Read local! The Rockland Public Library will hold its first ever Local Author Fair in the Library’s Community Room on Saturday, April 13 from 10 AM to 2 PM. Meet, talk with, and learn from local authors from Midcoast Maine. A variety of genres are included in this drop-in book fair. The ten authors, all from Knox, Lincoln and Waldo Counties, in the fair, are: Laurie Apgar Chandler, Diana Coleman, Lee Heffner, Tom Jamrog, Barbara Kent Lawrence, Brooke Pacy, Gin Mackey, Lisa Steele-Maley, and L.W. van Keuren. The authors will have displays set up with information about their published works, their writing and themselves, and they will sign their books and have copies for sale.
There will also be mini talks by featured authors scheduled in the Library’s Board Room throughout the day. At 10:30, Laurie Apgar Chandler will present “Small Moments in a Long Journey.” Diana Coleman will pose the question, “What New Risk Would You Like to Take?” in her talk at 11:00 AM. At 11:30, Barbara Kent Lawrence will discuss her writing process. Tom Jamrog will summarize some obstacles and surprises that occurred during his Continental Trail journey at 12:30 and Gin Mackey will describe “How a Novel is Plotted in 10 Minutes or Less” at 1 PM.
The day will include refreshments and the opportunity to win door prizes, too.
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Laurie Apgar Chandler daydreamed about moving to Maine for years. In 2003, she and her two children finally did, buying a log cabin surrounded by lakes and ponds. Changing careers from forest research to special education, she remarried, and discovered a new passion, wilderness canoeing. After losing her husband, Laurie began taking longer and longer journeys alone. In the summer of 2015, she surprised even herself by solo thru-paddling the 740-mile Northern Forest Canoe Trail in a new 13-foot Kevlar canoe. Laurie lives in Bremen and works at Great Salt Bay Community School in Damariscotta. Upwards, which tells of her canoe journey, is her first book. Upwards weaves faith, nature, and the goodness of people into an inspiring adventure on storied rivers from the Adirondacks to the Allagash.
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Believing in female fortitude and risk-taking power, Diana Coleman shares compelling stories of women enjoying new experiences, riveting adventures, and life-changing risks in her book Women Going For It! Taking Risks After 50. Twenty-six dynamic women, 50s through 80s, share their captivating, risk-taking stories with grit and humor. Diana has lectured around the country about women and girls overcoming daunting challenges. A former administrator and fundraiser for organizations including Save the Children, the University of California, Berkeley, Pen Bay Healthcare, and the International Museum of Women, Diana’s work and studies have taken her to Central America, Africa and Asia. Her travel essays are published in the Goose River Anthology. Originally from Massachusetts, Diana lived thirty years in San Francisco and, when not traveling, resides in Maine.
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Kathleen Fox, PhD has worked as an artist, professor, and author in St. George, Maine since the 1970s. Her watercolors have been shown throughout the Northeast; she has received several awards for her paintings and children’s books. She has written four children’s books and taught social welfare classes at the University of Southern Maine, The University of Maine Orono, and the University College of Rockland, Maine. Fox is interested in documenting the people, animals, and places relating to the fishing life of coastal Maine. Fox’s books include: Beowulf of Maine, Beowulf’s Kitten, and Can Animals Talk on Christmas Eve? BEOWULF OF MAINE is the old English story of the king who fought Grendel and dragons – but this book stars Beowulf the Newfie, who only dreams of fighting them. BEOWULF’S KITTEN is the story of a kitten named Amelie (Beowulf’s real kitten) who comes to live with Beowulf and is a pest, whom he gets pretty tired of. CAN ANIMALS TALK ON CHRISTMAS EVE? Virginia is a little girl living in Maine whose mother tells her animals can talk at midnight on Christmas Eve. She gets up to see, but the dog (Beowulf) is asleep and the cat (Beowulf’s kitten, Amelie) nowhere to be found.
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LEE HEFFNER WILL NOT BE ATTENDING Lee Heffner is author of Write to Finish: A Road Map to Authorship. Her passions are writing and writers. She began her work with creatives in 1995. A writer of both fiction and non-fiction, she integrates her passions and skills to coach writers to achieve their goals. In addition, she teaches multiple classes to further develop the writing practices of her students. Write to Finish is a no-nonsense, practical guide to transition from writer to author, that helps potential authors earn to navigate the rapid changes of today’s publication landscape to identify their best path.
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Thomas Jamrog, Maine Guide and past president of the Maine Association of School Psychology, has been backpacking and exploring the outdoors for 50 years. He penned a popular column in Motorcycle Tour & Travel, and twice completed 24-hour, 1,000-mile Iron Butt motorcycle rides. Tom earned the Triple Crown award from the American Long Distance Hiking Association in 2014. His book, In the Path of Young Bulls, details a team’s five-month-long stint of daily challenges along the Continental Divide National Scenic Trail, one of the USA’s toughest long-distance journeys. The book also serves as a resource for section and long-distance hikers in planning their own CDT adventures, by including daily mileages from starting and ending locations, as well as on-trail reports and conditions for each day’s hike.
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Barbara Kent Lawrence earned a BA in anthropology from Bennington College, an MA in sociology from New York University, and an EdD from Boston University. She taught anthropology and history in a high school, then co-founded and ran a real-estate and construction firm in Northeast Harbor, Maine. After receiving her EdD, she served as a policy analyst for the Rural School and Community Trust and later at KnowledgeWorks Foundation, while teaching writing and education courses at Northeastern and Lesley universities in Boston. Islands of Time and its sequel The Other Island: Ben’s Story are Barbara Kent Lawrence’s seventh and eighth books and first two works of fiction. She has also written Bitter Ice: A Memoir of Love, Food, and Obsession; The Hungry i: A Workbook for Partners of Men with Eating Disorders; The Hermit Crab Solution; Dollars & Sense 1: The Cost Effectiveness of Small Schools; Dollars & Sense 2: Lessons from Cost-Effective Small Schools, and many articles about education.
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Gin Mackey is the author of Disappear Our Dead, a Midcoast Maine murder mystery, and Suddenly Spying, a madcap caper. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Best New England Crime Stories 2016: Red Dawn and Fish or Cut Bait. Gin is a past president of the writing organization Sisters in Crime/New England and a member of Maine Authors & Publishers Alliance. She lives on the coast of Maine in the village of Owls Head, where she’s hard at work on her next novel. DISAPPEAR OUR DEAD tells the story of a young widow who she becomes a home funeral guide, reviving an age-old tradition to help others care for their loved ones at home, but her new life may be destroyed when she is accused of helping a client use a home funeral as cover for murder. In SUDDENLY SPYING, Nora Gallagher’s secret agent sister Giselle dangles a big bucks spy assignment and promises to help Nora learn the spy business, Nora forgets about the time Giselle gave her a bouillon cube and told her it was a caramel. Nora’s assignment? Stop a coup on a remote tropical island.
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Brooke Pacy credits a casually supervised childhood in Chappaqua, NY, Mt. Desert Island, and Nantucket for a deep affinity with salt water and woods. She raised four children, taught literature, and wrote in Baltimore, MD—publishing poetry in small press journals as well as stories and thought pieces in magazines: Notre Dame Magazine, Wake Forest Magazine, Smithsonian Air and Space and the Baltimore Sun. She spent seven summers sailing the Atlantic Coast with her husband, and lives year round in Midcoast Maine. Her novel Vanishing Act asks the question, “Why does a woman on the brink of celebrity vanish without leaving a trace?” One March day in 1973, photographer Elsa Galen arrives on Nantucket Island, stocks her cottage with groceries and liquor, and announces to her cab driver that she will be having a party. No one on the island sees her again. Reaching back two generations to the turmoil in Eastern Europe between the World Wars, Elsa’s story is an odyssey, exploring the channels brutality can carve through lives and spirits, those innocent and others less so.
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After growing up in small towns of New England and Wisconsin, Lisa Steele-Maley developed a strong connection to the affirming rhythms of wilderness while living and working in the mountains and coasts of Alaska and Washington. Now, after 20 years of working for non-profit educational organizations, life’s journey has expanded to include parenting, caregiving, writing and participation in the Chaplaincy Institute of Maine’s Interfaith Ministry program. The author of Without a Map: A Caregiver’s Journey through the Wilderness of Heart and Mind, Lisa lives in an aging farmhouse on the coast of Maine with her husband, two teenage sons, and a handful of animals. Without a Map weaves together Lisa’s experience of caregiving with lessons gleaned from decades of wilderness travel, rural living, and parenting. Revealing the uncertainty, wisdom, love and reciprocity of a caregiving relationship, this memoir contributes a deeply personal perspective to the subjects of dementia and aging.
Now a resident of St. George, Maine, Luise van Keuren is an author and illustrator, often of historical fiction. At the book fair, she offers her novel Raven, Stay by Me, set in the year 1000 in Newfoundland and Labrador. Here a Norse girl finds herself the only survivor of a shipwreck. Accompanied by a young raven she rescues, she is taken in by a Paleo-Inuit community, although their two cultures deeply mistrust each other. Targeted for young readers, the novel also appeals to adults. The author taught writing and literature on the university level for several years. She is the recipient of the Ralph Nading Hill Prize for historical writing, and has been twice recipient of the Northern New England Drama Prize.
