ALUMS 

Elisabeth Tova Bailey (Creative Nonfiction, S’15) was delighted to have one of her sentences selected for study and analysis by Nina Schuyler in her Stunning Sentence Substack. The sentence, which personifies time, is from Elisabeth’s book The Sound of a Wild Snail Eating. This is a wonderful substack for sentence geeks. The analysis can be read here. 

Sarah C. Baldwin‘s (Creative Nonfiction, S’15) feature on physicians who blow the whistle on human rights abuses is the cover story of the summer issue of Medicine@Brown. A piece about a medical student questioning the notion of precocious puberty among Black girls appears in the same issue. Sarah had a lot of fun telling the story of Brandeis University’s first 75 years through 20 objects and tracing the school’s amazing roster of faculty and alumni composers from its founding to the present day. 

Peter Adrian Behravesh (Popular Fiction, W’18) is a finalist for the Ignyte Award for Best Fiction Podcast for his work as the audio producer of the fantasy fiction podcast PodCastle, alongside all of PodCastle‘s fabulous 2022 staff. This is Podcastle‘s fourth Ignyte Award nomination in a row. The Ignyte Awards ceremony will be held in October 2023.

Shannon Bowring (Fiction, W’22) launched her debut novel, The Road to Dalton (Europa Editions), at PRINT: A Bookstore on June 6th. So far, the book has garnered high praise, including a Kirkus Starred Review, and was chosen as a title for the June 2023 Indie Next List. Shannon kept busy throughout June promoting The Road to Dalton at Maine libraries and bookstores, including an event held at Longfellow Books with Stonecoast faculty Aaron Hamburger and Stonecoast alum Jennifer Dupree (Fiction, W’15). It was a lovely full-circle moment for Shannon and Jen, who were both lucky enough to have had Aaron as their mentor. In another Stonecoast reunion, Shannon co-hosted a Business of Writing presentation with alums/friends Natalie Harris-Spencer (Fiction, S’21) and Darcie Abbene (Fiction, S’21) at the June residency. In addition to in-person events for The Road to Dalton, Shannon had two taped interviews, one with Maine author Irene Drago, the other with a librarian from New Jersey, and a print interview, featured on Natalie Harris-Spencer’s website, Aspiring Author. She also wrote a piece for LitHub: “Everything is Connected: A Reading List of Short Stories,” which appeared in early June. Click here for a list of Shannon’s upcoming author events.

Ryan Brod‘s (Creative Nonfiction/Fiction, S’17) first book, an essay collection called Tributaries: Essays from Woods and Waters, is set for publication in late September of this year (Islandport Press). Mechanics Hall, in Portland, ME, will host the launch party on October 11th at 6:00 p.m.

J Brooke (they/e; Poetry, S’19) has two poems just published within The Rumpus. The first poem, “I Drew a House,” was enormously impacted by work J did with Deb Marquart while pursuing their MFA at Stonecoast. The second poem, “T,” also developed during time as a student at Stonecoast, ignores well-intentioned suggestions of former Stonecoast faculty and current poet laureate of Texas Amanda Johnston (who wanted it to be a concrete poem) and current Stonecoast faculty Cate Marvin (who wanted it to be much, much longer). Fortunately neither Amanda nor Cate (now friends of J’s) hold a grudge.

Linda Buckmaster (Creative Nonfiction, S’11) has been awarded an Artist Project Grant from the Maine Arts Commission for her project “Of Cod and Community.”  With designer Lori Harley, she is developing a traveling installation adapted from her book Elemental: A Miscellany of Salt Cod and Islands. Eight 3′ x 5′ soft fabric banners will be printed with text and images from the book. They are designed to hang in community spaces such as libraries to reflect the centuries-long interrelationships between the North Atlantic cod and humans. The first showing will be the month of October in the Belfast (Maine) Free Library, and in Rockport Public Library (February) and Camden Public Library (August 2024). She is reaching out to other coastal and island libraries to participate. One of the goals of the project is to move the word off the page and to make it accessible to other readers.

Aimee Degroat (publishing under AJ Newsom; Fiction, S’21) had her short story “Before the Split” published in the spring 2023 issue of The Willam and Mary Review. 

Jennifer Dupree (Fiction, W’15) is pleased to announce that her novel The Miraculous Flight of Owen Leach was a finalist for a 2023 National Indie Excellence Award.

Elizabeth Garber (Creative Nonfiction, W’10) continues to give book talks promoting her 2022 Kirkus starred review memoir, Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year, in Maine, and will give talks about her new project in Western New York. 

• Tuesday, July 11, at 6:00 p.m. — Elizabeth will have a reading and conversation about her memoir at the Camden Public Library, 55 Main Street.  
• Thursday, July 13, at 6:30 p.m. — Elizabeth will have a reading and conversation about her memoir at the Sedgwick Village Library at 3 Reach Road, Sedgwick. 
• Thursday, July 20, 7:00 p.m. — Elizabeth will give a talk at the Roycroft Campus Corporation in East Aurora, New York, titled “The Life of Miriam Elberta Hubbard: Elbert and Alice Hubbard’s Love Child.”  Elizabeth’s great grandfather Elbert Hubbard started the Roycroft Arts and Crafts Community in 1895. Elizabeth is in the process of researching and writing a novel about her grandmother’s life. After years of scandal and front-page coverage in papers across the country, in January 1904, Elbert and Alice were finally free to marry and with 9-year-old Miriam, they moved to the Roycroft. This talk will focus on Miriam’s life in the years before, her youth at the Roycroft, and what happened when she was suddenly orphaned at age 20 after her parents were lost at sea with the sinking of the Lusitania in 1915. Based on biographies of her parents, Roycroft and family photos, newspaper articles, letters, Miriam’s unpublished papers, and family stories, Elizabeth, one of Miriam’s grandchildren, explores what Miriam’s life was like, in and out of the public spotlight. For more information, click here.
• Saturday, July 22, 11 a.m. — Elizabeth will give a Zoom talk from the Roycroft Campus Corporation in East Aurora, New York, titled “The Life of Miriam Elberta Hubbard: Elbert and Alice Hubbard’s Love Child.” For more information and to register for the Zoom, click here.

Linda Quinby Lambert (Creative Nonfiction, W’16) published a poem in I Sing the Salmon Home, a collection edited by Washington State poet Rena Priest, and participated in the launch at the State Capitol in Olympia. Linda also wrote the Preface to Spring and All, an anthology prompted by William Carlos Williams’ 1923 publication of the same name.

Nina B. Lichtenstein (Creative Nonfiction, S’20) is thrilled to announce the launch of Maine Writers Studio, which will offer workshops (on-line and in person), retreats, and a bi-monthly literary salon & open mic in Brunswick, ME. The next lit salon & open mic is scheduled for August 16that 7:00 p.m.

Alison McMahan (Popular Fiction, W’10) is teaching a free two-hour class via Zoom entitled “What Makes a Good Scene: Twists, Misleads, and Reveals” on August 5, 2023, at 2:00 p.m. EST, for the Alvin Sherman Library Series at Nova Southeastern University. She writes, “In this class we will start by reviewing what makes a scene a scene: the scene as a unit of action, usually defined by a single setting and linear time. We will talk about the character who drives the scene, what obstacles they encounter, and the perspective (point of view) on the scene. We will talk about how we know when a scene is over. Then we will focus on two techniques that make scenes interesting: Twists, and misleads and reveals. Register here. If you can’t make the class, register anyway to get access to the video later.”

In July Catharine H. Murray (Creative Nonfiction, S’17) will be joining object maker Tanya Crane, dancer and citizen artist Brian J. Evans , and writer Ning Sullivan for an artists’ residency at Hewnoaks in Lovell, Maine, where she will be working on her next memoir. 

Laura Navarre (Popular Fiction, W’11)won the Virginia Romance Writers’ Holt Medallion for Best Book by a Virginia Author with her extra spicy, extra shifty, wild & witchy why-choose academy romance Gemini Queen. Laura’s adventures continue in July with the launch of the Witching World, her reader subscription community, at https://reamstories.com/witchingworld

Marisca Pichette (Popular Fiction, S’21) joined Shacklebound Books editor Eric Fomley and author Jenna Hanchey for a flash-fiction reading hosted by Space Cowboy Books at the end of June. She read her story “The Wall” which appeared in the Shacklebound Books anthology Maelstroms. She also made her second appearance in Enchanted Living, alongside Dora Goss, for the Summer 2023 Witch Issue! In June, she had stories published in two anthologies: No Trouble at All,an anthology of polite horror from Cursed Morsels Press; and Tumbled Tales, an anthology from Wandering Wave Press. 

Bruce Pratt‘s (Fiction, S’04) short article on less well-known museums in Maine, “Weird Science,” is in the current edition of Portland Magazine. His short story “Fog Bank” will appear in the same publication later this summer. Bruce will be offering a seminar and workshop titled Inhabiting Your Characters for Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance on the last Saturday of August and the first Saturday of September at the Belfast Library. Please visit the MWPA website for details. 

Revelore Press has announced Scrying Angelos, an upcoming book-length, nonfiction lyric essay by Nitasia Roland (Popular Fiction, W’19), as well as a tarot deck. Nitasia’s small-press imprint Urania Press has news of the companion book to her latest tarot deck Starlore Astronomical Tarot coming out in September 2023; read about it here.

Recently, Lisa Romeo (Creative Nonfiction, S’08) has been focusing almost entirely on her freelance editing business—and enjoying seeing clients succeed in varied ways. Her developmental editing client Cynthia Ehrenkrantz’s memoir Seeking Shelter: Memoir of a Jewish Girlhood in Wartime Britain was recently a finalist for the Wishing Shelf Book Awards (UK) and The Indie Book Awards (US). (Lisa notes what a pleasure it was to help bring this story to fruition for the octogenarian first-time author.) One of Lisa’s writing coaching clients, Ariella Cook-Shonkoff, a psychologist who writes about the intersection of mental health, climate change, and gun violence, has published op-ed, opinion, and reported essays in The San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Grist, Salon, and The Sacramento Bee. Another client is in (can’t talk about it) talks to move directly from the memoir proposal that Lisa helped develop and edited to a series on a major streaming service.

Catherine Schmitt (Creative Nonfiction, W’12) has two forest-related stories out this month, one about the effort to plant a million trees in New York City for Northern Woodlands magazine and another about shipworms, shipwrecks, and what happens when trees meet their fate in the sea, for Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors.

The play The Pocket Guide to Desert Survival by Olive L. Sullivan (Fiction/Poetry, S’15) opens for three performances starting July 28 at the Memorial Auditorium in Pittsburg, Kansas. Tickets are on sale now at memorialauditorium.org. Artwork for posters, banners, program cover and other publicity is by Stonecoast alum Emily Knowles. The play tells Olive’s story of cancer treatment through a mythic lens, in which the main character journeys through the liminal space of a desert to come to terms with what it means to survive.

Robin Clifford Wood (Creative Nonfiction, S’15) will be giving an outdoor book talk in beautiful Prospect Harbor Maine on Thursday, July 27 at 2:00 p.m. at Dorcas Library, 28 Main Street, Prospect Harbor (Gouldsboro), Maine. Robin will discuss the nine-year adventure of researching and writing the award-winning biography/memoir hybrid about Rachel Field, The Field House: A Writer’s Life Lost and Found on an Island in Maine.

FACULTY  

Faith Adiele‘s (Creative Nonfiction) recent DETOUR column, “Morocco’s Fes Medina Old World Seen Through New Eyes,” a meditation on slow travel and deep exploration as she embarks upon her writing residency in Morocco, has been popular with summer readers in several national newspapers, including the Miami Herald. 

David Anthony Durham‘s middle grade novel, The Shadow Prince, is now an audiobook from Recorded Books. It’s available at Audible.com. His story, “The Wolf and the Butterfly” appears in the Wild Cards anthology, Pairing Up (July 11th), edited by George R.R. Martin.

Aaron Hamburger (Fiction, Creative Nonfiction) was awarded the Jim Duggins, PhD, Outstanding Mid-Career Novelist Prize by Lambda Literary. A quote from the judges’ citation:

“Throughout his career Aaron Hamburger has published beautifully written novels, short stories, essays, and journalism, and other kinds of writing that has always been craft-centered and language-driven while also expanding and complexifying notions of LGBTQ life…He has also been an advocate of LGBTQ writing on the whole, whether mentoring emerging LGBTQ talent or helping to make queer literature more a part of the national conversation.”

You can also check out a video craft chat about the writing of Hotel Cuba via The Writer’s Center on YouTube.  

And after two busy months on tour, Aaron is taking a break in July, but will be back on the road in August. Catch him at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in NYC on Thursday, August 10, 7:00 p.m. Or in the Detroit area at Sidetrack Books (which bravely held Drag Queen Story Hour in the face of Proud Boys protests a few months ago) on August 25 at 7:00 p.m.