Peaks Island Press
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Peaks Island author, educator, and scholar Laima Vince offers Creative Writing Workshop
Laima Vince on a Peaks Island ferry
Those of you who are subscribed readers of Peaks Island Press have read previously about Peaks Island author, educator, and scholar Laima Vince when I featured one of her many books, The Ghost in Hannah’s Parlor. Given how often Laima’s speaking engagements and international scholarship draw her away, globetrotting, it’s a rare opportunity for islanders – current and aspiring – when she offers a Creative Writing Workshop. Now is your chance.
For those of you who have dreamed of writing a memoir, a novel, or a poem, Laima’s workshop series is designed for those who have written a few pages, but just don’t know how to take the writing further. “By working with structured Creative Writing exercises, they will learn how to access the unconscious mind and mine the psyche for narratives, images, metaphors. My students will learn how to shape and develop ideas and how to follow through with their writing,” Laima said.
Laima is the author of three books of literary nonfiction: Lenin’s Head on a Platter, The Snake in the Vodka Bottle, and Journey into the Backwaters of the Heart, and a novel, This is Not My Sky, in addition to other books. She has twice been awarded a Fulbright in Creative Writing and is the recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant in Literature. Laima earned her Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from Columbia University and is now working on completing a second MFA in Nonfiction at the University of New Hampshire. Laima taught Creative Writing at the University of Southern Maine for ten years and for five years was the faculty director of the Stonecoast Summer Writers’ Conference. Among Laima’s former students who wrote their first books while enrolled in her workshops are James Hayman, author of The Cutting and George Rosol, author of This Island Life.
The writing class will meet four Saturday afternoons in June, from 4 to 7 pm (June 8, 15, 22, 29).
The fee for four weeks is $100. Classes will meet at 37 Sterling Street. Please contact Laima Vince Sruoginis at Laimavince@gmail.com or call 329-6449 to sign up.
Who is Patricia Erikson? – I’m an author, educator, and consultant who lives on Peaks Island in Casco Bay, Maine and blogs at Peaks Island Press to keep up with the many writers whose talent and joie de vivre make this island community an amazing place. I’m also a history geek who blogs at Heritage in Maine.
Come rock Stone Boat at a June poetry reading on Peaks Island
Martin Steingesser (photo by Sara Sutter)
Have you heard about Stone Boat, a poetry reading group on Peaks Island that meets monthly? It’s wonderful to see poets pooling together in this island’s amazing literary community. Stone Boat is a group that encourages open readings, but also features a poet each month. Participants may use up to five minutes for reading their original work or that of a favorite poet.
The June event, scheduled for 6:00 PM on Wednesday, June 5th at Jones Landing, will feature Portland, Maine’s first Poet Laureate, Martin Steingesser. An award-winning poet published in a broad spectrum of national magazines and anthologies, Steingesser is also a seasoned performer of poetry and music, sometimes involving stilts.
About poetry, Steingesser writes, “Writing and presenting poems is a way I touch and make present a sense of grace I want in my life. I remember once being intrigued by Wallace Stevens saying poetry was a sacrament in his life. It has come to that. There are moments I love in poems I have made when they are given, when windows, doors, walls blow off, and I am in a warm, boundless space with whoever is listening.” He’s both playful and inspiring, so don’t miss it! Questions? Call Jesse Mantsch 207-831-7354
Who is Patricia Erikson? – I’m an author, educator, and consultant who lives on Peaks Island in Casco Bay, Maine and blogs at Peaks Island Press to keep up with the many writers whose talent and joie de vivre make this island community an amazing place. I’m also a history geek who blogs at Heritage in Maine.
On writing from a breathless moment: a response to reading “The Snow Child”
Peaks Island Press doesn’t review books written by fellow islanders because the pretentiousness of that offends me. Instead, I like to feature the authors themselves and their writing process, sometimes even my own writer’s journey. What inspires us to write? How does writing fit into – or spill out of – our lives? So, although this entry may look like a book review, it’s not really. I have just finished reading a book, pressing it against my chest and holding it there as though its wisdom would slip between my ribs. It left me struggling to take my next breath and inspired me to pick up a pen.
You know those e-profiles on Facebook and Linked In, the ones that ask you to list your favorites of this, favorites of that – music, movies, and so on? My finger always taps at the blank prompt for “favorite books.” Favorite is a demanding adjective, one that I only deploy when that something makes me gush. The Help (Kathryn Stockett), Water for Elephants (Sara Gruen) and Chocolat (Joanne Harris) have achieved favorite status for me because they transported me to extraordinary, authentic emotional landscapes. Now that I’ve turned its last page and intend to read it again right away, I list The Snow Child by Eowyn Ivey as one of my rare “favorites.”
Ivey is neither Mainer nor islander, but rather an Alaskan writer; however, the ragged, furred-and-clawed setting that she conjures should feel familiar to those of us who maneuver deep snows, burning cold, chronically-shrinking woodpiles, and the pursuit of wringing our blink-like summer of all that it promises. The Snow Child offers a brave, lancing portrait of love and pain and empathy. An aged couple homesteading in Alaska realize that their anguished loneliness may have breathed life into a simple snowman – a snowgirl, really; they then wrestle with fear, chase their hope, and tentatively learn to embrace a more expansive understanding of family and life itself.
Like most people, I have lost loved ones – some unborn and unnamed, others present, yet bent and vacant with illness. Like the main characters of The Snow Child, Jack and Mabel, I dread the fierce love that can make the simple passage of a child out the door turn into an unexpected moment of raw and crippling fear too big to comprehend. But it isn’t the book, it’s Eowyn Ivey, who inspires me as a writer; she beckons her readers into the bitter, toothed Alaskan wilderness to witness the beauty in the sheen of a swan’s feathers and she holds our hand as she shows us the courage it takes to live a fairy tale life whose ending is already known. Reading The Snow Child made it difficult for me to pull in my next breath; it is that moment, that moment of breathless wonder and desperation in life that leaves me no choice but to write.
If you’re intrigued by this book, I point you to the video trailer and an interview with Eowyn Ivey below.
Twain Braden: The Complete Guide to Sailing & Seamanship
Twain Braden with his newest boat renovation project
A year and a half ago, Peaks Island Press caught up with Twain Braden when he and his family migrated back to “the Rock,” back to living on Peaks Island like so many other families who have left and then returned, including my own. The 2011 post talked about his Ghosts of the Pioneers and hinted that his next book was in production. Now, “The Complete Guide to Sailing & Seamanship” (Skyhorse Publishing 2013) is hitting the market just in time for the intended audience – beginner and expert sailors alike – to grab a copy before they give up leisurely reading for hauling sails. Although Twain practices law, he’s also known to be the kind of guy who clings to a bowsprit in 30 knot winds, if that’s what the situation demands. Suffice it to say, Twain is not your average island author. A Complete Guide to Sailing & Seamanship joins a long list of Twain’s maritime publications – Wooden Boat and Ocean Navigator articles, The Handbook of Sailing Techniques: Professional Tips, Expert Advice, Essential Skills (2003) and the non-fiction thriller In Peril: A Daring Decision, a Captain’s Resolve, and the Salvage that Made History written with Skip Strong (2003[2005].
Unlike most encyclopedic manuals, The Complete Guide to Sailing & Seamanship animates instructional methods with stories of maritime adventures and beautiful illustrations. Everything from knots and lines to sailboat anatomy to anchoring, mooring, and berthing has its own chapter. By interweaving stories from his experience as a mariner with hands-on techniques, Twain makes clear the critical importance of good seamanship.
Twain Braden looks over the page proofs of The Complete Guide to Sailing & Seamanship
Readers of this newest book will be delighted to see that Twain has partnered with world-renowned marine illustrator Sam Manning who Mainers know from his over 30 years of illustration for Wooden Boat Magazine. Over 100 black and white illustrations enhance this guidebook.
Looking over the page proofs of the book, Twain pointed out one of Manning sketches that illustrates the story of a particular journey by the schooner, Bagheera, from Maryland to its new home in Maine. Twain has described the experience of the Bagheera losing its propeller and getting hammered by a storm front.
Twain points to one of Sam Manning’s sketches that illustrates one of Bagheera’s misadventures
Navigator, Jan./Feb. 2003, “
“At some point on that cold, miserable night, I made the choice to turn back for Gloucester. Twenty to 25 knots and a few breaking waves was one thing. Thirty to 40 knots and green water washing down the decks of an old boat that deserved better – and a seasick crew – was no one’s idea of a good time…We ultimately limped into Portland, Maine, feeling more like whipped dogs than conquering heroes (see Ocean Navigator “It’s hard to go home again”).
You’ll have to grab a copy of The Complete Guide to hear more of these stories. And with the renovation of a 20 foot Small Point One Design yacht under way (see above) with Lawrence Mott, more adventures are sure to follow.
A Path of Stars: Anne Sibley O’Brien contributes to “I’m Your Neighbor, Portland” City-wide Read
Anne Sibley O’Brien’s “A Path of Stars”
Stories build understanding.
Understanding builds neighborhoods.
Neighborhoods build a strong city.
Support the sharing of stories of Maine’s “new arrivals” and the cultural fabric of the City of Portland.
Peaks Island children’s book author/illustrator Anne Sibley O’Brien has made an important contribution to the upcoming city-wide read of books supported by the Maine Humanities Council called “I’m Your Neighbor, Portland.” When she’s not crossing the globe by plane to visit fans, crossing the harbor by ferry or the island by bicycle to go home, she’s adding to her impressive list of children’s book publications.
Mostly recently, Anne has authored “A Path of Stars” (Charlesbridge Publishing), the story of a Cambodian immigrant grandmother, Lok Yeay, who tells her granddaughter about her homeland and how her family would sit in their yard and watch the stars that glowed like fireflies. To write a picture book that captured the Cambodian American experience here in Maine, Anne explains,
“I started by reading every survivor memoir I could find, until the outline of life in Cambodia before 1975, the Killing Fields, the escape, and life in a new land became familiar. I talked with several scholars about trauma survival and the sociology of Cambodian Americans. Most significantly, I listened to my friends Veasna and Peng Kem, who spent hours sharing their own memories with me. Many of the details in this story come from their accounts, or were inspired by them.”
A Path of Stars has been named a Notable Social Studies Trade Books for Young People 2013 by the National Council for the Social Studies (NCSS) and the Children’s Book Council (CBC); it has also been named an Honor Picture Book of the Asian Pacific American Award for Literature 2013 based upon its literary and artistic merit, as selected by the Asian Pacific American Librarians Association.
Anne illustrated another one of the nine books chosen for this city-wide read: Moon Watchers, an inside view of daily life in a modern Muslim family during Ramadan. A launch event for the city-wide read of books set in Maine’s new arrival communities will occur on May 25th from 3-6 p.m. at the Portland Public Library.
Read, Speak, Listen: Island poetry event with Portland Poet Laureate Bruce Spang
National Poetry Month poster
Portland Poet Laureate Bruce Spang
The island poetry event will feature Portland Poet Laureate Bruce Spang. About poetry, Bruce Spang has said he liked how “a poem could encapsulate an experience, could traverse the landscape of my feelings and thought, going from the highs to lows, in a short compact form. It was a tiny epiphany, a way of seeing experience from a new lens.” Spang is author of To the Promised Land Grocery (Moon Pie Press, 2008), I Have Walked though Many Lives: Young Voices—Scarborough (Moon Pie, Press 2009), The Knot, (Snow Drift Press, 2005), and Tip End of Time (Snow Drift Press, 2004). In addition to being the city of Portland’s Poet Laureate, Spang is a facilitator for the Maine Humanity Council’s Let’s Talk About It poetry series.
Peaks Island author Scott Nash offers event at Portland Stage Co.
Join The Affiliate Artists and Author/illustrator Scott Nash for a night of readings from his new book, The High Skies Adventures of Blue Jay The Pirate, as well as other works by Nash.
An open discussion and book signing will follow the actors’ readings.
April 8th 7 p.m. at Portland Stage Co., Forest Avenue, Portland.
For the “big, bloody, beating heart”: Love from the Rock Benefit
In Peaks Island Press’ last article, I described the benefit for Longfellow Books, our beloved indie bookstore that Joshua Bodwell calls the “big, bloody, beating heart” of this city’s literary community. Peaks Islanders love Portland. They love their independent bookstore. And they love their independence out here on “the Rock.” Roll that all together, along with Scott and Nancy Nash‘s brilliant event logo artwork, and you have a benefit designed to help Longfellow Books recover from Nemo blizzard damage. Thanks to Eleanor Morse‘s inspiration to organize this event, you can come and bid for a 90 minute origami lesson, two piano tunings, or a bisque ware painting party for four, and much, much more! Just two days away, don’t miss it!
Love from the Rock
Brackett Memorial United Church
Sunday March 10th, 2:00 p.m.
- 2.00: Children’s book (ages 8 and up) readings begin–including authors Jamie Hogan, Scott Nash and Annie O’Brien;
- 2.30: Silent auction browsing and bidding.
- 2.45: Adult fiction reading from authors Nicole d’Entremont, James Hayman, and Eleanor Morse
- Coffee, tea, amazing baked goods, books for sale.
Love from “the Rock”: Peaks Island Reading and Silent Auction to Benefit Longfellow Books
Fans and humidifiers dry out Longfellow Books. MPBN photo.
On Sunday, March 10th, the Peaks Island community of authors, readers, and unabashed bibliophiles will gather to raise funds to benefit their beloved, award-winning independent bookstore, Longfellow Books. As most people know, “Nemo, the Blizzard of 2013″ delivered a destructive blow to the Longfellow Square-based bookstore, requiring it to close temporarily and undergo considerable repairs from damage incurred by severe flooding. Approximately half of the stock was damaged, and insurance will only partially cover the losses – you’re not surprised, I know.
Well, islanders aren’t afraid of rising waters and they’re prone to band together to make important things happen. Author Eleanor Morse is organizing a reading and silent auction to benefit Longfellow Books. Here is how you can get involved.
Eleanor Morse, at her recent reading at Longfellow Books
Love from the Rock
Brackett Memorial United Church
Sunday March 10th, 2:00 p.m.
- 2.00: Children’s book (ages 8 and up) readings begin–including authors Jamie Hogan, Scott Nash and Annie O’Brien;
- 2.30: Silent auction browsing and bidding.
- 2.45: Adult fiction reading from authors Nicole d’Entremont, James Hayman, and Eleanor Morse
- Coffee, tea, amazing baked goods, books for sale.
Longfellow Books is one of the last remaining indie bookstores in the Portland area. It’s
more than a store–it’s a place for people to gather, to browse, to attend readings and
events, to be a thinking and feeling human being. WANT TO KNOW WHAT YOU CAN DO?
Donations of services for the silent auction (help-your-neighbor/brighten March). For instance:
- a drawing lesson
- magician tricks for children’s birthday party
- juggling lessons
- dump run
- clean the refrigerator
- shoot pictures for an hour
- walk the dog/feed the cat
- interior design color consultation
- birthday cake/pie
- teach dance moves
What else?–let your mind roam free! Please email Rhonda Berg at brhonda1@maine.rr.com or Eleanor Morse at eleanor.morse@gmail.com to set up your donation.
Donations of baked goods for the afternoon of March 10th. Coffee will be provided, and juice for kids. If you can bring a plate of goodies, please bring it to the Fellowship Hall of the Brackett Church by 1.45 on March 10th.
Celebrate the Publication of White Dog Fell From the Sky at Longfellow Books
Previously, I have written about Eleanor Morse and her award-winning novel, The Unexpected Forest. Since that time, Eleanor has written her third novel, White Dog Fell from the Sky, whose publication by Viking she celebrates next Friday, January 11th.
Advance Praise for White Dog Fell From the Sky from Publishers Weekly “Pick of the Week” calls it “Brutal and beautiful . . . Morse’s unflinching portrayals of extremes of loyalty and cruelty make for an especially memorable novel.”
Portland’s beloved Indie bookstore, Longfellow Books, will host a wonderful evening of Zambabwean music, beginning at 6:30 p.m., followed by Eleanor reading from her book at 7 p.m.
Interested in learning more about Eleanor and her newest novel, White Dog Fell from the Sky? Read my interview with Eleanor here.
-Patricia Erikson is a Peaks Island-based writer and educator who blogs about the literary community on Peaks Island at Peaks Island Press.
