Producer/Host: Joan Clemons
Studio Engineer: Amy Browne
Topic: Writing- prose
What is island living like? Why some students shouldn’t go to college? How did these writers get started writing?
Guests:
Eva Murray, murray@midcoast.com, www.safelyouttosea.com
Robert Klose, klose@maine.edu
Eva Murray moved from the Rockland area to Matinicus Island in 1987 after being hired to teach at the island’s one-room school. Two years later, after marrying the island electrician, she stayed on to raise their family. Over the years, Murray has become an emergency medical technician, operated a small bakery, begun the community recyling program, been first responder to emergencies both real and imagined, and undertaken a number of roles in municipal government and other local organizations. Since 2003, she has been a regular columnist for several publications, including Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, Working Waterfront, Village Soup (Rockland), The Free Press, and Down East Online. Well out to Sea–Year-Round on Matinicus Island, her first book, is a collection of short essays describing life there from the perspective of someone who has never spent a single day of vacation on the Island.
Robert Klose lives on the banks of the Penobscot River in Orono. He divides his time between his two adoptive sons from Russia and the Ukraine, teaching biology at University College of Bangor, and writing essays for The Christian Science Monitor. Besides his newly-released book, The Three-Legged Woman & Other Excursions in Education, he is the author of two previous books, Adopting Alyosha — A Single Man Finds a Son in Russia, and Small Worlds — Adopted Sons, Pet Piranhas & Other Mortal Concerns. His work has also appeared in Newsweek, The Boston Globe, Reader’s Digest, Exquisite Corpse, and elsewhere. Klose is a Fulbright Scholar and a four-time winner of the Maine Press Association’s annual award for opinion writing.