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Maine Public Book Club: All Books Considered

2024 Maine Public Book Club: All Books Considered is starting soon! 

Do you love books? Are you interested in hearing from the author and looking behind the curtain at what the author was thinking while writing? Perhaps have the author respond to a question or two that has been on your mind about a particular scene or character. Look no further than the Maine Public Book Club! Hosted by Bill Nemitz, the Maine Public Book Club takes on eight or so books a year in a series of virtual book club events. 

New this year are TWO fun member giveaways around each book club meeting!

We will be partnering with AudioFile Magazine and giving away a one-year subscription to the digital edition of the AudioFile Magazine to five random book club/Maine Public members before each book club event.

AudioFile is the #1 audiobook review source in the world for audiobook reviews and recommendations. They celebrate the magic of audiobook and the unique pleasures of listening to books. We’re very pleased to have them on board!

Bill Nemitz

Not a member? Take a moment to sign up! It’s a free and great way to satisfy one’s love of books and to connect with authors of books you’ve enjoyed.

We’ve also connected with the wonderful team at Decor Maine Magazine and they are giving away a year’s subscription to their magazine at each book club event as well.

Delivered to your door six times a year, Decor Maine Magazine is the definitive guide for living beautifully in Maine. Their inspiring content features innovative interiors, character-filled houses, and the stories of the people behind them, plus portraits of the vibrant artists, architects, makers, and creatives at work here in Maine.

Maine Public Book Club: All Books Considered is made possible by the generous support of:



2024 Book Club Lineup:



Lungfish by Meghan Gilliss
Thursday, March 21 at 7:00 pm
Click here to join the meeting!

Lungfish by Megan Gilliss Cover Art and photo of the author.

Reviews:

Author Bio:

I was raised in Louisville, Kentucky, moved around a bit (California, Missouri), and now live in Portland, Maine, with my woodworking/ artist husband Adam Stockman, and our daughter.

LUNGFISH is my first novel. I also write short fiction, which has appeared in great places like Salamander, Nat. Brut, fields, New Letters, The Rattling Wall, and North by Northeast: New short fiction by Writers from Maine and New England. 

I first studied studio art, then photojournalism, then attended the Bennington Writing Seminars, where I studied fiction and earned my MFA.

I’m interested in the ways non-traditional voices are entering the literary landscape—how real constraints and the necessary contortions inform practice and ultimately change the literature being written. I’m interested, especially, in the rise of the voice of mothers.

I’ve had the honor of being a resident at the Hewnoaks Artist Colony and have been, among other things, a journalist, a bookstore owner, an outreach librarian, and a pandemic-era nursing unit secretary.

The Road to Dalton by Shannon Bowring
Thursday, April 25 at 7:00 pm

The Road to Dalton book cover and photo of author Shannon Bowring.

Reviews:

Author Bio:

Shannon Bowring’s work has appeared in numerous journals and has been nominated for Pushcart and Best of the Net prizes. She has been recognized on such short- and long-lists as the Maine Literary Awards, the Writer’s Digest Short Story Competition, and the New Millennium Writing Awards. Her debut novel, The Road to Dalton, was chosen as one of NPR’s Books We Love in 2023. The sequel to Dalton, WHERE THE FOREST MEETS THE RIVER, will be published by Europa Editions in September 2024.

Shannon earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Stonecoast at the University of Maine. Raised in Aroostook County, she now resides in the mid-coast region of the state, where she works at her local library.

Soft Features by Gillian Burnes
Wednesday, May 22 at 7:00 pm

Soft Features book cover and a photo of author Gillian Burnes.

Reviews:

Author Bio:

The child of an Air Force meteorologist and a librarian, Gillian Burnes grew up moving. She studied English at ECU and the University of Delaware before starting journalism school at UNC-Chapel Hill—and living and breathing public radio as an intern at WUNC-FM. Around the same time, but independently of those studies, she learned to prepare rodents for convalescent raptors. (It comes up in the book.)

She met a New Englander in Santa Fe, where she was a copy editor for Outside magazine, and in 2002 followed him home to central Maine; they live beside his family’s organic cattle farm with their daughter and the ghosts of their many pigs and chickens. While continuing to copyedit for Outside and other magazines, she’s taught middle school language arts, proofread for the Maine Revisor of Statutes, and contributed articles here and there.

Burnes’s short stories have appeared in Glimmer Train, Split Lip, and The Dillydoun Review. She was one of the New Authors to Watch at the inaugural Maine Lit Fest. Soft Features (Littoral Books), a 2023 Maine Literary Award finalist, is her first novel.

Moon in Full by Marpheen Chann
Wednesday, June 19 at 7:00 pm

Moon In Full book cover and photo of author Marpheen Chann.

Reviews:

Author Bio:

Marpheen Chann is an award-winning author, writer, thinker, advocate, and speaker on identity, intersectionality, equity, and inclusion. As a gay, first-generation Asian American born in California to a Cambodian refugee family and later adopted by an evangelical, white working-class family in Maine, Marpheen uses a mix of humor and storytelling to help people view topics such as racism, xenophobia, and homophobia through an intersectional lens.

Marpheen Chann lives in Portland, Maine. He works in the nonprofit and advocacy sector and holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Southern Maine and a law degree from the University of Maine School of Law.

Current Public and Community Service:

  • President and Founder, Khmer Maine
  • Member, Planning Board for the City of Portland, Maine (March 2020 - Present)
  • Board Member, Maine Conservation Voters
  • Board Member, Quality Housing Coalition

Past Elected and Appointed Office:

  • At-Large Charter Commissioner, City of Portland, Maine (Elected)(June 2021 - August 2022)

“Moon is Full is a beautifully written, deeply layered and open-hearted story about so many things: beauty, love, pain, loss, reunion, displacement and forgiveness. As Marpheen Chan excavates his personal history with an astounding courage and honesty, he seeks no blame, no villains, no enemies. His desire is only to understand the people he loves: his Cambodian mother and godparents, his adopted Evangelical family, the meaning of his roots in rural Maine and Southeast Asia. I have read hundreds of memoirs but the final pages of Moon is Full truly changed my understanding of how a story—any story—can end.” —Jaed Coffin, Author of Roughhouse Friday

"Moon in Full, is much more than just a coming-of-age story; it is a remarkably open and honest story of a young man's triumph over adversities most people would refuse to face." —Bill Bushnell, Kennebec Journal

Home Now: How 6000 Refugees Transformed an American Town by Cynthia “CB” Anderson
Thursday, July 25 at 7:00 pm

Home Now cover and photo of author Cynthia "CB" Anderson

Reviews:

Author Bio:

Cynthia (CB) Anderson is a writer, journalist and educator. Her book Home Now: How 6,000 Refugees Transformed an American Town was a 2019 LitHub Fall Preview Pick and a "Briefly Noted" selection in The New Yorker. Her fiction collection River Talk was a Kirkus Reviews’ Best Books of 2014. A story cycle Blue Lion Days received the 2023 Jeanne Leiby Memorial Chapbook Award and will be published in May 2024. 

Anderson's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in The Iowa Review, Narrative Magazine, North American Review, Pleiades, Electric Lit and elsewhere. Prizes include the 2022 Winning Writers Tom Howard Prize for Fiction, the Crazyhorse Fiction Prize, and 2nd place in the Zoetrope: All-Story Fiction Contest. Her nonfiction has appeared in Boston Magazine, Fourth Genre, The Christian Science Monitor, HuffPost, The Miami Herald, and others, and has twice been shortlisted in Best American Essays.

She holds a B.A. in mathematics from Cornell University and an M.S. in journalism from Boston University. Fellowships/scholarships from the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, ZYZZYVA, and the AWP/Prague Summer Seminars have supported her work. 

Anderson lives in Maine with her family and has taught at venues including Boston University, MWPA, and Austin-based Writing Workshops. She loves ocean swimming, scotch, and karaoke— generally in that order. 

Hunger Hill by Philip Baker
Thursday, August 29 at 7:00 pm

Hunger Hill book cover and a photo of author Philip C. Baker.

Reviews:

Author Bio:

Growing up in Falmouth, Maine, Philip Baker sailed on Casco Bay and hiked through the woods and fields where the land meets the sea. His alma mater, Colby College, provided creative writing and literature courses that fueled his early interest in writing. Philip has taken many opportunities to hone his craft in Portland, Boston, and New York, taking writing courses and workshops with Monica Wood and Gayle Lynds among others. He attends a local monthly workshop to stay connected with other writers. He has written short fiction and now Hunger Hill, a Novel.

The sharing of ideas is the basis of all story-telling. Singers and songwriters, poets, and comedians convey stories to entertain. Philip feels he’s an entertainer at heart and uses the long form—the novel—to bring this story, Hunger Hill, to his readers.

Traveling has been a constant in Philip’s life. He has seen nearly all the states and five continents but his love is for Maine. Hunger Hill, his first published novel, begins a series of four. Each setting will be a different part of the state he loves. Exploring the geographically varied and socioeconomic distinctions of Maine’s four corners intrigues the author. Philip works and lives in Windham with his family and two rescue beagles. And, yes, he thoroughly believes a child should grow up with a dog.

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters
Wednesday, September 25 at 7:00 pm

The Berry Pickers by Amanda Peters Cover Art and a photo of the author.

Reviews:

Author Bio:

Amanda Peters is a mixed-race woman of Mi’kmaq and European ancestry, born and raised in the Annapolis Valley, Nova Scotia.

In 2022, Amanda completed a Master of Fine Arts Program in Creative Writing at the Institute of American Indians Arts (IAIA) in New Mexico. In 2021, Amanda won the Indigenous Voices Award for her work of short fiction, Waiting for the Long Night Moon. She was also selected to participate in the 2021 Writers Trust of Canada Rising Stars Program by Metis poet and novelist, Katherena Vermette.

Her short fiction and non-fiction have been published in The Antigonish Review, Grain Magazine, The Alaska Quarterly Review, The Dalhousie Review, and Filling Station Magazine.

Amanda’s first novel, The Berry Pickers, was published this spring by HarperCollins in Canada and by Catapult in the US this autumn. The novel is shortlisted for the Atwood Gibson Writers’ Trust Fiction Prize in Canada, and for the Barnes and Noble Discover Prize and the Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction in the US.

Fire Exit by Morgan Talty
Wednesday, October 9 at 7:00 pm

Fire Exit book cover and photo of author Morgan Talty.

Author Bio:

Morgan Talty, a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation, is the author of the national bestselling and critically acclaimed story collection Night of the Living Rez from Tin House Books, which won the New England Book Award, was a Finalist for the Barnes & Noble Discover Great New Writers, and is a Finalist for the 2023 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction. His writing has appeared in GrantaThe Georgia ReviewShenandoahTriQuarterlyNarrative MagazineLitHub, and elsewhere. A winner of the 2021 Narrative Prize, Talty’s work has been supported by the Elizabeth George Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts (2022).

Talty is an Assistant Professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and contemporary Literature at the University of Maine, Orono, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in creative writing as well as the Institute of American Indian Arts. Talty is also a Prose Editor at The Massachusetts Review. He lives in Levant, Maine.

Reviews:

"Fire Exit, Morgan Talty’s debut novel, is utterly consuming. With this book, Talty more than fulfills the promise of his glorious short story collection, Night of the Living Rez. The storytelling is both spellbinding and quietly devastating. The novel is ultimately about family and belonging, about the stories we need to know even when they threaten to burn our lives down. A father desperately wants to let his daughter know about her body’s secret history, even while his mother forgets her son altogether. This book is filled with humor, and humanity’s strange wonder at its own desperation and depravity, as only Talty can do, with his subtle charm and crystalline prose, his sober reckoning with what love can and cannot do, what healing is and is not possible in our families. The novel absolutely smolders." —Tommy Orange

"Fire Exit is gorgeous. A genuinely original examination of the costs we pay to tell ourselves certain stories about who we are and where we come from. Talty is a revelation on matters of the heart, particularly the tenderness and warfare of contemporary manhood. This is that rare thing: a frankly honest novel about hard things written without a trace of bitterness. I loved it." —Brandon Taylor

The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson by Ellen Baker
Thursday, November 21 at 7:00 pm

The Hidden Life of Cecily Larson book cover and photo of author Ellen Baker.

Author Bio:

Ellen Baker is the author of Keeping the House and I Gave My Heart to Know This. She has worked as a bookseller and event coordinator at an independent bookstore. Originally from the Upper Midwest, she currently lives in Maine.

Reviews:

“An engaging, multigenerational family saga…Baker deftly weaves the lives of three generations of Larson women into a moving tale of secrets, identity, and found family.” —Booklist

“A sprawling, beautiful delight of a novel spanning nearly a century as four generations gradually peel back the layers of long-buried family secrets that may just change everything.” —Kristin Harmel, New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Daughter

Maine Public Book Club: All Books Considered Partner Bookstores

These wonderful bookstores are providing a purchase discount to anyone purchasing a Maine Public Book Club title while Maine Public is featuring each specific title:

 BookStacks logo
BookStacks in Bucksport (use code MPBOOKCLUB2024)
 Bull Moose Music logo
Bull Moose (No discount code needed — store discount policy on all titles applies)

 Devaney, Doak & Garrett booksellers logo
DDG Booksellers in Farmington (use code MPBOOKCLUB2024)

 Left Bank Books logo
Left Bank Books in Belfast (use code MPBOOKCLUB2024)

Mockingbird Bookshop Logo
Mockingbird Bookshop in Bath (No discount code needed)

Nonesuch Books & More in South Portland (use code MPBOOKCLUB2024)

PRINT: A Bookstore logo
Print in Portland (use code MPBOOKCLUB2024)

Sherman's Maine Coast Book Shops logo
Sherman's Maine Coast Book Shops (use code MPBOOKCLUB2024)
Maine Public Book Club Meeting Archive
Season Three
Author Paul Harding discusses his novel This Other Eden in a fast-paced conversation with host Bill Nemitz.
Host Bill Nemitz and author Mary Louise Kelly discuss her highly person memoir.
Get transported into the world of Trek with author Ryan Brit and his book Phasers on Stun!
Author Bill Roorbach joins Bill Nemitz to talk about his novel, Lucky Turtle.
Author Kerri Arsenault discusses her novel Mill Town with host Bill Nemitz.

Coauthor Jennifer Finney Boylan and Host Bill Nemitz discuss the novel Mad Honey.

Join our host Bill Nemitz and "The Midcoast" author, Adam White.
Season Two
Author John Cariani discusses his novel Almost, Maine with Maine Public's Jennifer Rooks.
Author Morgan Talty speaks with Maine Public's Cindy Han about his novel Night of the Living Rez. Set in Maine, the book’s twelve stories center around life and death on the Penobscot Indian Nation reservation. At the center of the collection is David, a Penobscot boy living on the rez, and he is the piece that links all of the stories.

Author Jeffrey Lewis discusses his novel Land of Cockaigne with Maine Public's Jennifer Rooks.
Author Phuc Tran discusses his novel Sigh, Gone: A Misfit's Memoir of Great Books, Punk Rock, and the Fight to Fit In with Maine Public's Cindy Han.
Author Jessica Anthony discusses her novel Enter the Aardvark with Maine Public's Jennifer Rooks.
Author Gigi Georges talks about her first novel and the women that inspired her with Cindy Han.
Season One
Meredith Hall, author of the New York Times bestselling memoir Without a Map, discusses her novel Beneficence with Maine Public's Jennifer Rooks.
Author Lily King discusses her novel Writers & Lovers with Maine Public's Cindy Han.
Author Jim Nichols discusses his novel Blue Summer with Maine Public's Jennifer Rooks.
Author Christina Baker Kline discusses her novel The Exiles with Maine Public's Cindy Han.
Author Susan Conley discusses her novel Landslide with Maine Public's Jennifer Rooks.
In this special All Books Considered Book Club meeting, Maine Public's Jennifer Rooks host a roundtable conversation with the Starfish Writer's Group, a group of five Maine authors: Bill Roorbach, Monica Wood, Lewis Robinson, Sarah Braunstein, and Kate Christensen.

Author Gregory Brown discusses his novel The Lowering Days with Maine Public's Cindy Han.