Maine Authors & Artists Discuss "What the Woods Have Taught me."

​“I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.” Henry David Thoreau

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Maine poets, authors, artists and others gather to discuss, “What the woods have taught me?” in a panel discussion celebrating Thoreau’s Bicentennial, Saturday, October 21 at 2:15 to 3:30 p.m. in the University Events Room, 7th Floor, Glickman Library at USM, Portland. The panel will be moderated by publisher Nancy E. Randolph owner of Just Write Books of Topsham.

After individual presentations, Randolph will lead a Question & Answer session followed by an informal opportunity for the public to purchase books (maybe art) and meet panel participants. Refreshments will be served.
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Panel presenters, Robert Chute, Lisa Hibl, Anthony Muench, Norma Salway and Dana Wilde will present their own work in several minutes while discussing how the woods have informed their art. 

​More about the panelist:

​Robert M. Chute is a native of Naples, Maine, attended Fryeburg Acadamy and received degrees from the University of Maine, and Johns Hopkins University. Chute was instrumental in the formation of COLA, The Congress of Lake Associations, dedicated to the study and protection of Maine lakes. He also served as chair of a state commission concerned with genetic modification of agricultural products. Professing of Biology supported his poetry habit from 1962 until retirement from Bates College in 1993. He received the Rhine Humanities Council chapbook award for Samuel Sewall Sails for Home and the Beloit Poetry Journal’s Chad Walsh Award for the poem, “Heat Wave in Concord.” Chute was awarded the 2011 Distinguished Achievement Award by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.

Lisa (Giles) Hibl is the Interim Director of the Russell Scholars Program at USM.  She has taught for the English department, the Honors Program, and the Entry Year Experience Program, and the USM Summer Book Arts Program.  Her poetry and teaching often focus on the human relationship to nature, and on relationships between literature and the other arts.  She received a BA in English from Bowdoin College (1994), an MFA in Poetry from Arizona State University (1998), and a PhD in American Literature from Brandeis University (2001). Her poems have been published in Hayden's Ferry Review, Black Fly Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Hawaii Pacific Review, and elsewhere.  She regularly volunteers with the Poetry Out Loud project at Mt. Ararat high school and has assisted in a poetry workshop at King Middle School in Portland and is currently at work on a poetry manuscript.

Photo Courtesy Lisa Giles

​Anthony Muench RLA has practiced in Maine for 37 years. Tony grew up surrounded by visual arts. His father was an artist and art professor at RISD. Tony attended RISD majoring in Architecture and specializing in Landscape Architecture. Tony is a talented artist using freehand drawings as a communication tool, creating individual art—pastels and watercolors—separate from his landscape design work and preparing architectural renderings for other architects and developers. Tony produces public and private design projects—mostly residential in character—also institutional and commercial. He most enjoys his public sector work owing to the interaction amongst the various players. Tony serves on the Portland Public Arts Committee in Portland, Maine.

​Norma Kimball Salway, parent, grandparent, graduate of the University of Southern Maine, retired from teaching in 2009. During her 34 years in education, she taught four- to seven- year-old students. Her hobbies include writing, kayaking, gardening, antiquing, and crafting. Since retirement, Salway has written three books. The first, The Spirit of Songo, is a collection of original poems and vintage photos about the lake near her Albany home. The second, Touched by a Hummingbird, written and illustrated by Salway, tells the true story of rescuing a hummingbird prior to her friend's funeral. This book comforts those grieving a loss. Salway continues to write, living in Portland, Maine, with her Maine Coon cat, Gusty.

Photo by Kassi Gatchell

Photo Courtesy Bangor Daily News

Dana Wilde lives in Troy. Maine, and writes the “Backyard Naturalist” column for the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel newspapers in Maine. He has authored The Other End of the Driveway, Summer to Fall and Nebulae: A Backyard Cosmography. He has taught in Maine and Eastern Europe and has served as a Fulbright scholar in China and South Africa and as an NEH fellow. His writings have appeared in popular, literary and academic publications, including The North American Review, Exquisite Corpse, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Puckerbrush Review and many others.

About the Moderator: Nancy E. Randolph operates Just Write Books publishing Maine books by Maine authors telling Maine stories. An active community member since 1986, Randolph served on the Topsham Board of Selectmen in the late 1980s and the Brunswick Town Council in the early 2000s. She co-chaired the rehabilitation effort of the Androscoggin Swinging Bridge and guided the planning and creation of two riverside parks at each end of the bridge. Along with two others she founded and serves as a member of the board of Save Our Swinging Bridge.Org to ensure the maintenance of the historic bridge. Her current volunteer project raising $200,000 for the completion of the Androscoggin Brunswick-Topsham Riverwalk, a 1.25 mile, year-round, in-town walking loop connecting the two towns and including the Swinging Bridge and the Frank J. Woods bridge sidewalk.

Photo by Keith Spiro