Happily ensconced as a tenured Professor of Biology at the small Skowhegan College in the wilds of Maine, Tymoteusz Tarnaszewski— who goes by the moniker "T"—suddenly finds himself in unknown territory when an incident in a colleague's classroom motivates the college administration to issue a blanket policy requiring the installation of "trigger warnings" in all syllabi. T, believing that this would constrain his teaching, refuses to comply, even after one of his own students lodges a complaint about something T said during the course of a genetics lecture. The administration's judgment is swift: T will be terminated at semester's end for insubordination. What recourse, if any, does T have to save his position? And what will he do when he learns the higher-ups knew, early on, that the student who lodged the complaint against him is actually a threat to the school?
Confucius once said, "Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves." Confucius was wrong. A widower at just fifty years old, one lost, lonely, and increasingly obsessed man seems to find salvation in the ancient Scottish sport of curling—until his new-found hobby leads him down a much darker path. When he encounters a single, 130-year-old, black-and-white photograph of the beautiful Darcie Ross from Glasgow, what can he do but embrace this calling to finally learn the truth? This journey leads him through present-day Belfast, Maine, to 1880's Scotland, and to the remote, volcanic island of Ailsa Craig, home to the finest curling stone granite in the world (and former home to tens of thousands of marauding brown rats). Foreword by Tara Peterson, 2022 Olympic Curler for Team USA.
STUDIO SEEING: A Practical Guide to Drawing, Painting, and Perception
STUDIO SEEING is a study of perception and its role in drawing and painting, featuring practical exercises. It offers a compelling case for vision-based pedagogy. It provides a wealth of insights, guidance, and exercises grounded in Gestalt perceptual theory and neurological research. The premise is that a student of drawing or painting can develop skills to see and create, using ground-directed looking rather than object-directed looking. The author shares the successful process he has developed over decades of teaching and studio practice in a straightforward way. Using examples and anecdotes from his own experience and supporting them with a rich illustration program that includes works from historical and contemporary artists, Torlen distills clear, effective principles for painting and drawing that will assist artists to make strides in their understanding and ability. Exercises designed to help artists immediately understand and apply its concepts round out many chapters. Distributed by the University of Chicago Press within the US.
A Hard Silence: One Daughter Remaps Family, Grief, and Faith When HIV/AIDS Changes it All
A Hard Silence is an intimate glimpse into Melanie Brooks's memories of coping with the tragedy of her father's HIV infection from contaminated blood in 1985. Then, HIV/AIDS was widely misunderstood and public perception was shaped by fear, prejudice, and homophobia, and victims of the disease faced ostracism and persecution. Afraid of this stigma and wanting to protect his family, Melanie's father decided his illness would be a secret. A secret they'd all have to keep. In this powerful memoir, Melanie shares what it was like to endure the loneliness and isolation of not being able to speak. With candor and vulnerability, she opens her grief wounds and brings her reader inside her journey, twenty years after her father died, to understand the consequences of her family's silence, to interrogate the roots of stigma and discrimination responsible for the secret-keeping, and to show how she's now learned to be authentic.
Mountains and Loons
Nancy Orr
Independently Published
When Nancy Orr was 5-years-old in 1952, her family set out to climb Katahdin, the highest mountain in Maine and the centerpiece of Baxter State Park. They didn't make it to the top. As she says, her legs were short. Mountains and Loons tells of the many trips she has made to Baxter in the years since. Most of the later trips were to the north end of the Park - South Branch Ponds, Traveler Mountain, and Grand Lake Matagamon. The book is written in the form of a haibun, a mixture of prose and haiku.
Fellow poets sing praises for Foerster's latest collection. "RichardFoerster’s shining and shadowed poems accumulate into a whole that suggests the breadth and scale of a life, and of two lives conjoined. This poet is not afraid of darkness, so that his language – gorgeous, witty, dire,– lights up everything it touches" – Mark Doty, author of Fire to Fire: New and Selected Poems. Along similar lines Sarah Freligh, award-winning author of Sad Math observes, "Richard Foerster has always been a keen observer of the world, both natural and manmade, as well as a master of his craft, a sculptor of impeccably rendered lines. In With Little Light and Sometimes None at All there is also the wisdom of accrued experience, a sense of summing up a lifetime of close observance, a measuring of dark and light... Part lament, part benediction, this is one stunning book by a poet working at the confluence of craft and heart."
Swimming Between Mountains
Calla James
The Telling Room
"I danced to the sound of the rain
on my skin, kept dancing
when it was too quiet to hear.
I laid on the bleached rocks
and let it all go.
The rain felt soft, kind, adventurous on my cheeks.
I ached to be the same for her
because what is nature if not two-sided."
Calla James’ debut poetry collection centers around their semester spent in the mountains of North Carolina. In Swimming Between Mountains, they explore how the experience allowed them to begin to heal, grow, and learn to live intentionally, away from the pressures of technology. As they return to “normal life,” they must reconcile who they were in the wilderness and how to rebuild their life in Maine around who they have become.
People, Places, Poems
David McCann
Moon Pie Press
"A poem David McCann wrote as a child says, 'I had a dream about people.' Through a lifetime of writing, he has never stopped dreaming about people and about the world around him. He offers them here with musicality, and attention to craft—including his long engagement with the Korean sijo form—but most of all with affection and wonder. Here are beaches and mountains, family gatherings and street moments, Newport mansions and church singing: a human collection of experiences he presents for us to notice. As his poem “In Busan” says, "... just before they/or we/ passed from sight/somebody thought to wave" — Ellen Steinbaum, member of the poets’ group Every Other Thursday.
Mint and Melancholy
Nazik Adam
The Telling Room
“Tonight, the stars, moon, and wind caught my attention. Long after I was done cleaning, I stood in the middle of the kitchen just watching the stars. Adam and my parents said they were unimpressive compared to the ones in Sudan, which fascinated me. The light flooding from the building outside competed with them, but if I focused hard enough, I could make the stars shine brighter than all the other lights.” Siblings Adam and Amanii act as if they are strangers, so when they find themselves away from their Maine home and in a rural village in Sudan, they are surprised by what they learn about each other. In Mint and Melancholy, Nazik Adam pairs scenic prose with her own life’s experiences to create a fictional story that explores family dynamics in the face of differing cultures, generational trauma, and the relationship between brother and sister.
foxtrot algorithm
Atticus Prinn
The Telling Room
Luke Willoughby attends Pinegate Preparatory School, one of the most prestigious boarding schools in all of New England. One night, on an excursion to a local party, he meets Holly, a troubled girl from the nearby public school. Immediately, Luke and Holly click, noticing similarities in one another’s search to find meaning in the world. When both teens’ lives are suddenly turned upside down by a fatal accident, the two are forced to confront the complicated world of adolescence on the run. It’s then that Luke has to grapple with a serious question: how far does his loyalty go, and where must he draw the line?
SUBMISSIONS If you are a current Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance member, and you would like to announce your new book in ExLibris Maine, click HERE. If you are not a member, click HERE to learn more about our member benefits.
.jpg)
