Maine voices LIVE
The MaineVoices Live event series features 1:1 conversations between Portland Press Herald writers and notable Maine voices. Audience members can expect a memorable night and a chance for Q&A’s at the end.
Monica Wood / March 5, 2019
Monica Wood is a novelist, memoirist and playwright. Her second play, “The Half-Light,” makes its world premiere Feb. 26 at Portland Stage and runs through Sunday, March 24.
Her most recent novel, “The One-in-a-Million Boy,” has been translated into 20 languages in over 30 countries. She is also the author of “When We Were the Kennedys,” a New England bestseller, O, the Oprah Magazine summer-reading pick and winner of the May Sarton Memoir Award and the Maine Literary Award. Her novel “Any Bitter Thing” was an American Booksellers Association bestseller and Book Sense top 10 pick.
Her widely anthologized short stories have won a Pushcart Prize and been featured on public radio. She also writes books for writers and teachers. Her nonfiction has appeared in O, the Oprah Magazine; The New York Times; Martha Stewart Living; Parade and many other publications. Her first play, “Papermaker,” enjoyed an extended debut run at Portland Stage, becoming its best-selling play ever.
Cathie Pelletier / September 26, 2017
Cathie Pelletier is the author of twelve novels, beginning with The Funeral Makers in 1986, which was inspired by her hometown of Allagash, Maine. Her most recent, A Year After Henry, was published in 2014 and was a finalist for the Maine Fiction Award. Two of her novels, Dancing at the Harvest Moon and Candles on Bay Street, were published under the pseudonym K.C. McKinnon and both became TV films. The former was produced by Columbia TriStar and starred Jacqueline Bisset and Valerie Harper. The latter, produced by Hallmark Hall of Fame starred Alicia Silverstone. Her next book is Proving Einstein Right, a collaboration with theoretical physicist S. James Gates, Jr. It will be published in spring 2019 by Public Affairs.
Pelletier also has close ties to the music world. She’s a songwriter whose words have been sung by David Byrne, the Texas Tornados, and the Glaser Brothers and she collaborated with country icon Tanya Tucker on 100 Ways to Beat the Blues and with the late Grand Ole Opry star Skeeter Davis on The Christmas Note.
Bob Keyes, an award-winning Portland Press Herald arts reporter, will led the conversation as we heard firsthand stories from Cathie about her multi-faceted career and her part in Maine’s literary legacy.
Video Recorded September 26, 2017
Lily King / September 27, 2016
Lily King grew up in Massachusetts and received her B.A. in English Literature from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and her M.A. in Creative Writing from Syracuse University. She has taught English and Creative Writing at several universities and high schools in this country and abroad.
Lily’s first novel, The Pleasing Hour (1999) won the Barnes and Noble Discover Award and was a New York Times Notable Book and an alternate for the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her second, The English Teacher, was a Publishers Weekly Top Ten Book of the Year, a Chicago Tribune Best Book of the Year, and the winner of the Maine Fiction Award. Her third novel, Father of the Rain (2010), was a New York Times Editors Choice, a Publishers Weekly Best Novel of the Year and winner of both the New England Book Award for Fiction and the Maine Fiction Award. It was translated into various languages.
Lily’s latest novel, Euphoria, was released in June 2014. It won the Kirkus Award for Fiction 2014, the New England Book Award for Fiction 2014 and was a finalist in the National Book Critics Circle Awards. Euphoria was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times Book Review. It was included in TIME’s Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014 and the Amazon Best Books of 2014. Reviewed on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, Emily Eakin called Euphoria, “a taut, witty, fiercely intelligent tale of competing egos and desires in a landscape of exotic menace.” The novel is being translated into numerous languages and a feature film is underway.
Lily is the recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship and a Whiting Writer’s Award. Her short fiction, essays, and reviews have appeared in many publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Review of Books, Ploughshares, Glimmer Train, and several anthologies.
Video Recorded September 27, 2016
Richard Blanco / March 29, 2016
Richard Blanco is the fifth inaugural poet in US history—the youngest, first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban-exiled parents and raised in Miami, the negotiation of cultural identity and place characterize his body of work. He is the author of three poetry collections: Looking for the Gulf Motel, Directions to the Beach of the Dead, and City of a Hundred Fires; and two memoirs: The Prince of Los Cocuyos: A Miami Childhood and For All of Us, One Today: An Inaugural Poet’s Journey. The University of Pittsburgh Press has published the commemorative chapbooks One Today, Boston Strong, and Matters of the Sea, the last of which Blanco read at the historic reopening of the US Embassy in Havana. In 2015, the inaugural poem One Today was released as a children’s book, in collaboration with the renowned illustrator, Dav Pilkey.
Blanco’s many awards include the Agnes Starrett Poetry Prize from the University of Pittsburgh Press, the Beyond Margins Award from the PEN American Center, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Thom Gunn Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and two Maine Literary Awards. He is a Woodrow Wilson Visiting Fellow, a Phi Beta Kappa Alumnus Member, and has received honorary doctorates from Macalester College, Colby College, and the University of Rhode Island. In 2015, The Academy of American Poets named him its first Education Ambassador. He has taught at Central Connecticut State University, Georgetown University, American University, and Wesleyan University. A builder of cities as well as poems, Blanco holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing. He shares his time between Bethel, Maine and Concord, Massachusetts.
Video Recorded March 29, 2016