Category: Writers Forum

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 January 12 program featured Anne Burton, Sucha Cardoza, Brenda Gilchrist, and Nancy Hodermarsky.

Anne Larkosh Burton moved to Burnt Cove in Stonington four years ago, where she takes instructions in relaxation techniques from her orange tabby, Bobcat. She writes poetry and personal essays and is presently working on a Spiritual Odyssey. In a former life she worked as a Family Therapist and Pastoral Counselor.

Sucha Cardoza came to writing through acting, which she studied in New York with Irene Dailey and New Mexico with the late Kim Stanley. Her teachers, with whom she also worked and taught, continue to inform her life as a writer. Her work has appeared in Sunstone, the Santa Fe Literary Review, Primavera, and the Eggemoggin Reach Review She lives on Little Deer Isle with her dogs.

Brenda Gilchrist wrote, illustrated and designed four books published by Braceypoint Press, Deer Isle, including Paws for Peace and Gabi’s Doggone Totally Awesome Guide to Maine. After thirty years in art books publishing in New York, she moved to Deer Isle year round in 1990. Her work has appeared in the Maine Times and the Eggemoggin Reach Review. She received an honorable mention the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliances’s 2005 Open Writing Competition.

Nancy Hodermarsky of Deer Isle, itinerant teacher in Rome, Athens, New York City, Cleveland; attorney for safe crackers, broken lives, broken marriages in western Massachusetts; has studied poetry with Stephen Dunn, Robert Farnsworth and April Ossman at Stonecoast and MWPA workshops in Maine, published in USI Worksheets.

Press Release for December 8 Writers Forum

This Thursday’s Writers Forum will feature prose authors Sharon Bray and Julia Bower and poet David Davis.

Sharon Bray’s writing career has ranged from to Harvard Medical School to local newspapers and literary journals. She established The Enterprise in Bucksport in 1992 which she published and edited for 9 years before she sold it in 2001. She supports herself with freelance writing, mostly for Penobscot Bay Press. She publishes the Naramissic Notebook and is active in the Bucksport Bay Healthy Communities Coalition and the Orland Fire Department. She fits her own writing around newspaper freelance reporting, farm chores, community commitments, and responding as best she can whenever anyone asks for help or needs a jar of homemade soup.

David L Davis’ work has been published in the Bucksport Enterprise, Narramissic Notebook, Echoes Magazine and in anthologies Sense of Place, H.O.M.E. Words, and the bicentennial history Best Remembered: Orland, Maine 1800-2000. He recently published a book of poetry, Ready To Be Surprised. Dave did not begin writing poetry until after the tragedy at Columbine High School. He was so moved by this event that words just came tumbling out as fast as he could write. Since that time he continues to write every day. He writes about life as has found it living beside the Narramissic River. Dave has lived alongside the Narramissic River in Orland, Maine since his marriage in 1949 to Ginny Soper Davis, a descendent of the first settlers of Orland. When Dave visited relatives in Orland after WW11 he knew this was the place he wanted to be. He worked in the Bucksport paper mill until opportunity came his way to work for the University of Maine Cooperative Extension in community development. Upon retirement from there he started and ran a successful greenhouse business. He has always been active in town affairs and community organizations. A Quaker, Dave was instrumental in starting a Friends meeting in Orland. Ginny and Dave have two children and six grandchildren.

Julia Bowers lives and writes in Brunswick. She wrote and illustrated a children’s picture book at the age of eight that was nearly published by MacMillan, and wrote a play for an honors degree at Mt. Holyoke College. Since then she taught at a private boarding school in Switzerland, was a Foreign Service Officer with the State department, an interior decorator in Manhattan, a freelance illustrator in Connecticut and has continued to write in Massachusetts and Maine. She writes personal essays and observations, often with a satiric slant and is also writing a series of stories about a rather tiresome child named Margaret.

The November 10 Writers Forum will feature four Maine authors: Joan Clemens from Belfast, Michael Kuhni from Milbridge, Danielle Kuper from Brooksville, and D. H. Terry from Mt. Vernon.

Joan Clemens has been a resident of Maine for almost 6 years but a member of MWPA for about 10 years. Joan is a fiction writer with a novel just about finished. She writes a column for a weekly newspaper in Mass and has published short stories in a few small literary magazines. She founded and facilitated fiction writers groups both in Maine and Massachusetts, where she used to live. While in Massachusetts, she co-edited two different literary magazines, and operated her own free-lance copywriting and public relations business. She has also done advertising promotion work for both Time and McCall’s magazines.

Daniela Kuper’s first short story, HOLY GHOST, was nominated for a Pushcart and her current book, HUNGER AND THIRST was called “One of the most
vividly imagined and moving novels I’ve read in years. And one of the funniest…?? by Joyce Carol Oates. A Brooksville resident, she is touring
the west with two award winning authors on: STRONG CHARACTERS IN FICTION, IN LIFE.

Michael Kuhni is a native of western Pennsylvania, son of a steelworker, he dropped out of Wittenburg University to meander the country in 1972. Ended up with a six-year stint in the Navy working on submarines as a nuclear reactor operator. Submerged for a total of twelve months with Tolstoy, Brautigan, Tolkien, LeGuinn, and Vonnegut, to name a few. Surfaced as an anti-nuclear weapons/power activist. The next vessel boarded was the Greenpeace ship, Rainbow Warrior, where he volunteered in the engine room. Worked at Northeastern University, earning a degree in psychology along the way, then moved to Carnegie-Mellon University. Both university positions were in the engineering field. Left engineering to work at a shelter for teens outside of Boston. Later worked at other social service agencies helping abused children. Currently, he is a poet, organic gardener, devoted husband and father. His “other?? part time job is caring for a two-year where he actsas surrogate grandfather. He collaborated with artist and publisher Brian Curling at Goldfinch Press with a series of five art books featuring original Haiku and wood block prints. He is currently at work preserving the oral history and poetry of Theodore Enslin.

D.S. Terry is author of “Down The Bay”. She grew up in Blue Hill, ME in a lobstering family. “Down The Bay” is based on a true, autobiographical story about the two summers she spent lobstering with her older brother, Reggie Sherman. It is her only published work. D.S. Terry currently lives in Mount Vernon, ME.

On September 8, author Cynthia Thayer will join members of her writers group in reading their poems and prose on Writers Forum, a WERU program featured the second Thursday of every month from 10 a.m. to 11 a.m. with host Dr. Betty Duff.

Cynthia Thayer is the author of three novels, A Certain Slant of Light, Strong for Potatoes, and most recently, A Brief Lunacy, from Algonquin Books. She also writes for Northern New England Journey, AAA, and teaches fiction writing with Turnstone Writers Workshop and Schoodic Arts for All. She and her husband, Bill, live on an organic farm in Gouldsboro on Schoodic Peninsula.

Annaliese Jakimides’ essays, poetry, and short stories have been published in Hip Mama, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Southeast Review, and GQ Italy, among others. Essays have been included in collections such as The Essential Hip Mama and Room to Grow (“Choice?? is currently required reading for all incoming freshmen at the University of South Carolina). Short fiction is forthcoming in Leaving Home, a collection edited by Molly McQuade. Work has been broadcast on Maine Public Radio and National Public Radio. Her poems and short stories have been cited in national competitions. A freelance copy editor and the assistant director of the Belfast Poetry Festival, 10/7–10/9, she is a consulting editor and writes the “Last Word” essay and arts interview for Bangor Metro magazine.

Christopher Barstow was born in Connecticut and educated at Old Orchard Beach High School and Ripan College in Wisconsin. He lives in Lamoine with his wife and daughter and has just completed his first novel.

Kristen Britain is the best-selling author of the fantasy novels, Green Ride, and First Rider’s Call, and was for many years a ranger at Acadia National Park. Currently she resides in Bar Harbor with an Irish terrier and an orange cat.