April, 2024:
SIRI BECKMAN, visual artist, wood engraver, print maker, and co-author of the new book "The Prints of Siri Beckman: Engraving a Sense of Place." Beckman, born in Chicago, Illinois, moved to Maine in 1975, and was called to wood engraving quite by accident. She has been practicing the art form for more than forty years. Beckman’s early wood engravings are strongly influenced by her surroundings and daily life in the Maine fishing town of Stonington where she lived. She recently moved to Bath, Maine, where she continues to maintain her studio.

March, 2024:
KRISTIE BILLINGS, wearer of many hats, comes from a long line of lovers of the sea: fishermen, clam-diggers, and sardine packers. The ocean is home. She is a poet, a photographer, and a year-round swimmer. Native of Stonington, on Deer Isle in downeast Maine, Kristie is drawn to beauty, even in the ordinary, the mundane and the unnoticed. Her latest book, "Sea Witch: Photographs, Poems and Forget Me Nots from a Mainer Growing Up" (Seaport Books, Nov 2023) is filled with images and words of the sea, nature, folk art, dolls, loss, grief, love, acceptance, rage, music, and life.

February, 2024:
GARY LAWLESS, poet, bookstore owner, book editor, publisher, and educator. He has published many books of poetry and co-owns Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick and owns Blackberry Books Publishing in Nobleboro. He has run writing residencies in Newfoundland, Alaska, Italy, and Maine, and community writing workshops for adults with disabilities, unhoused, refugee and immigrant populations, and veterans groups.

February, 2024:
GARY LAWLESS, poet, bookstore owner, book editor, publisher, and educator. He has published many books of poetry and co-owns Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick and owns Blackberry Books Publishing in Nobleboro. He has run writing residencies in Newfoundland, Alaska, Italy, and Maine, and community writing workshops for adults with disabilities, unhoused, refugee and immigrant populations, and veterans groups.

January, 2024
LAUREEN LABAR, recently retired curator at the Maine State Museum and author of "Maine Quilts: 250 Years of Comfort and Community", published in 2021 by Down East Books. She and Peter discuss quilts and quilting in Maine, as an example of unique craft, history, and social engagement invoking the spirit of Maine.

December, 2023
SARAH ALEXANDER, Executive Director of Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (MOFGA), celebrating 50 years in 2023.

November, 2023
JOAN NEWLON RADNER of western Maine, Professor Emerita of American University, folklorist, professional storyteller, and author of Wit and Wisdom: The Forgotten Literary Life of New England Villages.

October, 2023
STEVE TATKO, Vice President of the Maine Chapter of the Appalachian Mountain Club. Steve is a lifelong Mainer, born in Monson, graduate of Colby College, shaped by the Maine woods, and now dedicated to its preservation for all of us to use and enjoy.

September, 2023
JOHN BUNKER, homesteader, farmer, orchardist, author, apple historian, co-founder of FEDCO Trees, and founder of MOFGA's Maine Heritage Orchard, 10-acre preservation and educational orchard located in Unity Maine home to over 360 varies of apples and pears traditionally grown in all 16 counties of Maine dating back to 1630.

August, 2023
TOMMY CARBONE, author of both fiction and non-fiction, outdoorsman, photographer, publisher, and collector of Maine lore and the work of forgotten or over-looked authors who invoke the spirit of Maine. Tommy is a son of Brooklyn, New York and has found another life in northern Maine, exploring the trails, ponds, mountains, streams and bogs, and finding the authors who preceded him. He has re-issued the books of Dr. Lucius Lee Hubbard, Thomas S. Steele, and Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, whose book Exploring the Maine Woods, first published as articles in Field & Stream Magazine in 1891, and edited and annotated by Tommy into a new edition by Burnt Jacket Publishing, Greenville, Maine. FMI: tommycarbone.com

July, 2023
JULIA LANE AND FRED GOSBEE, musicians and musicologists, who for many years have been researching their personal heritage by exploring the traditional music connections between the Celtic lands, the Canadian Maritimes and Maine. In this conversation we explore the early music of Maine, and our cultural heritage through story and song. Through Castlebay, as their musical home, they have released more than two dozen recordings. Their new book, "Bygone Ballads of Maine-Songs of Ships and Sailors", contains many of their findings including lyrics, tunes and relevant lore.

Bygone Ballads of Maine, Vol I Songbook
Songs of the Sea, Ships and Sailors
2021

Follow this link for midi files of all the tunes

This song book contains 165 songs transcribed from audio field recordings and unpublished manuscripts. These collections were done from the late 1800s up to 1943. The songs have been edited where necessary to add missing verses. Songs which were found without melodies have been set. Each song includes historical or contextual notes.

The cover price is $39.95 for the hardcover edition; $29.95 for the softcover edition plus tax (where applicable) plus shipping & handling.

Listen to a July 2023 conversation between Julia Lane and Fred Gosbee of Castlebay Music with Peter Neill by clicking the icon at left. You can also find Conversations from the Pointed Firs wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

This month we rebroadcast a July 2021 conversation with Rob McCall, who passed away in April of 2023. We, and many in Maine and beyond, are mourning the loss of this great man: minister, fiddler, writer and creator of the Awanadjo Almanack. Rob and Peter discuss the tradition of Nature writing in Maine, the characteristics of the genre, and the various methodologies and principles that underlie this special means by which to evoke and understand the natural world that surrounds us. 

April 21, 2023
An excerpt from Rob Shetterly’s “Reflections on the life of Rob McCall”:

”Rob McCall died this morning – not unexpectedly. He had been failing for some time.

His passing is a great loss to his community in Blue Hill, Maine. Also to the world.

I painted his portrait five years ago, and at the unveiling of it in the Blue Hill library, with Rob there, I said, “I know of no greater contemporary nature writer and no greater source of wisdom for how we must think of ourselves in relation to nature if we want to survive on this planet.”

He was, for many years, the beloved minister of the Blue Hill Congregational Church. But it may have been his weekly essays, his Awanadjo Almanac, through which most people knew him.

Rob paid extraordinarily close attention to all the miraculous phenomena of nature and equally close attention to the frequently dispiriting behavior of humans. He gently, but adamantly, encouraged members of this community to perceive more closely and act more generously. It is not an exaggeration to say that he changed the ethos of this place. In a democratic society how people act, what they choose to protect, what values they bring to important decisions, who they choose as leaders, how humble or arrogant or prejudiced or kind they are with others depends to a great extent on the quality of their teachers. The truths they tell. Rob McCall was a quintessential teacher.”

Read the full tribute from Rob Shetterly of Americans Who Tell The Truth here.

April, 2023
PETER BECKFORD, Maine farmer and storyteller who will introduce the work of the late Holman F. Day, journalist, poet, and raconteur, whose accounts of neighbors and friends, often in dialect, are classic evocations of the “spirit of Maine.”

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is PETER BECKFORD, writer, poet, Maine farmer, storyteller.

Peter has been memorizing and reciting Holman F. Day's poems for nearly 40 years, having heard of him from Maine humorist Tim Sample who mentioned Holman Day when he was introducing The Junk of Marshall Dodge. Beckford and his wife own and operate Rebel Hill Farm in Liberty, raising field-grown organic native perennials.

March, 2023
MARTHA WHITE discussing the life and writings of her grandfather, E.B. White, author of Charlotte's Web, Stuart Little, One Man's Meat, and more; frequent contributor to The New Yorker; and co-author of The Elements of Style.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is MARTHA WHITE, writer, editor and literary executor for the estate of her grandfather, E.B. White. In 2006, Martha White edited the revised and updated Letters of E.B. White (Harper Collins) and since then has compiled three more collections of E.B. White's work. Most recently she has offered her guidance to the Skidompha Library in Damariscotta, Maine for their authorized publication of Chickens, Gin and a Maine Friendship: The Correspondence of E.B. White and Edmund Ware Smith (Downeast Books, 2020).

Martha White is a writer, editor, and literary executor for the estate of her grandfather, E.B. White. She is a graduate in English from Mount Holyoke College; has been a longtime contributing editor to Yankee Publishing and The Old Farmer's Almanac, and compiled two weekly columns for United Feature Syndicate for many years. Her articles, book reviews, short stories, and essays have been published in The New York Times; The Boston Globe; Christian Science Monitor; Early American Life, Country Journal, Down East; Garden Design, Maine Boats Homes and Harbors, and numerous other national magazines and small presses.

In 2006, White edited the revised and updated Letters of E. B. White (HarperCollins) and, since then, she has compiled three more collections of E. B. White's work: In the Words of E. B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers (Cornell University Press, 2011) and E. B. White on Dogs (Tilbury House, Publishers, 2013). Her most editorial endeavor is Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship, The Correspondence of E.B. White and Edmund Ware Smith (DownEast Books, 2020.) 

February, 2023
DEAN LUNT of Islandport Press discussing the writings of Ruth Moore, an important 20th century Maine author. She is best known for her honest portrayals of Maine people and evocative descriptions of Maine.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is DEAN LUNT, founder and editor-in-chief at Islandport Press, an award-winning publisher of books and other media that strives to tell stories that are rooted in the sensibilities of Maine and New England. An eighth-generation native of downeast Maine, Dean Lunt was born and raised in the island fishing village of Frenchboro. His ancestors arrived on Mount Desert Island in the late 1700s and many of them moved across the bay to settle Long Island in the early 1800s. In 1999, Lunt founded Islandport Press, an award-winning independent book publishing company that produces books with New England themes. The company published its first book, Hauling by Hand: The Life and Times of a Maine Island, in the spring of 2000. Lunt has edited dozens of books as is the author of Here for Generations: The Story of a Maine Bank and its City. Later this year he will release an anthology of Ruth Moore’s work for which he is writing a lengthy forward describing the ways in which their lives intersected, and the enduring importance of Moore’s work.

FMI: islandportpress.com/aboutislandport
Their Ruth Moore collection can be found at islandportpress.com/ruth-moore-collection

In 2022 Islandport Press acquired the rights to the Ruth Moore catalog—which includes 14 novels—and has been redesigning and reissuing many of those books, including The Weir, Spoonhandle, Candlemas Bay, Second Growth, and Speak to the Winds, as well as several collections of her shorter work. Learn more at islandportpress.com/ruth-moore-collection.

January, 2023
SAMAA ABDURRAQIB, whose love of Maine’s natural landscape is what inspired her to shift careers and root herself in Maine. She tries to spend as much time as she can outside birdwatching, hiking, and kayaking. One of the most fulfilling roles Samaa has held is being a volunteer leader for Outdoor Afro, a national organization committed to (re)connecting Black people to the outdoors and connecting Black people to each other through the outdoors.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is SAMAA ABDURRAQIB, the Executive Director of the Maine Humanities Council, a position she has held since 2021. Before MHC she taught in the Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies Program for three years at Bowdoin College, teaching courses on Muslim memoir, Islam and feminism, and representations of violence against women in literature and film. Samaa left Bowdoin in 2013 and, after teaching a semester at the University of Southern Maine, left academia to begin a career in Maine’s nonprofit world. From 2013 through 2015, Samaa joined the staff at the ACLU of Maine as a reproductive justice organizer. After that grant-funded position ended, Samaa joined the staff at the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, where she worked for five years supporting domestic violence advocates across the state through training, technical assistance, and policy work. Samaa’s love of Maine’s natural landscape is what inspired her to shift careers and root herself in Maine. She tries to spend as much time as she can outside birdwatching, hiking, and kayaking. One of the most fulfilling roles Samaa has held is being a volunteer leader for Outdoor Afro, a national organization committed to (re)connecting Black people to the outdoors and connecting Black people to each other through the outdoors. Samaa received her PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s English Department in 2010. She is a published poet and nature writer.

FMI: mainehumanities.org

Listen to the conversation between Samaa Abdurraqib and Peter Neill by clicking the icon above. You can also find Conversations from the Pointed Firs wherever you listen to your favorite podcasts.

December, 2022
STUART KESTENBAUM
The subject of this conversation is CRAFT. What is it? How does it manifest? How is it a utilitarian response to environment and circumstance? How does its shape shift over time? Who are the makers? How does it fit as a creative element in the human psyche and into the spirit of Maine?

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Stuart Kestenbaum, arts innovator, poet, former director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts, and most recently, working with the Libra Foundation to design and implement a residency program for artists and writers called Monson Arts.

STUART KESTENBAUM is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Things Seem to Be Breaking (Deerbrook Editions 2021), and a collection of essays The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press). He was the host of the Maine Public Radio program Poems from Here and was the host/curator of the podcast Make/Time. He was the director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts from 1988 until 2015. More recently, working with the Libra Foundation, he has designed and implemented a residency program for artists and writers called Monson Arts. Stu has written and spoken widely on craft making and creativity, and his poems and writing have appeared in numerous small press publications and magazines. He served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021.

Maine Arts Commission

November's guests on Conversations from the Pointed Firs are David Greenham, Executive Director of the Maine Arts Commission, and David Hopkins, the Commission’s Chair. They and host Peter Neill discuss the arts in Maine, the creative economy, and the essential contribution and expression of the arts and the creative spirit of Maine.

DAVID GREENHAM is the executive director of the Maine Arts Commission. Prior to stepping to that post, he was the Associate Director of the Holocaust and Human Rights Center of Maine, where he developed educational outreach programs, curated exhibits, and presented various HHRC programs to schools and communities throughout the state. In addition to his work at the Maine Arts Commission, David is an adjunct lecturer in drama at the University of Maine at Augusta and is a frequent contributor to the online Boston-based arts magazine The ArtsFuse. David is a member the boards of the New England Foundation for the Arts, the Cultural Alliance of Maine, the Friends of the Blaine House, and Ladder to the Moon/Amjambo Africa.

DAVID HOPKINS has served on boards for the Farnsworth Museum, Waterman’s Community Center on North Haven, and the North Haven Historical Society. He also served as commissioner of the Maine State Museum. In March of 2021 Governor Janet Mills appointed Hopkins chair of the Maine Arts Commission board. Born in Bangor, Maine, David grew up on North Haven Island then spent 30 years of his career at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. He now owns and operates Hopkins Wharf Gallery on the island of North Haven in midcoast Maine, where he lives.

Learn more at:
mainearts.maine.gov

Winner of the 2022 Maine Literary Book Award in Poetry

October's guest on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Jefferson Navicky, author, poet, playwright, and archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection. He and host Peter Neill discuss the long history of women writers in Maine, their work well-known and sometimes forgotten, representing an essential contribution and expression of the unique place and creative spirit of Maine.

JEFFERSON NAVICKY is an poet and a playwright; he has written three books: "Antique Densities: Modern Parables & Other Experiments in Short Prose" (2021), winner of the 2022 Maine Literary Book Award for Poetry, as well as the poetic novel "The Book of Transparencies" (2018) and the story collection, "The Paper Coast" (2018). His plays have been produced in the Boston Theater Marathon, multiple times in the Maine Playwrights Festival, and at small venues across New England. His ten-minute play, “One Master Appetite,” was included in The Best Ten-Minute Plays of 2015, published by Smith & Kraus. Jefferson is a member of the steering committee for the Belfast Poetry Festival, and is a long-time Poetry Out Loud judge throughout Maine.

Learn more at:
jeffersonnavicky.com

What can poems possibly offer us in the face of unanswerable questions?

Host Peter Neill's guest for this month is Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, whose first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist, was chosen by Lisa Russ Spaar for the Vassar Miller Prize and published in 2012. The book received a starred review from Publishers Weekly and was featured by Poets & Writers as one of a dozen debut collections to watch. Gibson’s poems have appeared in magazines including Guernica, The New Republic, and Tin House, jubilat, FIELD, and The Literary Review. His fiction has appeared in Slice and Portland Magazine. His second book of poems, Deke Dangle Dive, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021.

GIBSON FAY-LEBLANC is a writer, a teacher, and a non-profit leader. He has taught writing at conferences, schools and universities including Fordham, Haystack, and University of Southern Maine, and has helped lead community arts organizations including The Telling Room, SPACE Gallery, and Hewnoaks Artist Colony. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and lives in Portland with his family.

Learn more at:
gibsonfayleblanc.com
mainewriters.org

The Maine Writers Literary Festival is coming to Waterville and Portland. Visit mainewriters.org/maine-lit-fest to learn more. Presented by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and the Colby College Creative Writing Program.

Both galvanizing and powerful, Mill Town is an American story, a human predicament, and a moral wake-up call that asks: what are we willing to tolerate and whose lives are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival? (GoodReads)

Host Peter Neill's guest for this month is Kerri Arsenault, author of “Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains”, published in 2020 by St. Martins Press. Kerri is winner of many distinguished literary prizes such as the 2021 Rachel Carson Environmental Book Award and the Maine Literary Award for Non-Fiction. “Mill Town” is a book of narrative non-fiction, investigative memoir and cultural criticism that illuminates the rise and collapse of the working class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxins and disease.

KERRI ARSENAULT grew up in the rural working class town of Mexico, Maine. For over 100 years the community orbited around a paper mill that employs most townspeople, including three generations of Arsenault’s own family. Years after she moved away, Arsenault realized the price she paid for her seemingly secure childhood. The mill, while providing livelihoods for nearly everyone, also contributed to the destruction of the environment and the decline of the town’s economic, physical, and emotional health in a slow-moving catastrophe, earning the area the nickname “Cancer Valley.”

“Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains” is a personal investigation, where Arsenault sifts through historical archives and scientific reports, talks to family and neighbors, and examines her own childhood to illuminate the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease. Learn more at kerri-arsenault.com.

“With a fiercely intelligent listening, Midden reveals Julia Bouwsma’s imagination and research as she investigates the early 20th-century history of Malaga Island, Maine and the devastating state violence against a 'mixed-race' fishing community of white and African Diasporic people who lived there. Bouwsma employs lyric, persona, and lyric narrative to investigate these histories of violent displacement, gentrification, and incarceration… She reminds us of how porous the bodies of a place and its people are, how loss is written into the bodies of both.”
— Aracelis Girmay, Kingdom Animalia and the black maria

Host Peter Neill's guest for this month is Julia Bouwsma, poet laureate of Maine and author of Midden, an award-winning collection of poems published by Fordham University Press in 2018, an intimate and raw set of poems addressing a dark and important piece of Maine history that transpired on Malaga Island in Casco Bay in 1912.

JULIA BOUWSMA lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, small-town librarian and Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate (2021-2026). Bouwsma is the author of two poetry collections, Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), both of which received the Maine Literary Award for Poetry Book. Other honors include the Poet’s Out Loud Prize (2016-17), the Cider Press Review Book Award (2015), and residency fellowships from the Virginia Center for Creative Arts, Vermont Studio Center, Monson Arts (Monson, ME), and Annex Arts (Castine, ME). Bouwsma’s poems and book reviews can be found in Cutthroat, Green Mountains Review, Poetry Daily, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. She currently serves as the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, ME and teaches in the Creative Writing department at the University of Maine at Farmington. Learn more at juliabouwsma.com.

"At times humbling and grueling, but it is also amusing...Woodsqueer shows the value of a solitary sojourn and both the pathway to and possibilities for making a sustainable, meaningful life on the land."
— Book Riot

"Twenty years ago, Legler moved with her partner, Ruth, into a post-and-beam Cape on 80 wooded acres in western Maine and started penning essays about the couple’s experiences carving a life out of what came to be their small farm: essays on building fences, tending goats, hunting deer, cutting wood, and much more. Over time, the essays coalesced into a book that reflects on not only the joys and challenges of homesteading in rural Maine, but also on human relationships — between romantic partners, among neighbors, and more — unfolding against an agrarian backdrop."
— Down East Magazine

Host Peter Neill's guest this month is Gretchen Legler, author of Woodsqueer: Crafting a Sustainable Rural Life published by Trinity University Press, an evocative examination of the back-to-the-land experience in Maine with her partner, Ruth Hill. She is a professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington where she lives. She and Peter discuss her most recent book, an intimate portrait of life in Maine, as well as the power of observation for creative writers, and her Master’s of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, where her interests focused on exploring human connections to the sacred in the natural world.

GRETCHEN LEGLER is a farmer, gardener, teacher, writer, lover of the natural world and the author of three book-length works of nonfiction. Her writing has garnered two Pushcart Prizes, a Notable Essay designation in Best American Essays, the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment creative writing award, a starred review in Kirkus Reviews, and was a finalist for the Steinberg Essay Prize, and the Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction.  She teaches creative writing and English at the University of Maine Farmington, where she is also the Director of the Campus and Community Garden. 

​She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Political Science and Journalism from Macalester College, a Master’s degree in Creative Writing and Ph.D. in English and Feminist Studies from the University of Minnesota, and a Master’s of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, where her interests focused on exploring human connections to the sacred in the natural world.  

My passion is “inciting wonder” by sharing my love of nature and science with children and adults through my award-winning books, essays, and teaching.

“I love doing author visits and have taught nonfiction writing workshops in dozens of elementary schools in Maine and the northeast based on my books. In addition, I teach nature writing workshops for families and adults and present special talks and programs at libraries and other public venues. Whether I’m writing for children or adults, my work comes from my deep love for the natural world!”

Our guest for March is Kimberly Ridley, science writer, essayist, award-winning author, and resident of Brooklin, Maine. Her books for children include The Secret Pool and The Secret Bay, both illustrated by Rebekah Raye, and Extreme Survivors: Animals That Time Forgot. And published this year is a new book of essays and historical renderings of natural things: Wild Designs: Nature’s Architects. Kim is an elegant writer, teacher and communicator of her affinity and sense of wonder of things observed in her own backyard in Maine. In this episode Kim and Peter discuss Kim’s many books, nature writing in general, the power of unstructured time for children, and the power present in close observations of our natural world.

KIMBERLY RIDLEY is a science writer, essayist, and author of award-winning nature books for children, including the Kirkus-starred The Secret Pool. She holds an MS in Science Journalism from Boston University and lives with her husband, the painter Thomas Curry, in Brooklin, Maine, where she loves exploring the wild world.

The cost of war is universal…
In William Carpenter’s ambitious new novel Silence he examines the survival of carnage and loss, and ponders where, in a divided and chaotic world, there is room for peace and silence.

Our guest for February is William (Bill) Carpenter, author of "Silence", published by Islandport Press in 2021, as well as other works of poetry and fiction. He and Peter discuss the new book; war and its aftermath specific to Maine; the traumas and the scars of military armed conflict; the past and future of human ecology and the importance of better understanding and living within our natural systems; the complexities of social stratification of island communities; inheritance versus native belonging; and the nature of conflict and loss.

BILL CARPENTER grew up in Waterville, Maine, graduated from Dartmouth College and got a PhD at the University of Minnesota, taught at the University of Chicago, and returned to Maine to help found the College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor where he taught English for 48 years. He is the recipient of the Pablo Neruda award, the Black Warrior award, and the AWP award in poetry. His previous novels are “A Keeper of Sheep” and “The Wooden Nickel”. He and the writer Donna Gold live in an old coastal inn and spend summers exploring Maine islands aboard their family sloop Northern Light.

“Caught is an account of the beauty, fragility and profound change that characterizes fishing, fishing families, and the communities who depend on them in the twenty-first century. Based in the tiny village of Port Clyde, Maine, Caught chronicles the struggle to transform a way of life for all who depend on our planet’s bounty.”

Our guests for January are Glen Libby and Toni Small, co-authors of “Caught: Time, Place, Fish”. Glenn is a working fisherman, proprietor of Port Clyde Fresh Catch, and an advocate for fishing policy in Maine; Toni is a photographer, educator and ocean advocate. In this episode they discuss their book, portraits and essays on fisheries and fishers, an essential aspect of the spirit of Maine.

ABOUT GLEN LIBBY AND ANTONIA SMALL
Glen is a working fisherman, proprietor of Port Clyde Fresh Catch, and an advocate for fishing policy in Maine. Toni is a photographer, educator and ocean advocate. Together they co-authored "Caught: Time, Place, Fish", an account of the beauty, fragility and profound change that characterizes fishing, fishing families, and the communities who depend on them. Through portraits and essays, “Caught” chronicles the individual and community efforts to transform a way of life for all who depend on the ocean’s bounty.

“From the first explorers, to the century of ships, to our modern fisheries and diversification, to modern day industry and the future of the coast, Maine's maritime story is told in engaging detail....”

Our guest for December is Lincoln Paine, maritime historian and author of many books, including the one discussed during this conversation: “Down East: An Illustrated History of Maritime Maine”. This is a fascinating discussion about the history of our coastal places in Maine—from the days when England declared every white pine in the State to be the King’s property, to the future of Maine’s coasts—from industry to how and where we go for recreation and renewal.

LINCOLN PAINE is an adjunct professor at the University of Maine School of Law and vice chair of the Maine Maritime Museum. He has published more than 100 articles and reviews for academic and popular publications, and his books include the award-winning The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World; Down East: An Illustrated History of Maritime Maine; and Ships of the World: An Historical Encyclopedia. He has lectured worldwide on a wide range of maritime-oriented subjects, including literature of the sea, exploration, oceans and seas in world culture, the history of maritime law, trade, naval history, rivers, decorative arts, and museum curatorship.

Find him at lincolnpaine.com.

“Maine folklore is rich in tales of humans confronted by strange beasts, both wonderful and terrifying. The Abenaki, or “First People” had their tales of Glooskap and Pamola. Other tales came with European settlers; and others sprang up almost out of nothing around the fires of the logging camps...”

Our guest for November is Christopher Packard, author of "Mythical Creatures of Maine: Fantastic Beasts from Legend and Folklore". Chris is a full-time high school science teacher, and prior to taking up teaching and writing he worked as an ecological restoration technician, field biologist, naturalist, and outdoor educator. His new book explores rich Maine folklore--tales of humans confronted by strange beasts, both wonderful and terrifying. Based on meticulous research into legend and folk tale, the resulting book is an encyclopedia, a field guide to the mythical creatures that maybe can be found in Maine and beyond—if you’re looking in the right places.

KESTENBAUMCHRISTOPHER PACKARD is the author of "Mythical Creatures of Maine" and the children’s book “Lumpy’s Gift”. A full-time high school science teacher he is also a trail runner, swordfighter, storyteller, and outdoor adventurer. When not teaching, writing, or wandering in the wilds he can often be found on his small homestead in Hampden, Maine gardening, raising chickens, and spending time with his wife and two sons. Prior to taking up teaching and writing he worked as ecological restoration technician, field biologist, naturalist, and outdoor educator. He has earned some pieces of paper that say things about degrees in biology and education. But most of his learning has come from his passion for discovery and his drive to bring people together. He has worked as field botanist, naturalist, and ecological restoration technician.

Christopher’s family has been building ships, lumbering, hunting, trapping, guiding, and running wilderness resort hotels in Maine since before the Civil War. He has hiked the 100 Mile Wilderness, paddled the Allagash Wilderness Waterway, climbed Mount Katahdin, and run across Waldo County in a single day on the Hills to Sea Trail but he’s still from away and that’s okay. Christopher was born and raised in Ohio, spending summers in Maine, until making his home here full-time in 2007.

Find him at christopherpackard.com.

"Holding an integral place in Maine’s community, the story of its early taverns and tea rooms is an important account of commerce and political and social life. From famed Revolutionary War incidents to Civil War generals, stagecoaches and the story of rum, the history of Maine’s early taverns is captivating. The tea rooms of the early 1900s were just as interesting and important. They played a large role in the national tea movement, the temperance and suffragette movements and the promotion of women’s independence, and they also symbolized Maine’s culture and sophistication. Join local authors Kathy and Bill Kenny as they unveil the stories, characters and history of these establishments over the past four centuries."

Our guests this week are Kathy and Bill Kenny, authors of Historic Taverns and Tearooms of Maine, published by History Press, 2021. The conversation centers around the social history and political culture of Maine as nurtured in unexpected places.

"…Thomas Edison once said all anyone needed in order to invent something was a good imagination and a pile of junk. Imagination and creativity have always been essential qualities for survival in Maine and the ingrained habits of “saving up” and “making do” inevitably led to heaps of junk. As a result Maine has produced some extraordinary inventors and inventions with many aimed at a simply making daily life, easier and more comfortable: from Joseph Peavey's self-named tool that dramatically improved log driving to Chester Greenwood's ear muffs to Charles Forster's toothpicks to Hiram Maxim's machine gun to the L.L. Bean Duck Boot…"

Our guest this week is Earl H Smith, a native of Waterville, a 40-year veteran of Colby College, former dean of the college, recently retired, and prolific author of fiction and historical non-fiction, most recently of Downeast Genius: From Earmuffs to Motor Cars, Maine Inventors Who Changed the World ‎ Islandport Press; First edition (June 1, 2021).

"I'm drawn to songs that show me how others have lived their lives and sorted through their problems – that's the great wisdom in traditional music, and in the songs that will become the tradition in other generations. They've shown me how to live, and if others learn something from my passing them on, that's another pleasure."

GORDON BOK grew up around the boatyards of Camden, Maine USA. In his early years, he worked on a variety of vessels—from passenger schooners to yachts. He learned many tunes, sea songs, stories, legends and ballads from the people he encountered. Where he couldn't find songs that matched his experiences or needs, he began to write his own, and has kept up a lively flow of poems, songs, stories, choral and instrumental works. He has performed extensively throughout the United States as well as the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand. He has appeared on the radio show "A Prairie Home Companion" with Garrison Keillor. Gordon's music has been sung by many other performers and has been used for films, most notably the documentary "Coaster: The Adventure of the John F. Leavitt" for which he won an award. Gordon received an honorary Doctorate of Science from the Maine Maritime Academy for his reflection of Maine's maritime heritage in his compositions and performances. His legacy includes over thirty recordings featuring his own compositions and folk tunes from around the world. His extensive repertoire provides a rich well to draw upon for his concerts; he has never sung the same solo concert twice. (from gordonbok.com)

"I learned to love scripture from my father and Nature from my mother, whose knowledge and love of wildflowers moved me."

Rob McCall is a minister and a musician, a naturalist and a nature writer, and is creator of the Awanadjo Almanack heard on WERU-FM and circulated across Maine in various publications and through his most recent book, Some Glad Morning, Holding Hope in Apocalyptic Times. In this episode of Conversations from the Pointed Firs Rob and Peter discuss the tradition of Nature writing in Maine, the characteristics of the genre, and the various methodologies and principles that underlie this special means by which to evoke and understand the natural world that surrounds us.

Rob is an ordained minister who from 1986 until his retirement in 2014 was pastor of the First Congregational Church of Blue Hill, Maine. Rob graduated as a philosophy major in 1966 from Illinois College in Jacksonville, Illinois, and Harvard Divinity School in 1970. He has been married to fine artist Rebecca Haley McCall since 1967. He is a fiddler, mandolin player, singer and guitarist and has worked as an elementary school teacher, handyman, tree and landscape contractor, church sexton, chimney sweep, and the foreman of a 250-acre apple orchard. His Small Misty Mountain was published by Pushcart Press in 2006 and distributed by W.W. Norton. Great Speckled Bird, a collection of essays and sermons, was published by Pushcart Press in 2012.

Chris Newell served as Executive Director of The Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, Maine and is Senior Partner to Wabanaki Nations*

CHRIS NEWELL (Passamaquoddy) is a lifetime educator. He was born and raised in Motahkmikuhk (Indian Township, ME) and is a proud citizen of the Passamaquoddy Tribe at Indian Township. He's a long time member of the Mystic River singers, an internationally acclaimed and award-winning inter-tribal pow wow drum group based out of Connecticut. For over two decades, Chris devoted much of his time to Mystic River traveling all over the US and Canada singing at community pow wows and spending time in those communities learning various Native musics and taking part in community and family events. Chris earned an interdisciplinary Bachelor of General Studies degree from the University of Connecticut which propelled him back to educating as a profession. Along with his work in education, Chris has also appeared in feature films and was the Senior Adviser on the Emmy winning documentary Dawnland chronicling the historic first-ever government-sanctioned Truth and Reconciliation Commission in the State of Maine. His dedication to this work goes back to his experiences at Dartmouth. Chris believes education is a path to making the world a better place for all people and looks forward to a better, well-informed future for us all.
*In Maine, four tribes – the Passamaquoddy, Penobscot, Maliseet and Micmac – are known collectively as the Wabanaki.

Mihku Paul is a poet of the Maliseet First Nation. Raised in Old Town, Maine, she devotes her creative work to the preservation of Native culture, despite the attempts that have been made to destroy it

Mihku Paul is an Indigenous writer, visual artist, and storyteller. A Maliseet, she is a member of Kingsclear First Nation, N.B., Canada. Mihku is a 2010 graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program and her first book of poetry, 20th Century PowWow Playland, was published by Greenfield Review Press. Her work can also be found in numerous anthologies including POEISIS XIII (EGS Press), MELUS, Port City Poems, Cabildo Quarterly, Dawnland Voices and others. Most recent publications include Enough! Poems of Resistance and Protest (Littoral Books) and Wait: Poems from the Pandemic. Mihku lives and works in Portland, Maine.

Resources & Publications:
Wait: Poems from the Pandemic (2021) Littoral Books

Enough! Poems of Resistance and Protest (2020) Littoral Books

River Voices: Perspectives on the Presumpscot (2020) The Water Road *reprinted with permission

Dawnland Voices (2014) University of Nebraska Press *major anthology

20th Century PowWow Playland (2012) Greenfield Review Press (Joe Bruchac) *first collection of poetry

Port City Poems (2013) Maine Poetry Council “Song for Machigonne” (historical poem used for teaching college courses)

MELUS journal (Multi Ethnic Literatures of the United States) Spring 2012 (cover art) “All Nations Seek Peace”

Native Literatures: Generations

Poiesis: Volume 13 EGS Press: Toronto, ON - “Piecework” (poem) and “She Gathers Together Sweetgrass and the Sun” (graphic art) May 2011 Issue

Stonecoast Lines (2010) *a publication of the Stonecoast MFA program - short excerpt of nonfiction from a work in progress “On Great Pond”

Goose River Anthology - Poetry, “At the Cove” and “Arrival”

Stolen Island Review - Poetry, “Orphan” “Sacred” and “Twenty-Three Winters”

The Review: Words & Images (USM) - Poetry, “Twenty-Three Winters”