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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.