Complete author list for 2012

Books in Boothbay is just eight days away! Here's our complete list of this year's authors.

Charlotte Agell
Cheryl Blaydon
Janis Bolster
Gerry Boyle
Sarah Braunstein
Don Carrigan
Virginia Cassarino-Brown
George C. Daughan
Vicki Doudera
Gibson Fay-LeBlanc
Donn Fendler
Kate Flora
Barbara Freeman
Dorothy Freeman
Tess Gerritsen
Harry Gratwick
Ardeana Hamlin
Robin Hansen
Karel Hayes
James Hayman
Rohan Henry
Preston Hood
Shonna Humphrey
Jessica Kinney
Jane McCloskey
Kevin Mills
Eva Murray
Jim Nichols
Maria Padian
Elizabeth Peavey
Lynn Plourde
Morgan Callan Rogers
Barbara Ross
Darcy Scott
Kate Shaffer
Jim Sharp
Sarah Thomson
Lisa Turner
Lou Ureneck
Lea Wait  
Barbara Walsh
Monica Wood

We hope to see you on Saturday, July 14 in beautiful Boothbay, Maine!

Elizabeth Peavey

Elizabeth Peavey is a Portland-based freelance writer and teacher. Her one-woman show, My Mother's Clothes Are Not My Mother, premiered in Portland this past fall to sold-out houses and is now touring the state. She is the author of Outta My Way: An Odd Life Lived Loudly and of Maine & Me, which was awarded the Maine Literary Award for Best Maine-themed Book. Since 1993, her writing has been featured in Down East magazine, where she is a contributing editor. She teaches public speaking at the University of Southern Maine and has also taught creative nonfiction at the University of Maine at Farmington. Her latest book, Glorious Slow Going -- a collaboration with renowned Maine landscape painter Marguerite Robichaux --  was one of three finalists for the John N. Cole Maine-themed Nonfiction Award in the upcoming Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Maine Literary Awards.

Jim Nichols

Jim Nichols is a native Mainer who lives in Warren with his wife, Anne. His work has been widely published in Magazines like Esquire, Night Train, elimae, Portland Monthly, Zoetrope ASE and Narrative and has won several awards, including the Willamette Fiction Prize, a River City Writing Award and a Maine Arts Commission Independent Artists Fellowship. His story collection Slow Monkeys and Other Stories (Carnegie Mellon) appeared in 2003.

Jim's novel Hull Creek (Down East Books) is a bawdy but empathetic look at the challenges faced by young men who still go down to the sea in ships. It received an IPPY award (Silver Medal for fiction) for 2012 and also won 2nd prize in this year's Book Award for Fiction at the Maine Literary Awards. 

Janis Bolster

Janis Bolster grew up in small towns in Maine. After post-English-major stints at things like checking off boxes on insurance claim reports and performing for a blind professor those tasks that his Seeing-Eye dog couldn't manage, she found her way to a job in publishing that has become a career. When she discovered that copy editors and proofreaders almost always share her enthusiasm for mysteries, she got the idea for the Sally Jean Chalmers series. In Murder in Two Tenses (Reck House Press, 2010), Sally is an editorial assistant getting experience in the business – and in the side effects of murder. In The Lost Daughters (Reck House Press, 2011), Sally works on a historic diary in Portland, Maine, and becomes a suspect when her employer is murdered.

Bolster has moved back to Maine, settling into an old shipwright's house in Bath that is making its way into the third Sally Jean Chalmers mystery, tentatively titled Emily Dickinson in the Attic.

Maria Padian

Maria Padian is the author of the young adult novels Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best and Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress, which was chosen by the ALA and YALSA as one of the Best Books for Young Adults and also received a Maine Lupine Honor Award and Maine Literary Award.  Her next novel for young adults, Out of Nowhere, will be released in Spring 2013.  All of her work is published by Knopf Books for Young Readers, an imprint of Random House. 

A graduate of Middlebury College and the University of Virginia, Maria lives in Brunswick, Maine with her family.  To learn more about her, visit mariapadian.com.

Jessica Kinney

Jessica Kinney is a Maine native and mother of six children who lives and writes on the coast of Maine. A Bowdoin College graduate and former middle- and high-school English teacher, Jessica says The Pig Scramble was inspired by a true story about her husband, who grew up as the youngest child on a Maine dairy farm and really did win a pig at a local fair.

Perhaps a result of being from Maine and most certainly because of the many books she has enjoyed through the years, Jessica has long admired character-driven stories about seemingly every-day events of real people. Living in an out-of-the-way place often requires creativity and resourcefulness to make ends meet -- hard work, colorful characters, and rich story-telling are natural by-products of this experience. Jessica viewed much of this first-hand, growing up, and seeks to incorporate similar themes in her stories.

Rohan Henry

Rohan Henry is a Jamaican born author illustrator who lives in the cold state of Maine. He enjoys spending time with his wife, his two kids and his giant cat Honey Bee. Honey Bee, who weighs in at about 18 pounds, is often mistaken for a small adult dog. Honey Bee’s litter box is located in the basement of the Henry family home next to Rohan’s drawing table. Honey Bee enjoys taking catnaps on Rohan’s desk chair and Rohan is thankful for his personal seat warmer.

Julia Spencer-Fleming

[We regret that Julie Spencer-Fleming will not be able to attend this year's show.]

Julia Spencer-Fleming, with one parent from Tuscaloosa, AL and the other from Argyle, NY, likes to think of herself multi-geographical. A former military brat, she grew up in places as diverse as Mobile, Rome, Stuttgart and Syracuse. A graduate of Ithaca College, George Washington University and the U Maine School of Law, she took up writing while still a stay-at-home mother of two. During the time it took to finish her first book, she got a full-time job at a Portland, Maine, law firm and had a third child. Julia didn't want to write yet another lawyer-sleuth, so she used her army past and a keen eye for the goings-on at her Episcopal church to create Clare Fergusson, first female priest in the small Adirondack town of Millers Kill. The result, In the Bleak Midwinter, made debut history when it won the St.Martin's/Malice Domestic contest, the Dilys Award from the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association, and the Agatha, Anthony, Macavity, and Barry awards for Best First Novel. Its sequel, A Fountain Filled With Blood, was a Borders Original Voices selection, and the third book in the series, Out of the Deep I Cry, was St. Martin's Minotaur's lead title this April. Now happily quit of the law, Julia lives and works in a 180-year-old farmhouse in the southern Maine countryside with her husband, three children, and beloved big dog.

Eva Murrary

Eva Murrary is the author of ‘Well Out to Sea’, a book of interesting articles on life at Matinicus Island. 

In 1987, Eva moved from the Rockland area to Matinicus, having been hired to teach at the island’s one-room school. Two years later, she married the island electrician and stayed to raise their family there (the children are now in college).

Over the years, she has become an emergency medical technician, started a small bakery, taken on a number of roles in municipal government and local organizations, started the community’s recycling program, and been a first responder to emergencies both real and imagined.  

Since 2003, she’s also been a regular columnist for several publications including Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, the Working Waterfront, the (Rockland) Village Soup and Free Press, and Down East Online.  

Eva bakes bread in a wood stove, spins wool, digs potatoes, collects useful herbs, cuts hay with a scythe and swings a blacksmith’s hammer.  Perhaps not surprisingly, she sometimes writes her articles with pencil and paper.  

‘Well Out to Sea’ shares stories of a unique community, of an interdependence that is all too rare these days but necessary for this island’s survival. 

Tess Gerritsen

Internationally bestselling author Tess Gerritsen took an unusual route to a writing career. A graduate of Stanford University, Tess went on to medical school at the University of California, San Francisco, where she was awarded her M.D.

While on maternity leave from her work as a physician, she began to write fiction. In 1987, her first novel was published. Call After Midnight, a romantic thriller, was followed by eight more romantic suspense novels. She also wrote a screenplay, “Adrift”, which aired as a 1993 CBS Movie of the Week starring Kate Jackson.

Tess’s first medical thriller, Harvest, was released in hardcover in 1996, and it marked her debut on the New York Times bestseller list. Her suspense novels since then have been: Life Support (1997), Bloodstream (1998), Gravity (1999), The Surgeon (2001), The Apprentice (2002), The Sinner (2003), Body Double (2004), Vanish (2005), The Mephisto Club (2006), The Bone Garden (2007), The Keepsake (2008; UK title: Keeping the Dead), Ice Cold (2010; UK title: The Killing Place), and her forthcoming Last To Die (August 2012).  Her books have been published in forty countries, and more than 25 million copies have been sold around the world.

Her books have been top-3 bestsellers in the United States and abroad. She has won both the Nero Wolfe Award (for Vanish) and the Rita Award (for The Surgeon). Critics around the world have praised her novels as “Pulse-pounding fun” (Philadelphia Inquirer), “Scary and brilliant” (Toronto Globe and Mail), and “Polished, riveting prose” (Chicago Tribune). Publisher Weekly has dubbed her the “medical suspense queen”.

Her series of novels featuring homicide detective Jane Rizzoli and medical examiner Maura Isles inspired the TNT television series “Rizzoli & Isles” starring Angie Harmon and Sasha Alexander.

Now retired from medicine, she writes full time. She lives in Maine.

Robin Hansen

West Bath author Robin Hansen has been researching and writing books about mittens for almost 30 years.  She is a recognized expert on traditional Maine mittens and has given workshops around the country, and even beyond our borders.  She is a folklorist and journalist as well, and her articles have appeared in Interweave Knits, Piecework, and Knitter’s Magazine, amongst many others.  She is the author of seven books on northern folk mittens, including two books for children: the best-selling how-to-knit book ‘Sunny’s Mittens’, and ‘Ice Harbor Mittens’.  Her latest book ‘Ultimate Mittens’ is a collection of 28 magnificent mitten patterns! This book is meant to carry on the tradition of folk mittens, passed down through the years.  Robin says it best: "Mittens are hardly more than a swatch with a thumb.  Their small format makes them ideal canvases for learning new techniques, playing with colors, or using fun techniques considered too laborious for larger garments".

Barbara Walsh

Barbara Walsh is a Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist who has worked for newspapers and magazines in Florida, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire and Ireland. Her children’s book, Sammy in the Sky, is illustrated by painter Jamie Wyeth; it was inspired by her family’s first dog, Sam, a loyal and loving hound who died in 2004. She is also the author of August Gale: A Father and Daughter’s Journey into the Storm, an adult biography and memoir.

Barbara lives in Maine with her family and their coonhound Jack, a rescue dog from Tennessee.

Her website is: http://barbarawalsh.net/

George C. Daughan

George C. Daughan holds a Ph.D. in American History and Government from Harvard University and is a recipient of the 2008 Samuel Eliot Morison Award for his previous book, If By Sea: The Forging of the American Navy – From the Revolution to the War of 1812 (Basic Books, 2008; paperback edition, October 2011). Daughan spent three years in the United States Air Forced during the Vietnam War, and was an instructor at the Air Force Academy and director of the MA program in international affairs there. Subsequently, he taught at the University of Colorado, the University of New Hampshire, Wesleyan University and Connecticut College. He resides in Portland, Maine. 

http://www.georgedaughan.blogspot.com/

Virginia Cassarino-Brown

A native of Bethesda, Maryland, Virginia Cassarino-Brown moved to Maine twenty-nine years ago and has made her home there ever since. She spends most of the school year as an educator of young children in Harpswell, Maine. She is constantly energized by their enthusiasm for everyday life and their love of learning.  During the past year, she has traveled to many elementary schools and community libraries to share her book with others and loves to touch upon the tender balance between wildlife, the environment and people. She and her husband Allan, spend much of their summers at their camp in Oquossoc, Maine where his experience with a tangled loon inspired her to write this story.  Virginia has written stories for the magazine, Adventures for the Average Woman and the anthology Thin Threads: More Real Stories for Life Changing Moments. The Tangled Loon is her first children’s book.

Sarah Braunstein

Sarah Braunstein is the author of The Sweet Relief of Missing Children, a finalist for the 2011 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction. In 2010 she was named one of “5 Under 35” fiction writers by the National Book Foundation, and she received a 2007 Rona Jaffe Writer's Award. Stories and essays have appeared in the AGNI, Post Road, Ploughshares, The Sun, Nylon Magazine, Maine Magazine, and on NPR’s All Things Considered. She teaches in the Stonecoast low-residency MFA program at the University of Southern Maine, and holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Based in Portland, Maine, she is at work on a second novel.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc is a writer and teacher. His first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist, was chosen by Lisa Russ Spaar for the Vassar Miller Prize and published by the University of North Texas Press in 2012.

His poems have appeared in magazines including 32 Poems, Blackbird, Guernica, Linebreak, Maine Magazine, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, Tin House, The New Republic, Poetry Northwest, Western Humanities Review, and Verse Daily, and in the anthologies Satellite Convulsions: Poems from Tin House and From the Fishouse: An Anthology of Poems that Sing, Rhyme, Resound, Syncopate, Alliterate, and Just Plain Sound Great. His articles and reviews have appeared in Boston Review, Guernica, Pleiades, Publishers Weekly, and Time Out New York. He has received awards for his poems from the Bellevue Literary Review and UC Berkeley.

With graduate degrees from UC Berkeley and Columbia University, he has taught writing and literature in public and private middle schools, high schools, and colleges in California, Vermont, New York, and Maine. In 2011 he was named one of Maine’s “emerging leaders” by the Portland Press Herald and MaineToday Media for his work directing The Telling Room, where he still occasionally teaches writing. He lives in Portland, ME with his family, serves as Poetry Editor of Maine magazine, and is at work on a novel.

Jane McCloskey

Jane McCloskey has been many things, including house painter, Christmas wreath maker, environmentalist, and writer.  She lives in a house she built herself on Deer Isle, Maine, near the island where she grew up.  She is Robert McCloskey's younger daughter and appears in many of his books.

Sarah L. Thomson

Sarah L. Thomson has published more than twenty-five books for young readers. A versatile writer, she has created fiction and nonfiction, poetry and prose, fantasy and realism, for age levels from kindergarten through high school. Her books include an adventure about two friends who rescue a dragon’s egg, a picture book biography of Abraham Lincoln, and a novel about a real-life vampire, along with poetry for picture book readers and nonfiction I-Can-Read titles about tigers, whales, sharks, gorillas, and snakes. She loves the field of children’s literature because readers are so committed to and passionate about books.

The Washington Post said that the plot of Sarah’s book, The Manny, is “worthy of Jane Austen,” and Booklist called her Arthurian novel, The Dragon’s Son, “a spellbinding tale of love, intrigue, and betrayal.” Her biography of Abraham Lincoln, What Lincoln Said, was reviewed in People magazine, her fantasy novel, Dragon’s Egg, was the winner of the Maine Lupine Award, and her most recent YA novel, Mercy, was selected as one of Barnes and Noble’s top ten YA books of 2011.

Sarah worked for nine years as a children’s book editor for HarperCollins and Simon & Schuster before leaving New York to devote herself full time to her own writing. She now lives in Portland, Maine, with her daughter and her two cats. Her daughter helps with inspiration, and her cats help by lying on the piece of paper she needs most.

Learn more about Sarah’s work at www.sarahlthomson.com.

Kate Gerteis Shaffer

A veteran of countless California restaurant kitchens, Kate Gerteis Shaffer moved to Maine in 2000 and landed her dream job—cook at an almost impossibly romantic lighthouse inn on remote Isle au Haut. When, five years later, the owners decided to retire, Kate was determined to find a way to use her rather limited battalion of skills to stay on the island—and with the community—she had accidentally grown to love.

Severely impaired by the inability to think inside the box, Kate and her husband, Steve (both of whom knew squat about chocolate) dreamed up a business making gourmet truffles out of their home kitchen, with a café in the middle of nowhere from which to sell them. With the inception of now iconic Black Dinah Chocolatiers, Kate and Steve set out to make a living—and, almost in spite of themselves, ended up making a life. In November, Kate was named one of North America’s Top Ten Chocolatiers by Dessert Professional Magazine.

Desserted: Recipes and Tales from an Island Chocolatier (Down East, $29.95) tells the story of Kate unlikely career and shares her tips and recipes for chocolate confections and other popular items served at the couple's seasonal cafe. Lavishly illustrated with 50 color photographs, the book includes detailed instructions not only for making chocolates, but for incorporating chocolate into a variety of sweet and savory dishes. From building a successful business on a remote island to creating fabulous gourmet chocolates, Desserted removes the mystery but keeps all of the magic.

Lea Wait

Maine author Lea Wait admits that she was born in Boston and grew up in both New Jersey and Maine. She did her undergraduate work at Chatham University in Pittsburgh, then her graduate degrees at New York University while she was living in Greenwich Village (an author's dream, and full of histories and mysteries) and working in the corporate world. She adopted 4 older Asian girls as a single parent, and is now the grandmother of 7 and the wife of Bob Thomas, a Maine artist who grew up in Lebanon. She writes historical novels for children as well as adult mysteries, and loves to row her skiff on the Sheepscot River.

Born in New Jersey, she grew up in a family where books were an important part of life. Her family summered in Maine. She did her undergraduate work at Chatham College - now Chatham University - in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and her graduate work at New York University, completing all requirements for a doctorate except for the dissertation, a 'DWD', and joining AT&T as a manager. Her grandmother was an antiques dealer, and in 1976 she started an antique print business, and decided she should become a writer. She also, as a single parent, adopted four “older” girls born in Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong and India.

It was in 1998 that she left the corporate life and moved to live in Edgecomb, Maine. She now divides her time between her writing and her antique print business.

Morgan Callan Rogers

Morgan Callan Rogers is the author of Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea. She grew up in Bath, Maine, an historical shipbuilding city situated on the Kennebec River. Growing up, she spent her summers in a small cottage with her parents and three siblings, exploring the woods and fields with the family dogs, wandering along the rocky shore of the New Meadows River, swimming off the rocks, reading anything she could get her hands on, and writing stories at a rickety table located on a screen porch. She has been, in her lifetime, a librarian, a journalist, an actress, an editor, and a teacher. She holds a BA in English and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine. Red Ruby Heart in a Cold Blue Sea is her debut novel. She currently splits her time between her beloved Maine and western South Dakota. She is busy writing another novel.  

Lisa Turner

"Lisa Turner is one of the best [farmers]...she has pioneered new crops and new techniques. Who better to write a cookbook than someone who really knows what it takes to create great food" - Eliot Coleman, author of The New Organic Grower


With this shift toward local food sources, shoppers are finding a wide variety of items not available in large supermarkets. Many wonder how to prepare them. Thanks to Lisa Turner, whose Laughing Stock Farm supplies Maine’s best kitchens, preparing great dishes from these local foods is fast, easy and delicious. As past president of the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association (the oldest and largest state organic organization in the country), Lisa has a deep appreciation for the value of foods grown close to home. Her new book, Eat Local (Down East, $27.50) is a collection of over one hundred recipes from Maine’s top chefs, farmers, home cooks, and Lisa’s own kitchen.

Eva Murray

Eva Murray moved from the Rockland area to Matinicus Island in 1987, having been hired to teach at the island’s one-room school. Two years later she married the island electrician and stayed to raise their family there (the children are now in college). Over the years she has become an emergency medical technician, started a small bakery, taken on a number of roles in municipal government and local organizations, started the community’s recycling program, and been a first responder to emergencies both real and imagined. Since 2003 she’s also been a regular columnist for several publications, among them Maine Boats, Homes & Harbors, the Working Waterfront, the (Rockland) Herald Gazette and Free Press, and Down East Online.

Her first book, Well Out to Sea—Year -round on Matinicus Island, published by Tilbury House in 2010, is a collection of essays about how things really work in a tiny, isolated community. Island Schoolhouse-one room for all: the 21st century one-room schools of Maine, also published by Tilbury House, should be out in August of 2012.

Eva bakes bread in a wood stove, spins wool, digs potatoes, collects useful herbs, cuts hay with a scythe and swings a blacksmith’s hammer. She sometimes writes her articles with pencil and paper.

James Hayman

After twenty-five years writing advertising for Madison Avenue ad agencies, James Hayman moved from New York to Portland, Maine in 2001.

Recognizing that Portland would make an almost perfect setting for a thriller series, Hayman started writing his first Mike McCabe thriller, The CuttingThe Cutting was published by St. Martin’s/Minotaur  in 2009.

The second McCabe novel, The Chill of Night, came out last year.

Both books have been published all over the world and have been translated into half a dozen languages. Hayman has just finished writing his third thriller, Darkness First, which takes place in Downeast Maine and features McCabe’s partner, Detective Maggie Savage.

Barbara Ross

Barbara Ross’ first mystery novel The Death of an Ambitious Woman was published by Five Star/Gale/Cengage in August 2010. In addition to her novel writing, Barbara is one of the co-editor/co-publishers of Level Best Books, which publishes an annual anthology of crime stories by New England writers.  The most recent edition, Best New England Crime Stories 2012: Dead Calm, was published in November 2011. Barbara recently signed a contract with Kensington to write a mystery series about a young venture capitalist who returns to run her family’s clambake business in coastal Maine. The first book will be published in the fall of 2013.

Barbara blogs with the Maine Crime Writers, a wonderful group of Maine mystery authors including Kate Flora, Gerry Boyle, Paul Doiron, Kaityn Dunnett, James Hayman, Vicki Doudera, Lea Wait, Julia Spencer-Fleming and Sarah Graves at www.mainecrimewriters.com

In 2005, Barbara and her husband Bill Carito bought Bill’s mother’s home, the former Seafarer Inn at the head of the harbor in Boothbay Harbor, Maine. When they aren’t in Boothbay, Barbara and her husband live in Somerville, Massachusetts. They have two grown children.

Kate Shaffer

If you've ever had a fantasy of living on a Maine island, this book is for you. It,s just icing on the cake it that is also happens to involve chocolate. Kate Shaffer and her husband moved to remote Isle au Haut nearly seven years ago. Once there, they were inspired to open a chocolate company and cafe featuring delicious chocolate and fresh Maine ingredients. Now their products are shipped all over the world ~ and their island cafe is a true Maine destination. This armchair travel log and cookbook all in one describes the fantasies ~ and fantastic realities ~ of island life in Maine while featuring more than forty-five of Shaffer,s delicious recipes for her renowned chocolates and chocolate-inspired recipes from her seasonal cafe.

Ardeana Hamlin

Ardeana Hamlin is the author of Abbott's Reach, the sequel to her novel Pink Chimneys. She also is the author of A Dream of Paris. In 'real life' she works for the Bangor Daily News where she writes the "By Hand" column and feature stories for the Lifestyle page.

Kevin C. Mills

Kevin C. Mills is a product of his own rich maritime history. A love of the ocean and its history has been passed down from numerous Mills generations.

One ancestor was a privateer. Others fought in the Revolution and led the charge at Bunker Hill. A great, great grandfather built the first three-masted schooner of its kind in New England. His great grandfather was the longest serving keeper at Goose Rocks Lighthouse in Penobscot Bay. His grandfather was an assistant keeper at the Rockland Breakwater.

Mills has researched that fascinating history extensively over the last decade. He spent over four years producing a book on his Mills family history. He followed that up with another lengthy project that chronicled the life of his grandfather. He has also transcribed diaries of both his grandfather and great grandfather, which included an account of life on a coastal schooner in 1883.

His two novels continue that work, shaping historical fiction out of his family history.

Sons and Daughters of the Ocean is the first novel for the award-winning journalist, who has spent nearly two decades covering sports from the high school to professional levels for many of New England's top newspapers.

This novel is based loosely on the maritime history of various ancestors. The characters are rooted in true life experiences from the age of sail and portray an accurate account of life many generations ago.

His most recent work, Breakwater, follows the Miller family generations later after Sons and Daughters of the Ocean. Though not a sequel to the first novel, a few characters make return appearances in Breakwater. It is a story of love, faith and tragedy as two members of the Miller family seek to understand the purpose of their lives.

Mills, voted Best Author in the Portland Phoenix online reader’s poll in 2011, also has a nonfiction work called Sidelined. It is a collection of offbeat adventures and experiences from his award-winning journalism career. He provides the story behind the story while taking readers to the sidelines of sports reporting.

Mills is a native of Gorham, Maine and graduated from Gorham High School. He earned an English degree and a minor in Biblical Studies at Gordon College in Wenham, Mass.

After working extensively for the college newspaper, where he was a writer and sports editor, Mills embarked on a career in sports journalism.

While in college, he covered high school sports for the Boston Globe, was the sailing writer for the Lynn Daily Evening Item and covered local sports for the Portland Press Herald.

In 1992, he began working for the Lewiston Sun Journal. In addition to being the regular beat writer for the Portland Pirates for 10 years, he has also been responsible for the paper’s award-winning coverage of women’s sports, including soccer, basketball and softball.

He has also freelanced for a variety of other newspapers and magazines.

During his sports journalism career, he has been recognized on numerous occasions by the Maine Press Association and the New England Press Association. He earned awards from the MPA seven times in eight years.

He has also been honored by the Maine Basketball Coaches Association and the Maine Interscholastic Athletic Administrators Association.

Darcy Scott

Darcy Scott is a former symphony orchestra marketing director who works as a freelance writer and marine industry publicist when she’s not off adventuring. An experienced ocean cruiser who lives on her sailboat in Kittery, Maine much of the year, she’s sailed to Grenada and back on a whim, island-hopped through the Caribbean, and been struck by lightning in the middle of the Gulf Stream. Her favorite cruising ground remains the coast of Maine, however, and her appreciation of the history and rugged beauty of its sparsely populated out-islands serves as the inspiration for Matinicus and the other novels in her Island Mystery Series. She recently completed book two, Reese’s Leap, and is currently drafting the last of the trilogy. Her debut novel, Hunter Huntress, was published in June, 2010 by Snowbooks, Ltd., UK. Learn more at www.Darcyscott.net.

Author announcement: Lou Ureneck

CABIN was selected by Publishers Weekly as one of the
Top 10 memoirs to hit stores in fall 2011.
Lou Ureneck was looking for something that would lift him from his gloom.  He had been city-bound for a decade, and was dealing with some of the usual disappointments of middle age—the loss of a job, the death of his mother, a health scare, climbing back from a divorce.  He needed a project that would engage the better part of him, one that would pull him from an uninspired state of mind. Being a lifelong outdoorsman, Ureneck realized that he was at his happiest when outside, working with his hands. In 2008, he purchased a five acre lot in rural western Maine near the New Hampshire border, and set his sights on building his dream cabin, aided by his brother, Paul. The cabin became the inspiration for Ureneck’s blog for The New York Times called “From the Ground Up,” and now the trials and tribulations of this two-year process are chronicled in his new book, CABIN: Two Brothers, a Dream, and Five Acres in Maine (On Sale: September 19, 2011; Viking; 978-0-670-02294-6; $25.95).

At first, Ureneck saw the cabin simply as a way to put some nature back into his life. However, as Ureneck and his brother spent more time together, working through endless problems during the construction process, he came to see that building the cabin was also a way for him to hold on to the most important pieces of himself, the memories he shared with his younger brother.  As Ureneck reveals the actual construction of the cabin—excavating, digging the foundation holes, and assembling the frame and the rafters—he also lovingly describes the bond that is renewed and strengthened between him and his brother, as well as his nephews, who tag along to help whenever they can. Ureneck writes tellingly of the landscape of his childhood, the New Jersey shore, where he caught crabs and trapped muskrats in the swamps, and of the struggle he and his brother had growing up in a poor household with no father and a mother who was constantly moving them from place to place. In building the cabin, Ureneck comes to realize that he is not just building himself a retreat from big-city life and its problems, he is building himself a “home,” a concept that had eluded him for most of his life.

CABIN is a beautifully written story about the evolving relationship of two brothers who are building their way to the far end of middle age and dealing with the issues those years present, such as loss, change, and the search for renewal. Ureneck also explores the satisfactions to be obtained from physical labor and the pleasure and emotional healing that can come from nature and country living, as well as drawing a portrait of the historical and cultural context of this specific corner of New England.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lou Ureneck was born in New Brunswick, New Jersey.  A former newspaper editor at the Portland Press Herald in Maine and the Philadelphia Inquirer, he is now head of the journalism department at Boston University.  His first book, Backcast:  Fatherhood, Fly-fishing, and a River Journey Through the Heart of Alaska received the 2007 National Outdoor Book Award.

Mystery novelist Gerry Boyle

Gerry Boyle is a crime/mystery novelist based in Maine. Gerry is a former newspaper reporter and columnist whose crime reporting has provided the raw material for his novels. Beginning in 1993, Gerry began writing mysteries featured Jack McMorrow, a former New York Times reporter transplanted to Maine (some might say exiled). In the books, McMorrow, his social worker partner Roxanne, and their ex-Marine commando friend Clair have explored Maine mill towns, country hideouts, and the Maine woods, often fighting their way back home. As Gerry says, “I never send Jack anywhere I haven’t been.” That means dispatching McMorrow to courtrooms, mill-town tenements, marijuana fields, jail cells, and police interrogation rooms. The McMorrow novels, beginning with DEADLINE (1993) and the ninth in the series, DAMAGED GOODS (2010) have been translated into several languages.

In 2009, Gerry launched a new series with the novel PORT CITY SHAKEDOWN, featuring young Brandon Blake, a Portland, Maine boat bum with a troubled past. Brandon has grown up on the water, raised by an alcoholic grandmother after his mother was lost at sea in a sailing accident. He’s decided that there are two things in life: right and wrong, with nothing in between. Brandon is tough beyond his years, hardened by life. From his aging cabin cruiser Bay Witch, he makes his way along the waterfront, attracting a lovely writer friend, Mia, and some nasty criminals.

This fall, the second Brandon Blake novel, PORT CITY BLACK AND WHITE, was published by Down East Books. In this novel, Brandon realizes his dream of joining the Portland P.D., with mixed results. The police cruisers are black and white but to Brandon’s surprise, even the world of cops is colored in many shades of gray.

Gerry recently completed his 10th Jack McMorrow novel, ONCE BURNED. He expects that book to be published in 2012. He plies his trade from a small village on a lake where he indulges his passions: books, boats, and birds.

Harry Gratwick

Harry Gratwick has been writing books about Maine since he retired from Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia, where he chaired the history department. Gratwick has also written extensively on maritime history for The Working Waterfront and the Island Journal, publications of Island Institute in Rockland.

Gratwick’s previous books have attracted favorable notices: Penobscot Bay, People, Ports and Pastimes, “An eclectic, entertaining collection told with an engaging style and a flair for storytelling”. Hidden History of Maine: “Author Harry Gratwick unearths some captivating stories about Mainers you probably haven’t heard about before.”  Mainers in the Civil War: “The experiences of its people, well told by a dedicated historian with a passion for his subject, have much to teach us today”. Harry’s fourth book, Stories from the Maine Coast was published in April of 2012.

Gratwick is a life-long summer resident of Vinalhaven Island in Penobscot Bay. He and his wife Tita spend the winter months in Philadelphia. Harry is a graduate of Williams College and has a master’s degree from Columbia University.  Read more about Harry at his website, www.harrygratwick.com.

Three author announcements: Donn Fendler, Lynn Plourde and Ben Bishop

Donn Fendler, seasonally of Newport, lived his own survival story in 1939 when he was lost as a twelve-year-old boy for nine days in the wilderness around Katahdin. His saga was first told in the classic Lost on a Mountain in Maine and most recently in the graphic novel Lost Trail: Nine Days Alone in the Wilderness. Donn makes frequent visits to schools and libraries sharing his story.

Lynn Plourde (www.lynnplourde.com) of Winthrop is the author of 27 children’s books including her most recent Dino Pets Go to School and Only Cows Allowed, and co-author of Lost Trail with Donn Fendler. She lives in Winthrop with her husband.

Ben Bishop (www.bishart.net) is a graphic novelist, toy designer, and illustrator who lives in Old Orchard. He illustrated Donn Fendler’s graphic novel Lost Trail. He also self-published Nathan the Caveman and is working on his next project, The Stand-In, a Jim Kruger comic.


Author announcement: Kate Flora

Attorney Kate Flora’s twelve books include seven Thea Kozak mysteries, two gritty police procedurals including The Angel of Knowlton Park, a suspense thriller, Steal Away, written as Katharine Clark, and a true crime, Finding Amy, which was a 2007 Edgar nominee and has been optioned for a movie. Her current projects include Death Dealer, a true crime involving a Canadian serial killer, a screenplay, and a novel in linked stories.

Flora’s short stories have appeared in numerous anthologies, including the Sara Paretsky-edited collection, Sisters on the Case. She is a former editor and publisher at Level Best books, former international president of Sisters in Crime, and a founding member of the New England Crime Bake conference. Her story, “All that Glitters” appears in Dead Calm, and her story, “Bone China” in the crime story anthology Dead of Winter. Her third Joe Burgess police procedural, Redemption, will be published in March 2012.

Author announcement # 2: Jim Sharp

Captain Jim Sharp is a man that has been interested in sailing vessels from the get go.  He at age 12, sans  his parent’s knowledge much less permission, pilfered the family skiff, bed sheet from the guest bedroom, two broom sticks, with bristles still fanning the end, and dreaming of things of the sea, rigged up that cock-a-shell like a clipper and sailed the thing across Dredge Harbor playing the part of a Cape Horn crusty captain.  He then realized he had to row all the way home -up wind- to face his father’s  stern eyes and glaring daggers that were already gathering at the youthful affront.

Life, however, after that altercation was good to the “would be” captain.  He swallowed the salt water with many happy hours on his father’s power boat, learning seamanship and discipline from a fair, but demanding disciplinarian who unfortunately passed at an early age.  This forced Jim, seeking survival, into an unexpected business endeavor in finance.  Not being his forte, escape from the “suit and tie” world was imperative.  He had gathered enough to purchase an old 44’ Alden classic yawl and set out for the Bahamas to become a charter captain.  Hard times, near starvation, working from one job to another, he finally came to Maine to discover the Windjammer fleet out of Camden. Here, with a summer as mate on the leaky, ancient,  skin-boats of the original Swift fleet, he decided- come hell or high water- he would settle and carve out a career.

His first was the Schooner Stephen Taber, oldest commercial sail vessel in the U.S.  She leaked volumes both through the bottom and the decks.  Accepting her salt water circulatory system he sailed that first season without disaster and found that it was “the best thing I ever did”. Vowing to remain in the windjammer business, he bought the poor decrepit schooner Adventure, a thoroughbred, hidden under flaking paint, short rig and questionable reputation.  A major rebuilding ensued and while in that fit of inertia, he went to work on the Arctic Schooner Bowdoin saving her from death and destruction by the museum of Mystic.  Then followed the Schooner Roseway  and a string out of over 30 vessels, sail, tugboats, freight boats and just about “anything that would float” kind of boat.  It even included a Dutch built canal boat In Europe where for ten years he and his wife, Meg, had cruised the intricate system of waterways in France, Belgium, Holland and Germany.

Retirement came early and Sharp went for it with reckless abandon. Cruising around the world, crisscrossing the U.S. on lakes and rivers, writing his memoirs, (strangely enough called “With Reckless Abandon”) donating his beloved Schooner Adventure to preservation in Gloucester, he, for almost 20 years was occupied with a thousand retirement issues.

He then flunked retirement!

Purchasing the old Outward Bound Property in the South end of Rockland, he proceeded to renovate the buildings and create a little jewel of a museum called the Sail, Power & Steam Museum, Children’s Museum, Professional Office building, marina and boat shop. 

Some call it “Reckless Abandon”, others would call it mentally unhinged.         

First author announcement for 2012: Vicki Doudera

Top-producing Realtor Vicki Doudera “masterfully uses the backdrop of high-stakes realty as a great setting for a murder mystery,” says the Bangor Daily News. Vicki’s latest release to feature crime-solving, deal-making agent Darby Farr is DEADLY OFFER.

“Darby’s third appearance (after Killer Listing) is just the property for those who want a fast, entertaining read with a diverse cast and appealing setting, says the Library Journal

A broker with a busy Camden firm and former Realtor of the Year, Vicki is also the author of Moving to Maine from Down East Books.  She belongs to Mystery Writers of America, Sisters in Crime, and the National Association of Realtors and serves on the board of the New England chapter of Sisters in Crime. Read more about Vicki at her official website, www.vickidoudera.com.