Welcome to the Peaks Island Writers blog. Peaks Island is a small island (roughly seven kilometers long) located in Casco Bay, Maine. The island is connected to the mainland by the Casco Bay Lines ferry, which runs year round and roughly every hour. However, the last ferry stops running at 10:30, so we are pretty much stuck out here together at night and during raging northeasters when the ferry stops running altogether! We are only 20 minutes away by ferry from Portland and for this reason Peaks Island is one of the few year round commuter islands off the coast of Maine. Peaks Island seems to draw a more contemplative, introverted resident--the type of person who enjoys long solitary walks along the rocky coastline and does not mind isolation. For this reason, the island is a fertile ground for writers! For a small island with a year round population of 900, we are proud to be the home of many writers, artists, and musicians.
I moved to Peaks Island in 1997 and raised my three children on the island. After spending four years in Europe, my kids and I returned to Peaks Island in 2011. This year I decided to start a Peaks Island Writers' workshop in my home. I am a writer and the author of two novels This is Not My Sky and The Ghost in Hannah's Parlor (based on Peaks Island history and written for children ages 9 - 12), three works of literary nonfiction, Lenin's Head on a Platter, Journey into the Backwaters of the Heart, The Snake in the Vodka Bottle, a play, The Interpreter, and a collection of poems, Irish Woman Washing. I am the recipient of two Fulbright grants in Creative Writing and a National Endowment for the Arts grant in Literature. I have earned two Master of Fine Arts degrees, one from Columbia University School of the Arts in Poetry, the other from the University of New Hampshire in Nonfiction. I am also the author of Lithuania's first textbook on teaching Creative Writing, Everybody Can Write (Rasyte gali kiekvienas). I applied the knowledge and tools I've acquired teaching Creative Writing for 17 years at the University of Southern Maine, Vilnius University, and other places, as well as my experience as director of the Stonecoast Summer Writers' conference 2004 - 2007) to my workshop and have been thrilled with the results. It has been a wonderful experience me, discovering so much talent here in my small island community. I started this blog to give my island writers an opportunity to share their work. Almost all of the workshop writers are developing book-length works of either fiction or nonfiction. This blog will give workshop participants the opportunity to post chapters and excerpts as they are developed. We also participate in a number of weekly in-class exercises. These spontaneous jewels of writing are often lovely and deserve to be shared here on the blog as well.
I hope that this blog becomes an interactive place of expression that offers opportunities for sharing and developing Peaks Island creative work. Enjoy!
Laima Vince
Peaks Island, Maine
I moved to Peaks Island in 1997 and raised my three children on the island. After spending four years in Europe, my kids and I returned to Peaks Island in 2011. This year I decided to start a Peaks Island Writers' workshop in my home. I am a writer and the author of two novels This is Not My Sky and The Ghost in Hannah's Parlor (based on Peaks Island history and written for children ages 9 - 12), three works of literary nonfiction, Lenin's Head on a Platter, Journey into the Backwaters of the Heart, The Snake in the Vodka Bottle, a play, The Interpreter, and a collection of poems, Irish Woman Washing. I am the recipient of two Fulbright grants in Creative Writing and a National Endowment for the Arts grant in Literature. I have earned two Master of Fine Arts degrees, one from Columbia University School of the Arts in Poetry, the other from the University of New Hampshire in Nonfiction. I am also the author of Lithuania's first textbook on teaching Creative Writing, Everybody Can Write (Rasyte gali kiekvienas). I applied the knowledge and tools I've acquired teaching Creative Writing for 17 years at the University of Southern Maine, Vilnius University, and other places, as well as my experience as director of the Stonecoast Summer Writers' conference 2004 - 2007) to my workshop and have been thrilled with the results. It has been a wonderful experience me, discovering so much talent here in my small island community. I started this blog to give my island writers an opportunity to share their work. Almost all of the workshop writers are developing book-length works of either fiction or nonfiction. This blog will give workshop participants the opportunity to post chapters and excerpts as they are developed. We also participate in a number of weekly in-class exercises. These spontaneous jewels of writing are often lovely and deserve to be shared here on the blog as well.
I hope that this blog becomes an interactive place of expression that offers opportunities for sharing and developing Peaks Island creative work. Enjoy!
Laima Vince
Peaks Island, Maine
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