Category: Writers Forum

Writers?¢‚Ǩ‚Ñ¢ Forum is hosted by Dr. Betty Parker Duff and is a new program at WERU designed to bring you the voices of Maine writers from all over the state but especially from the coastal region.

Writers Forum 2/14/08

Hosts: Dr. Betty Duff and Joan Clemons

Topic: Love Song to Maine: Tradition, love poems, Maine poems, WERU

Guest: Pat Ranzoni (pranzoni@aol.com)

Mixed blood Yankee, Patricia Smith Ranzoni, was born in the Katahdin region to a Canadian-American woodcutter and farm girl from Orland and Castine, both descended from European settlers to Indian territory in what became Massachusetts then Maine, their roots mixing in relation with Native Americans and First Canadians. She grew up in Bucksport where she now writes from one of the subsistence farms of her youth.
Her unschooled documentary poems have been published across the country and abroad, and she is a frequent reader and reciter around Maine. In 2002 she became the first poet from the northern reach of the Appalachian Chain to be invited to read at the University of Ohio, Zanesville, Women of Appalachia Conference. Her work has been used in Colby College’s “Many Maines” course and by University of Maine  departments of history and English, and is being acquired by Fogler Library’s Special Collections and other archives of Maine history, class, and women’s studies.
Books: CLAIMING (1995), SETTLING (2000), ONLY HUMAN ~ Poems from the Atlantic Flyway (Sheltering Pines Press, 2005).

Questions this program may have answered for listeners:
What are some Maine traditions? How do Maine cultures connect with other cultures?
How are winters today like winters past for long-time natives keeping the old ways?

Writers Forum 9/13/07

Producer/host: Dr. Betty Duff and Joan Clemons

Guests:

Mary Duncan, author of Eyes of Garnet , a suspenseful tale of an 11 year old girl who grapples with her “second sight” (the Scottish term for having psychic abilities). Duncan is an artist who once owned a gallery in Blue Hill, Maine, a graphic designer and a florist (garnet@midmaine.com or www.eyesofgarnet.com)

Sanford Phippen, author of the novel Kitchen Boy; two books of short stories, The Police Know Everything and People Trying to Be Good; a book of essays, Cheap Gossip, and the editor of The Best Maine Stories and High Clouds Soaring, Storms Driving Low: The Letters of Ruth Moore. He has appeared on Maine Public Television as the host of “RFD Maine”. A former columnist for Maine Times, he is a graduate of the University of Maine and Syracuse University (sanphip@aol.com)