Since 1992
Print and digital marketing
AUGUSTA — The University of Maine at Augusta is partnering with the University of New England on a panel discussion focused on three authors represented in the archives of the Maine Women Writers Collection at UNE’s Josephine S. Abplanalp Library.
The panel, which is free and open to the public, will be from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday, March 27, at the University of New England, Portland campus. There will be a reception from 4 to 5 p.m. in the Abplanalp Library, and the panel discussion will be in the Newbury Room, Alumni Hall.
Participating in the panel will be Ellen Taylor, professor of English at UMA; Susan Tomlinson, associate professor of English at UMass Boston); and Joseph Conforti, professor emeritus from the University of Southern Maine. Jennifer Tuttle, professor of English at UNE and the director of the Maine Women Writers Collection, will facilitate the panel discussion.
The three writers from the MWWC archives who will be highlighted in this program are Elizabeth Coatsworth, Ruth Moore and Mary Ellen Chase.
Coatsworth, who called Chimney Farm in Damariscotta her home for most of her adult life, was a best-selling children’s book writer, poet, novelist and essayist on rural Maine living. Popular during her lifetime, she won the Newbery award for her children’s book “The Cat Who Went to Heaven,” (1930), and wrote more than 90 books between 1910 and 1976. Taylor will discuss her MWWC archival findings related to Coatsworth as they relate to her poetry, especially her collection “Compass Rose” (1929).
Born and raised in Maine, Moore was probably best known in her own time for the novel “Spoonhandle” (1946), about a Maine island family. The novel sold more than a million copies and was made into a motion picture by 20th Century Fox, “Deep Waters” (1948), filmed on Vinalhaven. Tomlinson, who has conducted archival research on Moore, will explore the ways in which Moore’s earlier experience working for the NAACP impacted her later writings.
Conforti will discuss Mary Ellen Chase, who was born and raised in Maine. The author of more than 30, she wrote a great deal of Maine-based fiction, including the bestselling novel “Windswept” (1941). In a 1936 interview in the Portland Sunday Telegram, Chase said that she wrote “largely because I want to acquaint others with the background of Maine life, with the splendid character of Maine people, and with the unsurpassed loveliness of Maine fields, shores, and sea.”
The University of Maine at Augusta is presenting a yearlong program of events exploring the artists, writers, and innovators who shaped and chronicled Maine’s mid-century cultural evolution. Maine’s Mid-Century Moment has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For a full listing of the year’s events, visit uma.edu/midcentury.
