer and editor who has penned
all sorts of things over the years --including poetry. She divides her time
between Washington, DC and midcoast Maine along with her family, her kayak,
and her running shoes
Olga K-Pastuchiv exhibits paintings and woodcuts
regularly, both in the United States and abroad. Her book illustrations
include a botanical flora, a cookbook, four books of poetry, and a
children’s picture book.
Susann Pelletier, a Lewiston native, has been writing poems
since she was ten years old. Her work gives voice to her deep connections to
family and place in Franco-America, as well as her vision of social justice
and dignity at home and beyond our borders. Her articles and poems have been
published here and abroad in anthologies, literary journals, and political
and environmental magazines. Susann works as a learning associate at the
Writing Workshop at Bates College. She was awarded by Bates a Johnson
Foundation grant to take part in its 2003-2004 faculty seminar on Islam &
the Modern World. In April, Susann received her second grant to participate
in the 2004-2005 Johnson Faculty Seminar: Movements for Change. She is
especially interested in exploring sustainability models and movements to
protest genetic engineering and intellectual property rights.
Judy Platz is an Ohio native having transplanted to New England
twenty years ago, and to Maine twelve years ago. Her poetry has been
published in journals across the country. She teaches College Composition,
Literature, and Poetry at York County Community College and The University
of Southern Maine.
Ray Pontin is an artist and architectural designer living in Maine.
He is also a photographer, cook, micro car enthusiast, and avid bookworm.
Gayle Portnow lives in Camden, Maine, and usually winters in New York
City, though this year may be different. She writes poetry and stories about
mothering, fog, soup, moths, water, and other seemingly unrelated themes.
She has been published in Wind Magazine, Purple Patches,
The Easthampton Star, and the Free Press.
Roy Potter has had an intense love affair with Maine all his life,
from the time he was nine until now when he’s seventy-five. Since he is not
a native, the only requirement Maine makes of him in this affair is that he
goes there as often as possible, which he does. Almost half of the poems he
had written concern and were inspired by Maine. His career was in magazine
and book publishing, and retirement twenty years ago gave him a chance to
try writing poetry full time.
Joyce Pye is a freelance writer / author and poet whose work—which
includes essays, historical articles, prize-winning poetry and a nonfiction
book, Ireland’s Musical Instrument Makers—has been published in
Ireland and Maine. Recent work was included in an anthology of Maine poetry,
A Sense of Place: Collected Maine Poems. She has enjoyed reading at
Live Poets Slam, Washington; Local 188, Portland; Lincoln Arts Festival,
Boothbay; for National Poetry Month and Longfellow Days, Brunswick and for
private groups.
Amanda Surkont is a Maine native whose work has appeared in Art
Life, Concrete Wolf, The Nedge, Puckerbrush Review,
The Newport Review, Pulse, and other journals. She is poetry
editor at Rhode Island Roads Magazine. Her manuscript, Pondicherry
Square, a Maine memoir in poems, will soon be searching for a home.
Randy Randall is a native Mainer who lives with his wife Jean on the
banks of the Saco River in southern Maine. Together and with their family
they own and operate Marston’s Marina on the Saco River tidewater. In
between fishing, hiking, kayaking, camping, bicycling, and Boy Scouting he
somehow found time to raise three sons and work for IBM for thirty-one
years. Now retired, he’s trying to get his money’s worth out of the BA
degree he earned many many years ago at UMO. His stories have appeared in
Down East magazine, the Northwoods Sporting Journal, Point's
East magazine, and the Maine Sportsman. Among other
accomplishments, he is also a registered Maine Guide. When he’s not
writing or reading or pumping gas for boats, you can usually find him out on
Saco Bay pulling his lobster traps.
Patricia Smith Ranzoni was born
in Lincoln with roots in Maine and Canada deeper than she’s been able to
locate, so far. Writing from a subsistence farm in Bucksport where she grew
up, her poetry has been published in dozens of journals and anthologies
including Animus, Apples & Oranges, Buffalo Vortex,
Blueline, Cafe´ Review´, Christian Science Monitor,
Off the Coast, Shearsman, Spoon River Poetry Review,
Yankee Magazine, and Zone 3. Her work has been collected by
Puckerbrush Press in Claiming (1995) and Settling (2000) and
is forthcoming in Wellhouse Not Far Enough and Myrie?, in
manuscripts.
Marti Reed was born in Calais, Maine, she now
resides by the 'Keag River in South Thomaston. She has been the inspiration
and proprietor of The Personal Book Shop in Thomaston, Maine for seventeen
years. Marti is an avid reader and a lover of poetry. For many years poems
have percolated in her mind, she has recently begun to write them down.
Gil Rogers settled in northern Maine
upon obtaining his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 1970. He opened a
counseling center at the University of Maine-Presque Isle, developed
psychology courses and raised pick-your-own strawberries on the Egypt Road
in the southeast corner of the township. He left his position as professor
of psychology and chairman of the social science division in 1993, devoting
the next two years to travel and writing. His longest light plane flight
took him from Presque Isle to Fairbanks, Alaska, where he spent the summer
in construction with his son. He has lived in Pennsylvania since 1995,
working in both drug/alcohol and mental health settings. Last year he built
a sailboat and completed Book V of his memoirs. He also writes
poetry, short stories, and young adult adventure.
Cheryl Wood Ruggiero has visited Maine only once,
but she keeps its clear autumn sunset along a rocky beach among her favorite
memories. She lives in southwest Virginia, where she has spent most of her
words on teaching for three decades. Her poetry and fiction are forthcoming
in CALYX and Potion. She and her husband enjoy children, grandchildren, and
seeing the mountains from their porch swing.
Willow Runningwater lives on a small organic farm
on the coast of Maine. She and her husband raise much of their own food. She
writes poetry and essays and is currently writing a longer work. She is also
a landscape and seascape painter, and lithographer. While Willow has been
writing for many years, she has only recently begun to publish her work.
Marissa Saltzman of Framingham, Massachusetts, is a junior at
Mount Holyoke College. She vacations annually in the Penobscot Bay Region,
where she enjoys writing, sailing, and painting. She is seeking publication
of her first novel.
Glenn Shea is a Connecticut native and the author of two chapbooks of
verse: Find a Place that Could Pass for Home (Islandia Press, 1994)
and Crossing to Aranmor (Vortex Press, 2003).
Grace Sheridan was a teacher before her family relocated to Maine,
where she had a civil service career as purchasing agent. Now she enjoys
spending time as a library and visitor’s center volunteer, along with a bit
of kayaking, gardening, and learning computer. She is currently the leader
of a support group and on the Senior College board. In 2003 she enrolled in
a class on Irish poets at Sunrise Senior College because of an interest in
things Irish and a dab of interest in things poetic. From that time forward,
the class instructor has been her mentor in reading, writing, and sharing
poetry. Grace and her husband Neil enjoy a rural lifestyle “way Down East”
in Cutler, Maine.
Sarah A. Sherman was born and raised on Southport Island, Maine,
where she and her two sons make their home. She was educated in the island’s
three-room schoolhouse, graduated from Boothbay Region High School, and
holds a degree in Graphic Arts from Central Maine Technical College. She is
the author of Southport: The War Years, An Island Remembers and
Heroes Among Us, A History of Boothbay Region’s Veterans During the Second
World War. Sherman is pursuing a degree in English from the University
of Maine at Augusta
Jill Sinclair is a history and English teacher who
is currently taken some time off to attend school at the University of
Massachusetts at Boston where she is taking literature and writing classes
in preparation for graduate school. Jill has been teaching for over ten
years at various grade levels. She is always most enthusiastic when teaching
poetry. She has been inspired by the creativity and insight of her students
and poets—ranging in grade level from preschool to high school. When she is
not busy studying and writing papers, Jill concentrates on her writing. She
enjoys writing short stories, poetry, and journal writing. She has recently
been trying to strengthen her skills at writing editorials. Her current
nonfiction project involves a series of column pieces entitled “The Writing
Tutor.” Each piece focuses on an anecdote or insight derived from her
current part-time job as a high school writing tutor. She lives in
Framingham, Massachusetts. She is a proud alumni of the University of Maine
at Orono.
Sarah Sousa lives in the foothills of Western Maine with her husband,
a musician, and two sons, who are home schooled. She is currently trying to
publish a chapbook of poems.
Deborah Straw lives in Burlington, Vermont. A
graduate of UNH, she spent several partial summers in the York area. An
English instructor at Community College of Vermont and at Johnson State
College, she teaches writing and literature courses. Aside from essays, she
writes book reviews and short stories and is the author of two nonfiction
books: Natural Wonders of the Florida Keys (1999) and The Healthy Pet
Manual, A Guide to the Prevention and Treatment of Cancer (2000, updated
with new title, 2005).
David R. Surette was born and raised in Malden, Massachusetts. He is
the author of three poetry chapbooks Malden and Muckers, Grinders,
Hangers, Hackers, and Huns, and Good Shift and has placed
poems in literary journals such as Peregrine, The South Boston
Literary Gazette, and Button. He has featured in venues such at
The Cantab in Cambridge, Massachusetts, home of The Boston Poetry Slam, and
The Daily Grind in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, GASP in Onset, MA, and
Borders at Downtown Crossing, Boston, and in schools and libraries. He is
the host of Poetribe (formerly The Bridgewater Poetry Slam). He is co-editor
of Selected Poems from The Daily Grind. His poem “Forever and Ever”
was nominated for “Best Love Poem” by the Cambridge Poetry Awards 2003.
Ellen M. Taylor lives in Appleton,
Maine, with her husband, Daniel, an Uncle Henry’s Golden Retriever named
Bella, and a flock of stunning Rhode Island Red hens. She teaches at the
University of Maine at Augusta, and is the author of two collections of
poetry, Humming to Snails, with Moon Pie Press, and Letters from
the Third World, published by Sheltering Pines Press.
Jim Walker lives in Brooklin, Maine, with artist wife, three dogs,
two cats, sheep, geese and chickens. Used to live in Manhattan and Long
Island where taught public school, college level English, playwriting in a
theatre school. Wrote and had performed several plays, published reviews and
poetry in several small mags, and is delighted to be included in Wolf
Moon Press Journal!
Jean Webster is a poet, journalist and fiction writer. Her poetry has
appeared in a number of anthologies in Maine and upstate New York where she
lived for 30 years. Poems were also published in the Christian Science
Monitor, la bella figura (an anthology of work by
Italian-American women), and the Poetry Society of Virginia, among
others. She is presently working as a freelance travel writer. Two of her
stories appeared recently in the Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday
Telegram. Last year, Jean published a book of her poems Four Corners
of the Circle: Poems of Coastal Stones, City Bricks and Ancient Bones.
Special thanks to:
Tom Fallon for help with publicity.
