local author power trio

photo by Beth Leonard

Local author power trio at Gulf of Maine Books!
Cynthia Lord, Maria Padian, Josephine Cameron

Julia Bouwsma reads from Midden poems

Julia Bouwsma will read from her book of poems Midden at the Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick on Saturday, May 4, at 2 PM, with book support from Gulf of Maine Books. The poems in Midden rise up out of the historical account of Malaga Island, where in 1912 the State of Maine forcibly evicted an interracial community of roughly 45 people. Utilizing a wide range of poetic styles, Midden confronts the events and over one hundred years of silence that surround this shameful incident in Maine's history. Here is a section from "Interview with the dead", one of the poems in the collection:

How did you leave?

Our houses became our bodies - we lashed
ourselves to rafts.Our bodies became boats.
Some left as cargo in boats, boxes.
We wept or did not weep

until home became the rubble
between our teeth: the thing one cannot
bite for fear of breaking.

Then we were a people sculpted of wind,
and when we left, we scattered as breath,
lingered as breath -

then we were a people carved of gravel and dust,
and we left as the land
stripped from the land -

carrying our hearts in our fists.

Julia Bouwsma

The event is free, and open to the public.

David Vermette at Gulf of Maine

David Vermette will read from and discuss his book "A Distinct Alien Race" at Gulf of Maine Books on Tuesday, April 30, at 7 PM.
Mr. Vermette's book deals with the history of the textile industry in New England, and of the Franco Americans who worked in that industry. He uses Brunswick, Maine, as the historical example, and follows the routes of the Canadian French as they come to Brunswick to work. He gives us the histories of the Cabot and Verney mills, the Ku Klux Klan in Brunswick, the origins of the financing of the New England textile industries (slaves and opium...) and more -. The author's great great grandfather Joseph lived in Quebec, just south of Quebec City, and three of Joseph's sons came to Brunswick to work at the Cabot Mills, eventually living on Oak Street. David Vermette is a researcher, writer, and speaker on the history and identity of the descendants of French North America.
The event is free, and open to the public.

Publishing Party - The Proper Way To Meet A Hedgehog

Please join us for a publishing party for "The Proper Way To Meet A Hedgehog and Other How-To Poems", poems selected by Paul Janeczko, at Gulf of Maine Books Saturday, April 27, at 3 PM. Guest readers will include Melissa Sweet, Lynn Plourde, and Matt Tavares. Refreshments, poetry, and friends. Free and open to the public.

Writing/Righting by and for Refugees

Making Mirrors - Writing/Righting by and for Refugees, edited by Jehan Bseiso and Becky Thompson, has just been released by Olive Branch Press. The contributors include Palestinian poets Zeina Azzam and Sharif Elmusa, both of whom have read at our annual "Hummus and Poetry" evenings of Palestinian poetry, music, and food. We hope to have them both here again this coming summer, to read from, and celebrate, this wonderful new anthology!
Here is a poem from the collection :

My People's Story

We once lived rooted
like the ancient olive trees.
Now we're birds
nesting on songs
about homes we miss.
Storms and distances
decide our address.

Ibtisam Barakat

Peter Kilgore's Collected Poems

North Country Press has just published Quarry - The Collected Poems of Peter Kilgore - a 300 page collection of poems by this wonderful Maine poet/educator.
Here is what Gary said on the back cover of the book:
Here in Maine, in the early 1970s, Contraband Magazine started appearing, and I found a group of young Maine poets, kindred souls in a lonely state for poets. One of my favorites was Peter Kilgore. His poems struck home. They were clear, spare, intelligent, and informed. Peter didn't stay with us long enough, and it is a great gift to have this collection of his poems in print, in the air, to hear the sound of his voice, again.

Happy Birthday Lawrence Ferlinghetti!

Happy 100th Birthday Lawrence Ferlinghetti!
Shown here at Gulf of Maine Books, back in our old 61 Maine Street location (now Henry and Marty's)
a booksigning at Gulf of Maine before a reading at Bowdoin College!

recommended books - Fall 2018

On November 11 we sent out an email to a number of writer and reader friends, asking them to recommend five books for people to read for themselves, or to share during the Holidays season. Here are the responses (more to come as we receive them):

Charlotte Agell:
Days of Awe - short stories - A M Homes
The 57 Bus - a true story of two teenagers and the crime that changed their lives - Dashka Slater
Anything written by Tove Jansson
Symphony for the City of the Dead - Dmitri Shostakovich and the Siege of Leningrad - M T Anderson
Fascism: A Warning - Madeleine Albright


Joshua Bodwell:
Mrs. Bridge - Evan S. Connell
The Bookshop - Penelope Fitzgerald
The Summer Book - Tove Jansson
The Book: An Hommage - Burkhard Spinnen
The Baltimore Book of the Dead - Marion Winik

Lisa Brooks:
Why Indigenous Literatures Matter - Daniel Heath Justice
Miko Kings - Leanne Howe
Sacred Wilderness - Susan Power
Mother/Land - Cheryl Savageau
Snowy Strangeways - Melissa Tantaguidgeon Zobel

Freida Camacho
Ghost - Jason Reynolds
The Mother Daughter Book Club - Heather Vogel Frederick
Keeper of the Lost Cities - Shannon Messenger
The Swap - Megan Shull
Orphan Island - Laurel Snyder

Tom Cheetham:
The Different Modes of Existence - Etienne Souriau et al
Chalk: The Art and Erasure of Cy Twombly - Joshua Rivkin
Emerald PLanet - David Beerling
Jung, Buddhism, and the Incarnation of Sophia - coming in 2019
LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media - P W Singer and Emerson Brooking

John Chryssavgis
Lincoln in the Bardo - George Saunders
These Truths - Jill Lepore
News of the World - Paulette Jiles
Autumn - Ali Smith
A Strangeness In My Mind - Orhan Pamuk

Ellen Cooney
Flights - Olga Tokarczuk
Mirror Shoulder Signal - Dorthe Nors
An Empty Room - Mu Xin
Eleanor or The Rejection of the Progress of Love - Anna Moschovakis
American Indian Stories and Old Indian Legends - Zitkala-Sa

Sharif Elmusa and Judith Tucker:
Jamilia - Chingiz Aitmatov - trans. James Riordan
Four Wise Men - Michel Tournier
The Odyssey: A Father, A Son, and an Epic - Daniel Mendelsohn
Gaza: Preparing for Dawn - Donald Macintyre
Harvard Square- Andre Aciman
The Palestinian Table - Reem Kassis
Soup for Syria - Recipes to Celebrate Our Shared Humanity - Barbara Abdeni Massaad
Making Mirrors - writing/righting by and for Refugees - ed. by Bseiso and Thompson
This Same Sky - a collection of poems from around the world - selected by Naomi Shihab Nye
It's All for Sale: The Control of Global Resources - James Ridgeway
Companions in Conflict: Animals in Occupied Palestine - Penny Johnson (coming Feb. 2019)

Richard Ford
The German Lesson - Sigfried Lenz
The Enigma of Arrival - V S Naipul
Heat & Light - Jennifer Haigh
If You Leave Me - Crystal Hana Kim
Experience - Martin Amis

Carmen Greenlee
The Great Believers - Rebecca Makkai
The Library Book - Susan Orlean
Kaaterskill Falls - Allegra Goodman
The Gulf - Jack Davis
Modern Man: The Life of Corbusier - Anthony Flint
These Truths - Jill Lepore

Nor Hall
Books and Islands in Ojibway Country - Louise Erdrich
The Winter Sun - Fanny Howe
The Ginni and the Golem - Helene Wecker
A Tale For the Time Being - Ruth Ozeki

Gary Lawless:
Overstory - Richard Powers
Midden - Julia Bouwsma
Gathering Moss - Robin Wall Kimmerer
Nature Love Medicine - Essays on Wilderness and Wellness - editor Thomas Fleischner
Miss Garnet's Angel - Salley Vickers

Bill McKibben
Overstory - Richard Powers
Eager - Ben Goldfarb
New York 2140 - Kim Stanley Robinson
A Paradise Built In Hell - Rebecca Solnit
These Truths - Jill Lepore

Phyllis Merriam
These Truths - Jill Lepore
Fear - Bob Woodward
Becoming - Michelle Obama
The Art of the Wasted Day - Patricia Hampl

Naomi Shihab Nye
Ask Me - William Stafford
The Way It Is - William Stafford
The Which Way Tree - Elizabeth Crook
Monday Monday - Elizabeth Crook
News of the World - Paulette Jiles
Small Fry - Lisa Brennan-Jobs

Andrew Rosen
Man Without Qualities - Robert Musil
13th Tribe - Arthur Koestler
Feast of Fear - (interviews with Stephen King)
Rancho Mirage: an American Tragedy of Manners, Madness, and Murder - Aram Saroyan
Prime Green - Robert Stone

Eero Ruuttila
A Thousand Greetings - Sally Mann
The Water Will Come - Rising Seas, Sinking Cities, and the Remaking of the Civilized World - Jeff Goodell
The Third Plate - field notes on the future of food - Dan Barber
Berlin - Jason Lutes
A Life of Olson w/Glyphs - Ed Sanders

Andrew Schelling:
Call Them By Their True Names - Rebecca Solnit
Counter-Desecration: A Glossary for Writing Within The Anthropocene - Russo & Reed
The Annotated Big Sleep - Raymond Chandler
Complete Cold Mountain- Han Shan - translators Kazuaki Tanahashi and Peter Leavitt
Henry David Thoreau: A Life - Laura Walls

Jonathan Skinner
Cubanology - Omar Perez
DuBois's Telegram - Literary Resistance and State Containment - Juliana Spahr
Something for Everybody - Anselm Berrigan
Being Ecological - Timothy Morton
Some Municipal Love Poems - Simon Smith
Spontaneous Particulars - The Telepathy of Archives - Susan Howe

Gary Snyder
1491 - Charles Mann
Dooby Lane - Snyder and Goin
Against the Grain - John C Scott
Mountains, Rivers, and the Great Earth - Reading Gary Snyder and Dogen in the Age of Ecological Crisis - Jason Wirth

Alessandro Spinazzi
In Danger: A Pasolini Anthology - Pier Paolo Pasolini
The Aesthetic Dimension - Herbert Marcuse
The Writer of Modern Life- essays on Baudelaire - Walter Benjamin
New Collected Poems - Marianne Moore
The Mother - Maxim Gorky

Brooke Williams
The Peregrine - J A Baker
Cosmic Consciousness - Bucke
Song of the Dodo - David Quammen
Blue Sapphire of the Mind - Douglas Christie
Jung's Collected Works vol. 18 - The Symbolic Life

Monica Wood
The Uncommon Reader - Alan Bennett
Principles of Uncertainty -Maira Kalman

Colin Woodard
The Warriors - J Glenn Gray
In the Garden of Beasts - Erik Larson
Liberty Men and the Great Proprietors - Alan Taylor
Champlain's Dream - David Hackett Fischer
A Doryman's Reflections - Paul Molyneaux

Bookstore Dogs

Gulf of Maine Bookstore has added extra help for the Holiday Season!

(photos by Beth Leonard)

Bridie says "How can I help?"

Bella is ready to help as well.

Syd is very happy to see you!

Milo can answer any of your questions

Basho recommends Haiku collections!

Vito is reading EB White on Dogs!

Marzipan at work

Raffi is selling Dahlov Ipcar books!

Nikita wants to know where the books about dogs are -

Redd is our computer expert!

Korra is interested in just about anything!

Scarlett is ready to write up your sale!

Noya wants to know "Who moved the biscuits?"

Jack wants Bridie to recommend a good read -

Beckett has several recommendations for you to choose from!

Mona just can't wait to tell you about Justice Ginsburg!

Scarlett thanks you for coming, and hopes that you will visit again!

Carolyn Chute at Gulf of Maine

Gulf of Maine Books will host Maine author Carolyn Chute
Saturday, February 7, 3 PM
Reading from, and discussing, her new novel Treat Us Like Dogs and We Will Become Wolves

Carolyn's previous novels include The School on Heart's Content Road, Merry Men, Snow Man, Letourneau's Used Auto Parts, and The Beans of Egypt, Maine.

The event is free, and open to the public.

Gulf of Maine Chainsaw Massacre

 

Gulf of Maine Books will celebrate Halloween a little late this year, with a Saturday, Nov 2, 3 PM booksigning with author and actor Gunnar Hansen signing his new book "Chain Saw Confidential - How we made the world's most notorious horror movie". Gunnar starred as Leatherface in the movie Texas Chainsaw Massacre.To watch a trailer for the book please click
here
For more information please call the bookstore 729-5083

Common Ground Fair bestsellers

Here are our bestsellers from our booth at this year's Common Ground Fair:

#1 - Art of Fermentation - Sandor Katz
#2 Wild Fermentation - Sandor Katz
#3 Wild Plants of Maine - Tom Seymour
#4 Four Seasons Farm Cookbook - Damrosch and Coleman
#5 Balance - poems by Russell Libby
#6 How to Move like a Gardener - Deb Soule
#7 Taste, Memory
#8 WeMoon Engagement Calendar
#9 This Life Is In Your Hands - Melissa Coleman
#10 Flight Behavior - Barbara Kingsolver

gulf of maine in the new york times

In the March 31, 2013 edition of the New York Times Book Review, novelist Elizabeth Strout, author of the Pulitzer Prize winning "Olive Kitteridge" and  now "The Burgess Boys", was asked in a By The Book interview "Where do you get your books> Do you have a favorite bookstore or library?"
Her answer; "When I want a book, I usually want it right away, so if I'm in New York I'll go into the first bookstore I pass by. When I'm in Maine I go to our local bookstore, Gulf of Maine Books, and if they don't have it, they order it for me and it comes in a couple of days."
Thank you Elizabeth!

Gulf of Maine Birthday

Common Ground Fair photo by Roger Leisner, The Maine Paparazzi


Beth Leonard and Gary Lawless opened Gulf of Maine Books in February, 1979. We are still here, and we want to celebrate. This year our birthday weekend will be Friday and Saturday, February 22 and 23. Because the bookstore is now in its 30s, we will be giving 30% off all book sales on both days. We will have a birthday party on Saturday the 23, at 3 PM, with food and drink, door prizes, 30% off, and a reading by Brunswick author Maria Padian to celebrate the publishing of her new book "Out of Nowhere". We are very excited about Maria's new book - it is a cultural education, a healing book, a community building book. We think every person in Maine should read it, and yes, beyond that, that everyone should read it. It is a young adult title, but it is a book that should be read by adults as well. It deals with French Canadian and Somali teenagers in Lewiston, the high school soccer team, and the actual history of the coming of the Somalis to Lewiston. As the characters of the book struggle to learn how to get along, how to behave respectfully and intelligently, we the readers learn as well. This is a very important book. (If you can't make it to the birthday party, there will be a publishing event for the book the week before, Feb. 16, 7-9 PM at Curtis Library in Brunswick)
Those of you who came to our 30th birthday party will remember Simon Pettet, the poet who read at the party. He has just spent a two month poetry residency in Venice, and compiled an online anthology of poems by poets he met there, available here.
We hope that you will join us in celebrating independent bookselling and the survival of Gulf of Maine Books on this anniversary.
For more information please call the store at 729-5083.

Arizona book ban and librotraficantes

The Arizona legislature has passed a bill ( House bill 2281) which outlaws ethnic studies programs that "promote resentment toward a race or class of people" "advocate ethnic solidarity instead of...pupils as individuals" "are designed for pupils of a particular ethnic group" or "promote the overthrow of the United States government". Tucson schools then shut down a K-12 Mexican American Studies program, banned a number of books by Mexican American and Native American authors, and came into the schools to seize over 80 titles from school libraries and students. (the former superintendant of state schools, Tom Horne, is now the state's attorney general behind the banning) Students immediately began protesting, and a new breed of smugglers, librotraficantes, has arisen to help supply the banned books to students. Calling themselves "librotraficantes", a group of book smugglers filled a bus with over 1000 banned books (now known as "wet-books")and headed for Tucson, stopping along the way for a reading by banned author Sandra Cisneros (The House on Mango Street) and a visit with banned author Rudolfo Anaya(Bless Me, Ultima). Now the librotraficantes are planning to set up underground libraries featuring work by Mexican American and Native American authors, called the rooms "Read Easies" after the speak-easies of the past. You can read the librotraficante manifesto and news of future plans, read a list of the banned books, and make a donation, here One of the books seized in Tucson was ReThinking Columbes: The Next Five Hundred Years, a book that includes work by Native American authors including Mohawk poet/storyteller Peter Blue Cloud. We published Peter's book of coyote poems Back Then Tomorrow in 1979 from our own Blackberry Books. It has been out of print for over a decade, but on hearing this news we have brought it back into print, and sent copies to Tucson. Viva Librotraficantes!

Gulf of Maine Birthday Party

Gulf of Maine Books opened on Maine Street in Brunswick in February, 1979. There was a bad ice storm that day, but we were open, serving waffles and orange juice to anyone who showed up. We will have a birthday party for the bookstore on Saturday, Feb. 25, at 3 PM. On Friday the 24th and Saturday the 25th all books will be 30% off, to celebrate 3 decades of bookselling. At 3 PM on Saturday we will have a birthday party with food and drink, door prizes, and readings by Camden poet Kristen Lindquist (from her new book of poems Transportation) and Bath native and Theater Project alum Morgan Callan Rogers (reading from her new novel ruby red heart in a cold blue sea).
The event is free, open to the public, and we hope that you will come and help us celebrate 33 years of independent bookselling in Brunswick!

gulf of maine poetry site

To start the new year, we have created a Gulf of Maine Books poetry site, where we will post one or two poems a week, with links to more information about the poem or poet. We hope that you will view the site, keep it as a favorite, return often, and forward it to friends. You can connect to it
here

Fine Art By Margaret Leonard

Margaret Leonard has worked here with us at the bookstore over the last 32 years, but her real work, her creative work, is as a painter. You can see her work online
here
or by appointment (207-833-6051)
We encourage you to take a look!

summer bookstore events

Here is a list of Summer Events at Gulf of Maine Books
134 Maine Street, Brunswick 729-5083
All events are free and open to the public.

July 2, 4PM - reading/booksigning with Susan Conley and Joseph Dane
Susan Conley's new book is The Foremost Good Fortune - a memoir of her family's two year stay in China, a narrative which becomes more complicated when Susan learns that she has cancer. Publisher's Weekly said that she "pulls the reader into her world like a close friend." Susan is the co founder of The Telling Room in Portland.
Joseph Dane's new book is a memoir, Dogfish Memory. Joseph is a Maine native who has recently been teaching at the University of southern California, but returning each summer to Harpswell, to write and to sail. Carolyn Chute said of Dogfish Memory that it is "not a ghost story, but there are ghostly and foggy desires, epiphanies and yearnings wavering in and out of ordinary days...A memoir like no other." Franklin Burroughs said the book "combines memoir, elegy, quest narrative, sailing chronicle, and a love story, and is held together by a remarkable voice." In Chris Bohjalian's review of the book he says that "It also made me want to see Maine. I think Henry Miller would have been pleased."
The makers of Dogfish Ale have promised to provide liquid refreshment.

July 9, 4 PM Watersheds and EcoPoetics
a poetry reading and booksigning with Kathleen Ellis and Jonathan Skinner.
Kathleen Ellis is a poet and professor at the University of Maine. Her new book is Narrow River to the North, a beautifully done celebration of the Penobscot River watershed, using poetry, prose and photographs. Baron Wormser said of these poems "Ellis has deep feeling for the trembling energy that informs life on earth."
Jonathan Skinner is the editor of the journal ecopoetics (dedicated to exploring creative-critical edges between writing (with an emphasis on poetry) and ecology (the theory and praxis of deliberate earthlings). Jonathan's latest book of poems is With Naked Foot. He lives in Bowdoinham.

Date changed to July 18, 7 PM
Emily Dickinson Out Loud!
Marion Jeffery reads the poems of Emily Dickinson
Marion Jeffery is performing in The Belle of Amherst, a play based on the life of Emily Dickinson, at Centennial Hall in Harpswell July 12- July 26. She will share an evening of Dickinson's poetry with us for this one evening.

March Gulf of Maine Book Events

Here is our book event schedule for March:

Friday evening, March 18, 7 PM at Frontier Cafe - a book table to accompany the showing of the film JFK & The Unspeakable - Why He Died and Why It Matters by James Douglass - sponsored by PeaceWorks - $5 admission

Saturday, March 19, 3 PM at Gulf of Maine - a talk by Tricia Shapiro, author of Mountain Justice - Homegrown Resistance to Mountaintop Removal,For the Future of Us All. Tricia Shapiro has been closely following and writing about efforts to end large-scale strip mining for coal in Appalachia since 2004.Her book tells a number of first hand stories about living with mountaintop removal and offers on-the-scene and behind-the-scene reporting of what people are trying to do to stop it. She lets the victims of mountaintop removal and their allies tell their own stories, allowing moments of quiet dignity and righteous indignation to share the stage.
Mike Roselle, one of the founders of the Earth First! movement, and author of Treespiker, has said "Shapiro is one of the few writers on this subject who actually understands the strategy, the tactics, and the internal politics of a dynamic and growing movement. This is environmental journalism at its best." To see a short video on a recent anti-mining violations protest click here

Also Saturday,March 19, 7-9 PM at Curtis Library, Brunswick, a publishing party for Maria Padian and her new young adult novel Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best. Check out Maria's website here

Saturday, March 26, 4 PM -at Gulf of Maine Books - a dramatic reading from the novel Ancient Rage, with author Rev. Mary Lee Wile and guest readers Emily Vail and Diana Krauss.
In the novel the author looks at Mary, mother of Jesus, and her cousin Elizabeth, mother of John the Baptist, as they deal with grief, suffering, and the silence of God. This brief dramatic presentation will focus on the heated argument between the two widows, now childless, who struggle to come to terms with their deeply human grief.

Friday evening, April 1, Curtis Memorial Library, a book table for a talk by author Izzeldin Abuelaish, and his book I Shall Not Hate - A Gaza Doctor's Journey On the Road to Peace and Human Dignity