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In partnership with the University of New England’s Maine Women Writers Collection, the University of Maine at Augusta will bring together a panel of professors to discuss three mid-20th century Maine women writers during this period in history and the significance of their work.
The webinar will be held at 5 p.m. Friday, Nov. 6, andt is open to the public, but an RSVP is required by clicking here.
The panel discussion will focus on three authors represented in the archives of the collection at UNE’s Josephine S. Abplanalp Library. Participating in the panel will be Ellen Taylor, professor of English (UMA); Susan Tomlinson, associate professor of English (UMass Boston); and Joseph Conforti, distinguished professor emeritus (USM). Jennifer S. Tuttle, professor of English at UNE and the director of the MWWC, will facilitate the panel discussion.
The three writers from the MWWC archives highlighted in the 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. Very 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 books between 1910 and 1976. Taylor will discuss her MWWC archival findings as they relate to Coatsworth’s travels in the Far East and their influence in writing her celebrated children’s book.
Born and raised in Maine, author Ruth Moore was probably best known in her own time for the novel “Spoonhandle” (1946), about a Maine island family. This novel sold more than a million copies and was made into a major motion picture by 20th Century Fox called “Deep Waters” (1948), filmed in 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.
Joseph Conforti will discuss Mary Ellen Chase, who was born and raised in Maine. The author o fmore than 30 books, 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 declared 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.”
This event, originally scheduled for March but postponed due to COVID-19, is part of University of Maine at Augusta’s bicentennial events exploring the artists, writers and innovators who shaped and chronicled Maine’s mid-century cultural evolution. Maine’s Mid-Century Moment (www.uma.edu/midcentury/)has been made possible in part by a major grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
For more information, contact Cathleen Miller, curator, Maine Women Writers Collection, call 207-221-4334 or visit library.une.edu/mwwc/workshops-events/calendar-of-events/mid-century-maine-women-writers-panel/
The Maine Women Writers Collection was founded in 1959 by Grace Dow and Dorothy Healy to preserve and make available the writings of Maine women who had achieved literary recognition. Geographically, its holdings concern the state of Maine; Dawnland, the traditional territory of Wabanaki people; and the northern New England region. The group collects the work of anyone who identifies as female, femme, transfeminine, or non-binary. While many of the people included in the collection would self-identify as authors, many others are writers of unpublished material (such as letters) and producers of other forms of creative work. Visit library.une.edu/mwwc/.
