Category: Writers Forum

Producers/hosts: Dr. Betty Duff and Joan Clemons

Guests: Gerald George, Grace Sheridan, Kelly Lombardi

Topic: Poetry by the Salt Coast Sages

Host: Dr. Betty Duff

Local youth poets

Hosts: Dr. Betty Duff and Joan Clemons

Guests: Authors Jean Davison and Lee Smith

Topic: The authors read from their work and a discussion follows.

Jean Davison holds a Ph.D from Stanford University. She is the author of several books, including Agriculture, Women and Land: The African Experience and Voices from Mutira: Change in the Lives of Rural Gikuyu Women. She founded the non-profit organization, IDEA, in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1980s. The group later merged with Global Exchange. Now retired from teaching at American University, international consulting work, writing, and family are her top priorities. She splits her year between Cape Rosier (Maine) and Austin, Texas. She is a member of the Deer Isle Writers Collective and her most recent publication is The Ostrich Wakes: Struggles for Change in Highland Kenya.
Lee Smith is the author of eleven novels including Oral History, Saving Grace, The Devil’s Dream, and Fair and Tender Ladies as well as three collections of stories. Her novel, The Last Girls, was a New York Times bestseller as well as co-winner of the Southern Book Critics Circle Award. A retired professor of English at North Carolina State, she received an Academy Award in Fiction from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1999. Her new novel On Agate Hill will be published in October 2006. Lee spends her summers in Castine (Maine).

Host: Dr. Betty Duff
Guests: Author and essayist Barbara Hattemer; Fiction writer Deborah Marshall; Poet Jacqueline Michaud reading some of their work

In what ways have their writing experiences differed?
Do they target a particular market? How?
What are the benefits of belonging to a writer’s group?

Writer's Forum 07/13/06 [ 58:35 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Host: Dr. Betty Duff

Guests: Novelists Linda Tatelbaum and Donna Morrisey, poet Karin Spitfire

Topic: Prose, poetry, read by the authors and followed by discussion

Writer’s Forum 05/11/06 Hosts: Dr. Betty Duff and Joan Clemons Guest: Laura Emack Topic: Military Recruitment. Laura Emack’s play “An Army of One”. Features local actings reading scenes. How does the recruitment process operate? What motivates young people to join the military? What is the copywright process for acting in or producing plays?

Writer’s Forum 03/09/2006

WERU’S Writers Forum hosted by Dr. Betty Parker Duff began 2006 with the authors who were the inspiration for the program. They are all members of the Deer Isle Morning Writers Group and contributors to the first edition of the Eggemoggin Reach Review.

The February 9 program will feature Diane Berlew, Gayle Hadley and Norma Sheard.

Diane Berlew started writing seriously after attending a Deer Isle Writers’ Group meeting. She has taught preschool and worked as a counselor for emotionally disturbed children. She ran a bed and breakfast in Stonington, where she has lived for 25 years. She particularly enjoys writing stories for children based on ones told to her by her father and for adults based on an active fantasy life. She has also been a cartoonist, illustrating three books and numerous life situations.

Gayle Ashburn Hadley pursued her writing habit while teachin in or directing programs fo inner city low-income children. She now reside and writes on Deer Isle. Excerpts from her novel, Eternal Vigilance, were read at the 2003 Stonecoast Writers Conference and published in the Eggemoggin Reach Review. Her humorous essay, Insectomania, appeared in The Working Waterfront.

Norma Vorhees Sheard received a New Jersey State Council of the Arts Poetry Fellowship in 1989 before moving permanently to Maine. She was awarded a poetry residency at the Millay Colony in Austerlitz, New York in 2004. Her poetry has appeared in many journals and anthologies including New York Quarterly, Nimrod and Puckerbrush. Her recent work includes a poem in the first issue of the Bangor Metro published in June of 2005.