Alicia Anstead is a writer, editor, producer and educator. She is the director for programming at the Office for the Arts at Harvard, where she also teaches narrative journalism. She is formerly the executive editor of Inside Arts, the magazine for the Association of Performing Arts Professionals in Washington, DC, and of The Writer magazine in Boston. As an arts reporter at the Bangor Daily News in Maine, she also covered food and food writing (and worked in Maine restaurant kitchens). Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Boston Globe, Scientific American, The Harvard Gazette and Art New England. She has been an arts contributor to The Callie Crossley Show and Under the Radar with Callie Crossley on WGBH in Boston and NPR's Morning Edition. An English department graduate of American University (B.A.) and the University of Maine (M.A.), she has been a fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, National Arts Journalism Program at Columbia University and NEA arts editor program at Duke University. She has been a contributing producer, editor and strategist for APAP|NYC, the largest annual conference of performing arts professionals, the Sphinx Organization where she co-produced the first two SphinxCon conferences on diversity in the arts, the Boston Book Festival, Shakespeare in Stonington at Opera House Arts, Sister Cities International and the National Archives Foundation. (Photo credit: Michele Stapleton)
Susan Choi is the author of the novels My Education, American Woman, A Person of Interest, The Foreign Student, and Trust Exercise, winner of the 2019 National Book Award for fiction. Her work has been a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the PEN/Faulkner Award and winner of the PEN/W.G. Sebald Award and the Asian-American Literary Award for fiction. With David Remnick, she co-edited Wonderful Town: New York Stories from The New Yorker. She lives in Brooklyn.
Russ Cox was raised by a pack of crazed hillbillies in the backwoods of Tennessee. Without much in the way of modern conveniences, like television or running water, he spent his time drawing, whittling, and throwing dirt clods at his cousins. With the bulk of his life spent in Pennsylvania, he met his wife; became a graphic designer; played in punk, alternative, and surf bands; had two kids; and started his own illustration studio, Smiling Otis Studio (named after one of their enormous cats).
Russ creates his art using digital software, primarily Clip Studio and other digital tools. He works in traditional mediums, often with a mixture of paper, pencil, pen & ink, gouache, and watercolor. He lives in Maine with his wife and three cats.
Barbara Damrosch is the author of The Garden Primer, Theme Gardens and The Four Season Farm Gardener’s Cookbook. She has written about growing and cooking food for a number of publications, including The Washington Post and Mother Earth News. She and her husband own Four Season Farm, a vegetable market garden on Cape Rosier.
Brooke Dojny is an award-winning cookbook author and food writer with more than a dozen books to her credit, including The New England Cookbook, Dishing Up Maine, Lobster!, and Chowderland. Brooke lives in Sedgwick, is currently the president of the board of trustees of Brooklin’s Friend Memorial Public Library, and can be found at her stove or frequenting farmers’ markets, farm stands, and clam shacks.
Elizabeth W. Garber is the author of Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect’s Daughter, and four books of poetry. She completed her new memoir, Not As Lost As I Thought: The True Story of a Girl at Sea, about her high school adventures on a derelict square rigger. She lives in Belfast. www.elizabethgarber.com
Award-winning poet Beatrix Gates’ New & Selected Poems will be published by Thera Books in 2023. Her six poetry collections include Dos and Lambda Poetry Award finalist, In the Open. Her translations of Jesús Aguado’s poems and her poetry appear in bateau, Beloit Poetry Journal, Kenyon Review and Tupelo Quarterly. Gates’ hybrid work appears in Jane Cooper: A Radiance of Attention (Michigan) and “For Orlando: Make Beautiful in Maine” in Scotland’s MAP. A long-time member of Goddard’s MFA faculty, she has taught literature and writing for over thirty years in many settings, including Colby College, NYU, CCNY, libraries in Maine and NYC and Maine Maritime Academy. She serves on the Board of The Cannery at South Penobscot and founded SIDELINES/ In Translation Series. She grew up in Cambridge, Massachusetts with roots in Hancock, Maine and lives in Brooksville, Maine.
Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Things Seemed to Be Breaking (Deerbrook Editions 2021), and a collection of essays The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press). He was the host of the Maine Public Radio program “Poems from Here” and the host/curator of the podcasts Make/Time and Voices of the Future. He was the director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts from 1988 until 2015. More recently, working with the Libra Foundation, he has designed and implemented a residency program for artists and writers called Monson Arts. Stuart Kestenbaum has written and spoken widely on craft making and creativity, and his poems and writing have appeared in numerous small press publications and magazines including Tikkun, the Sun, the Beloit Poetry Journal, the New York Times Magazine, and on the Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. He served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021.
Bob Keyes has worked as a journalist for four decades. He is a nationally recognized arts writer and storyteller with specialties in American visual arts and the contemporary culture of New England. The Isolation Artist is his debut book.
Keyes has worked for the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram since 2002. He has received numerous awards for his writing, including the Rabkin Prize for Visual Arts Journalism in recognition of his contributions to the national arts dialogue. (Photo credit Sean Alonzo Harris)
Anica Mrose Rissi, who grew up in Deer Isle and spends part of the year there now, is the author of more than a dozen books for kids and teens, including the Anna, Banana chapter books, Love, Sophia on the Moon and Nobody Knows But You.
Tim Seabrook has been working in fine art intaglio printmaking for 45 years. His early exhibits began with Images 69 at Ohio’s Baldwin-Wallace College followed by The Biennial at The Cincinnati Art Museum and juried exhibits at The Cleveland Museum of Art and the Indianapolis Museum of Art. Seabrook won the George Sherman Medal Award from the Society of American Graphic Artists in New York City. He has exhibited nationally and internationally at Fairfield Hall in London; Cape Split Place in Addison, Maine; and his work has been in juried shows at Maine Coast Artists in Rockport and the Barrett Art Center National Printmaking Exhibition in Poughkeepsie, NY. Seabrook was selected for “Maine Printmakers 1980-2006,” curated by Bruce Brown, and the Maine Arts Commission’s “Maine Printmakers 1980-2006,” curated by Donna McNeil. In Maine, he has exhibited at The Leighton Gallery, The Turtle Gallery and The Laughing Lion Gallery. Seabrook’s drawing and printmaking have stayed with him as a dedicated focus next to the long-term work of farming and creating 5 Star Nursery and Orchard with Leslie Cummins.
Tim Seibles, Poet Laureate of Virginia from 2016-2018, is the author of several poetry collections, including One Turn Around the Sun (2017), Fast Animal (2012), which was a finalist for the 2012 National Book Award, Buffalo Head Solos (2004) and Body Moves (1988). The National Book Foundation notes, “Tim Seibles’ work is proof: the new American poet can’t just speak one language…he fuses our street corners’ quickest wit, our violent vernaculars, and our numerous tongues of longing and love.” Tim has received the Open Voice Award, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. He was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, received a BA from Southern Methodist University and received an MFA from Vermont College in 1990. Seibles has served as a professor at Old Dominion University for over twenty years and lives in Norfolk, Virginia.
Kate Shaffer is a writer and small business owner based in Portland. She is the author of three cookbooks, which have earned accolades from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, the Foreword Indies Awards, and include a spot on Food & Wine’s 2011 Top 25 Cookbooks of the Year. Kate has written about food and cooking for various regional publications, including the Portland Press Herald, Creative Maine, and Edible Maine.
Kate is the founder of—and artistic director for—Ragged Coast Chocolates, an award-winning artisanal chocolate confectionery which utilizes sustainably produced chocolates and locally sourced fruits, vegetables, herbs, and flowers.
Lori Thatcher’s penchant for short-form writing, from flash and micro-fiction to memoir is indisputable. Her six-word memoir was feature of the day on SMITH Magazine’s website, and her short stories have been published in It’s a Crime, and in My Wheels. She has led writing groups in Massachusetts and Florida, edited and published anthologies of writing by others, created websites for writers and mentored beginning writers. Lori is currently working on a chained flash fiction novel, Lulu’s Best Florida RV Resort and Trailer Park. When not navigating the angst of fictional people, she splits her time between Maine and Florida.
Arisa White’s most recent book Who’s Your Daddy (2021) is a memoir in verse about her trip to Guyana in search of her father, the exploration of her relationship with him, and of her childhood. “Coming in glimpses, poems felt like the perfect way to mirror memory and how it functions,” White said. She is also the co-editor of the anthology Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart and co-author of the middle-grade biography Biddy Mason Speaks Up, winner of the 2020 Maine Literary Award for Young People’s Literature. Creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations centering on narratives of queer people of color. She serves on the board of directors for Foglifter and Nomadic Press, is an advisory board member for MWPA, a Cave Canem fellow and Assistant Professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College.
Maya Williams (she/hers, they/them, and ey/em) is a religious queer Black Mixed Race suicide survivor constantly writing poems. In 2018 they were a finalist of the Slam Free Or Die Qualifier National Poetry Slam team and a runner up of the Individual Slam. Maya was a semi-finalist for Nimrod International Journal's Francine Ringold Award, a finalist for Best of the Net in 2019, and finalist for MWPA’s Chapbook Contest in 2019.