This month’s selection of media coverage highlighting the insight, expertise and achievements of �ֲ���ý professors has a little bit of everything, from the presidential election to personal economics, news about a top literary award, and even, a major fish tale.

For a creative writing professor who is also a novelist, there’s nothing like being in the running for a major book award to spread the word about your novel in a wide variety of publications. That’s what happened to Lecturer in English Jessica Anthony ’96 this week when her novel The Most was longlisted for the National Book Award.

Meanwhile, economics professor Paul Shea weighed in on American personal savings rates for Marketplace and the newest issue of The Atlantic includes a deep dive by Tyler Austin Harper, assistant professor of environmental studies, into the secret world of extreme fishing. Wetsuit required. Read below to learn more and get links to coverage of other faculty members in the news.

Jessica Anthony ’96

National Book Foundation announces the longlist for the 2024 National Book Award for Fiction — People

The fourth novel by Lecturer in English Jessica Anthony ’96, The Most, made the National Book Foundation’s longlist of 10 books for its 2024 Fiction prize. The news was featured in numerous outlets, including , and , along with .

Here’s what the had to say about Anthony’s book:

“This year’s Fiction Longlist features two titles that interrogate the role of gender in marriage, in sex, and in artmaking. On an unusually warm Sunday in November, housewife, mother, and former tennis champion Kathleen Beckett puts on her old, red bathing suit, enters her apartment complex’s semi-abandoned pool, and refuses to come out. Set over the course of eight hours, Jessica Anthony’s The Most paints an intimate portrait of marriage in the late 1950s — and the secrets, expectations, and lost loves that tells the story of one seemingly unremarkable couple and a larger cultural moment.”

The finalists will be announced Oct. 1.

For more on Anthony’s much-lauded novel, and her insights into her craft, see earlier coverage from �ֲ���ý News.

Paul Shea

Americans are spending a lot and not saving much. Economists aren’t too worried. Yet — Marketplace

Marketplace tapped into Dowling Family Professor of Economics Paul Shea’s expertise for a story about news from the Bureau of Economic Analysis . The savings rate in July was only 2.9 percent, while at the same time consumer spending increased.

“The spending part is a sign of a strong economy,” Marketplace‘s story read. “But the data shows we’re continuing to buy stuff while not putting money away. You can see the problem here.”

Paraphrasing Shea’s reassurances, Marketplace reporter Caleigh Wells wrote “it’s not that saving rates are frighteningly low, it’s just that they’re coming down from when they were��really high early in the pandemic, when people had money to spend and nothing to spend it on. Now things are different.”

Then she quoted Shea directly: “The average household is, in a way, normalizing. They’re starting to move towards more normal levels of debt.”

Francesco Duina

Who cares about inequality, and what should we do if we want less of it? —Researching Sociology

Writing for the blog Researching Sociology, Dana Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina and colleague Cary Wu . 

Historically in America, across party lines, the richer one was, the less worried they were about income inequality. “In 1987, for instance, poorer Democrats and Republicans [both] perceived income differentials to be too big,” the scholars write.

But now, party affiliation plays a huge role in how people view income inequality. Across all income levels, “those who identify as Democrats care a great deal about income inequality while those who identify themselves as Republicans…care a lot less.” But “concern [about income inequality] among poorer Republicans has actually dropped over time.”

For the blog post, the scholars drew from their recent article, , “Political Polarization and the Dynamics Between Actual Income and Perceived Income Inequality in the United States, 1987 to 2021.”

John Baughman

Maine political scholars see no precedent for divisive, unpredictable presidential race — Portland Press Herald

Published prior to President Joe Biden dropping out of the presidential race, , associate professor of politics, and other Maine politics scholars about the fraught race.

Baughman spoke to comparisons to the 1968 election, when incumbent Lyndon Johnson declined to seek a second term. While comparisons to the 1968 election are valid, today’s political climate is driven more by negative partisanship than in the past, Baughman said.

“I don’t want to overplay how fraught politics are today in light of what was happening then with Vietnam and civil rights, but I think there is one thing different now that is important to consider, and that’s the role of negative partisanship in driving behavior of voters.”

Tyler Austin Harper

Inside the dangerous, secretive world of extreme fishing — The Atlantic

Tyler Austin Harper, an assistant professor of environmental studies who is a contributing writer at The Atlantic, writes about his penchant for . Eighty nights a year no less.

This despite some expert guidance he got when first getting into the sport of “wetsuiting” a few years ago: “The advice I received from another fisherman was simply: �ٴDz�’t.”

Wetsuiting is a form of saltwater fishing that involves wearing a wetsuit and wading or swimming out to offshore rocks — almost exclusively at night, often during storms — to access deeper water or faster currents than can be reached in traditional waders.

For Harper, the quarry is striped bass, a popular gamefish that migrates every spring, mostly from the Chesapeake and Delaware bays, to as far north as Maine, and back down again in the fall.

White Dudes for Harris’ was a missed opportunity — The Atlantic

Harper, who also has an interest in politics, wrote in another piece, in July, that , a group of voters supporting the Kamala Harris presidential campaign. Democrats have “peddled condescending, divisive, and often bizarre rhetoric in the name of ‘anti-racism.’”

“So imagine my shock when I found myself, slowly but surely, charmed by the White Dudes for Harris call.” 

Still, he writes, the “White Dudes” name “risks solidifying the public’s impression that the Democratic Party is for overeducated elites with laptop jobs and performative progressive politics. That is a shortsighted move “when the GOP is on its way to achieving a multiracial working-class coalition, cobbled together with increasing shares of Black and Hispanic voters driven by male defections from the Democratic coalition.”

Harper’s other recent writing for The Atlantic includes:

• ““
• ““
• ““

Paul Schofield

‘These people are looking back at us’ — Seattle Met

Paul Schofield, an associate professor of philosophy whose research focuses on moral and political philosophy, writes frequently on the issue of homelessness. Last month Schofield was quoted in a Seattle Met story about a retired history professor, J.M. Simpson, in Washington state. 

The writer of the article had learned about Simpson’s work via in April, lauding the photographer and sharing some of his photographs. The thread has over 24,000 likes and three million views. In the story, the writer quotes extensively from Schofield’s response to Simpson’s work:

“It’s easy to imagine them having friends and having dreams and having things that they care about just as a result of sitting there with the photo for a few minutes,” noted Schofield, whose writing on homelessness had caught Simpson’s attention.

“It’s got to be something about him that brings this out,” Schofield concluded.

Lecturer in English Jessica Anthony ‘96 has had some dazzling reviews for her new novel, The Most, since it was released by Little, Brown & Co. in July.

NPR’s reviewer said the slim novel, just 133 pages, “blindsided me with its power.” The Washington Post called The Most “a spare, elegant novella” and the Chicago Review of Books compared her to mid-century critical darling Richard Yates: “Jessica Anthony renders the pathos of older domestic dramas such as Revolutionary Road, but with an admirable economy of words and a creative omniscient narrator.”

In the midst of that response to her fourth book of fiction, Anthony did something unusual. While she speaks on the topic of craft constantly in her creative writing courses at �ֲ���ý, she rarely writes about it.

But last month (better known as Lit Hub), the online publication devoted to all things literary. In it, she celebrates using time as a form of structure for her fiction, and both showing and telling. 

The Most takes place on one November day in 1957, when a housewife named Kathleen climbs into the pool at her apartment complex and spends the whole day there, contemplating choices both before and behind her while her husband Virgil and two young sons watch in wonder and consternation. There are some flashbacks to her life as a youthful tennis star before she met Virgil, via self-reflection, which Anthony puts in the category of telling, but Kathleen and Virgil’s story unfolds in the course of that day.  

In her LitHub essay, Anthony connects her use of time as a form of structure with what she learned from teaching her students at �ֲ���ý, particularly in the midst of the pandemic in 2020, when she had to use Zoom. As a decidedly un-tech-oriented person, this initially felt like an impossible task. “I had no idea how I was going to teach structure on a screen, because the only way I’ve known to teach structure is by intimately connecting it to character and style.”

Anthony went back into her own writing practice “and realized that what I had been doing was teaching myself, through experimentation and failure, about the art of time.”

“This superb short novel, about a marriage at its breakpoint, deserves to become a classic.”

Anthony’s other books include The Convalescent (2009), a graphic novel called Chopsticks, published in 2012, and Enter the Aardvark, which came out in 2020.

Anthony writes:

“ I started to see scenes differently, not as a structural apparatus, but as a magical contradiction of time. When I sat down to write Enter the Aardvark, I gave myself three days to bring down the re-election campaign of a U.S. congressman. How different would that novel have been if I gave myself a full year? What about twenty minutes? How much time would I have spent in scene versus narration? When I wrote The Most, I gave myself one working day. Eight hours. We know how much we can get done in a day according to our clocks. So it can go in story. What if we only met Emma Bovary for two days, and not a lifetime?”

In a note to �ֲ���ýNews, Anthony added a few more thoughts: 

“Time’s malleability is one of the reasons why I suppose I have not grown tired of the novel. Time allows for an infinite parade of formal constructions. An entire act of a character’s life can occur in the seconds it takes to simply recall, remember. A whole season can occur over a single day. (Virginia Woolf understood this, perhaps, better than anyone.) The writing of this novel encouraged me to reimagine how I communicate structure to the fiction writers here at �ֲ���ý. The best tools for a writer are always the simplest, and Time is a useful tetherer.”

More on The Most, from critics:

• From NPR: — Heller McAlpin reports that The Most “blindsided me with its power, much like the cunning tennis strategy from which it gets its title. I don’t say this often, but this superb short novel, about a marriage at its breakpoint, deserves to become a classic….”
• From The Washington Post: — “The Most is darkly funny in its own way, and in the end is less a comedy than a smoldering, Cheeveresque mediation on mid-century, middle-class disappointment.”

•  From Chicago Review of Books: — Anthony elevates The Most “from a simple marriage story to a portrait of an era, a minute event firmly entrenched in a larger world.”

Clark Whelton ’59

Say Your Prayers and Take Your Chances — City Journal

Clark Whelton ’59 compared his recollections of the 1957–58 global influenza pandemic — which he experienced at �ֲ���ý firsthand — to what’s transpiring now. 

“Today, I look back and wonder if an oblivious America faced the 1957 plague with a kind of clueless folly,” writes Whelton, a former speechwriter for New York City mayors Edward Koch and Rudolph Giuliani.

“Why weren’t we more active in fighting this contagion? Could stricter quarantine procedures have reduced the rate of infection and lowered the death toll? In short, why weren’t we more afraid?”

Read the story:

• “” City Journal, March 13, 2020

Jenna Armstrong ’15

Duke medical student Jenna Armstrong named Gates-Cambridge scholar — Duke Today 

Duke University announced that Jenna Armstrong, �ֲ���ý ’15, won a Gates-Cambridge Scholarship, a prestigious award that funds the full cost of a degree at Cambridge University. 

Starting in October 2020, Armstrong will earn a doctorate in physiology, development, and neuroscience. She plans to study “human metabolic resilience in older individuals through the lens of mitochondrial function and malleability,” according to Duke — in other words, she’ll study aging, and how to ease its effects, at the cellular level. 

Armstrong majored in biological chemistry and mathematics at �ֲ���ý and was a rower all four years. 

Read the story:

• “,” Duke Today, Feb. 17, 2020

Mike Nelson ’06

Nelson eager to be another kid’s lighthouse — The Wanderer 

Southeastern Massachusetts’ The Wanderer reported that Mike Nelson ’06 was appointed superintendent of the Old Rochester Regional School District. When he takes the job on June 30, he will be the youngest superintendent in the state. 

Nelson, who studied politics at �ֲ���ý, always knew he wanted to work in public education, he told reporter Mick Colageo. He has served as director of student services and assistant superintendent in the same school district. 

“I really thought about ‘Why am I applying for this position?’” said Nelson, who is currently developing remote learning opportunities for the students who are staying home during the COVID-19 pandemic. During his interview for the post, “I shared comments about the analogy that educators can be lighthouses for children.

“I thought about how fortunate I was not only to have one lighthouse but many different lighthouses who were educators throughout my life. And I said, ‘That’s the reason why I believe I ended up interviewing for this position,’ because in some ways it helps me come full circle in terms of what people gave to me.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” The Wanderer, March 12, 2020

Katie Dobkowski 

Parasitic sushi worms have quietly been on the rise, study says — New York Post 

Hannah Frishberg of The New York Post covered a new study, co-authored by Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology Katie Dobkowski, which found that the number of parasitic worms humans can ingest by eating raw or undercooked seafood is on the rise. 

Dobkowski worked on the paper, which studied the prevalence of Anisakis, or “herring worm,” as a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Aquatic and Fisheries Sciences at the University of Washington. 

While herring worms — which also infect other species — pose more of a danger for marine mammals, the parasites can cause symptoms of food poisoning for humans who eat contaminated sushi. 

People up and down the supply chain do their best to remove the worms before they make it to a diner’s plate, but the researchers recommend that, to be extra sure their roll doesn’t contain a little something extra, sushi lovers should inspect every bite for worms before chowing down. 

Read the story: 

• “,” New York Post, March 20, 2020

Rakey Drammeh ’14

‘Squash gave me the tools to pick and choose my way to exist in the world at large,’ says StreetSquash graduate Rakey — Squash Mad

Squash news site Squash Mad editor Alan Thatcher covered a dinner celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Squash and Education Alliance, a network that combines squash, academics, and college preparation for underresourced communities. 

During the event, Rakey Drammeh ’14 gave a “show-stopping speech” about her experience with the affiliated program StreetSquash. An environmental studies major, she was captain of the women’s squash team at �ֲ���ý and is now a software developer at Citibank. 

“SEA introduced me to a world that I never imagined knowing or being part of,” Drammeh said in her speech. “But more than that, it gave me the tools to pick and choose my way to exist in that world at large.”

Read the story: 

• “�Ę,” Squash Mad, Jan. 26, 2020

�ֲ���ý College

�ֲ���ý College breaks record for Fulbright award winners — Sun Journal 

The Lewiston Sun Journal shared the college’s February announcement of a historic year for the college’s Fulbright Student Award program.

With 24 young alumni receiving Fulbright-sponsored awards for teaching and research worldwide in 2019–20, �ֲ���ý is the No. 1 producer of Fulbright Student awards among U.S. liberal arts colleges. The college’s two dozen awards are the most ever going to a U.S. liberal arts college.

(Subsequent to this article, in March, the U.S. State Department due to the COVID-19 public health crisis.)

Read the story: 

• “,” Sun Journal, Feb. 10, 2020

Clifton Daggett Gray 

Insight: When Clarence Darrow came to Maine — Portland Press Herald 

For the Portland Press Herald, U.S. District Court Senior Judge D. Brock Hornby wrote about a curious episode for �ֲ���ý, Maine, and legal history: the time �ֲ���ý President Clifton Daggett Gray, after boasting that college debaters could best legendary attorney and orator Clarence Darrow, had to put his money where his mouth was. 

In 1927, Darrow, known as the fierce defense lawyer who litigated the “Scopes monkey trial,” came to Maine to debate Gray on the question, “What and why is man?” The debate would be a friendly clash of worldviews: Gray, who held a doctorate from the University of Chicago, was an ordained Baptist minister; Darrow was thoroughly agnostic. 

The two debated first in Boston and again two days later in Portland. Of the Boston contest, The New York Times wrote, “If the scholarly shield of Dr. Gray shone with a higher polish, the ironic lance of Mr. Darrow smote with a sharper point.”

And the Press Herald, on the debate in Portland: “The contest of wit and logic rested at the conclusion without decision.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” Portland Press Herald, Feb. 9, 2020

William Worthy ’42

William Worthy — a radical, intrepid journalist and activist — Amsterdam News 

Herb Boyd of Amsterdam News profiled William Worthy ’42, a journalist and activist whose dedication to his work led him to flout U.S. travel restrictions during the Cold War. 

Defying a U.S. ban on travel to China, Worthy made a reporting trip there in the late 1950s, after which the State Department declined to renew his passport. He later traveled to Cuba without a passport, was convicted for returning to the United States without one, and had the conviction overturned. His trip to Cuba was the subject of “The Ballad of William Worthy” by folksinger Phil Ochs. 

Boyd praised Worthy’s courage and ability to stand up against injustice no matter who perpetuated it, whether on the political right or left. “Worthy not only courageously lifted his voice for the oppressed, he did it no matter where he ventured — China, Cuba, Russia, or the four corners of the world,” he wrote. 

Read the story: 

• “,” Amsterdam News, Feb. 6, 2020

Francesco Duina 

Flyover 2020: What does patriotism mean? — MPR 

Professor of Sociology Francesco Duina joined Berkeley sociologist Arlie Hochschild and Kerri Miller of Minnesota Public Radio for a discussion about what patriotism means and how it will affect voters’ decisions in the next presidential election. 

Duina’s 2017 book, Broke and Patriotic, explores why the poorest Americans are the most patriotic. The radio discussion turned to a meaty question: whether patriotism requires an uncritical, love-it-or-leave-it attitude, or if a self-defined patriot can still be critical of U.S. policies.

Duina said many Americans’ ideas of patriotism combine contribution to the nation, whether through military or another type of service, with a sense of hope for the future.

“Those are essential elements of American patriotism,” he said during the discussion, an entry in Miller’s call-in “Flyover” program. But “some people feel that the ability to live up to the notion of giving back with hope is vanishing because of a confluence of various long-term racial trends, economic trends, political trends.” 

“Some people feel that you can be patriotic — but you’re up against insurmountable challenges.” 

Listen to the interview:

• “” MPR, Feb. 5, 2020��

Nathan Tefft 

New study suggests raising taxes on e-cigarettes could encourage traditional smoking — Forbes 

Kelly Phillips Erb of Forbes reported on a new study, co-authored by Associate Professor of Economics Nathan Tefft and funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, that found raising taxes on e-cigarettes can lead to a corresponding rise in consumption of traditional tobacco products. 

That’s a problem — when it comes to so-called sin taxes, which prices are raised in a bid to discourage bad behavior, you don’t want people to swap one behavior for another. 

“Because smoking is known to have substantial negative health impacts,” Tefft said in an interview with �ֲ���ýNews, “policymakers should be aware of this potential tradeoff when contemplating e-cigarette control policies.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” Forbes, Feb. 10, 2020

Cameron Hamilton ’12

Lessons from ‘Love Is Blind’ for socially distanced daters — NPR

Cameron Hamilton ’12 and wife Lauren Speed — who met on the breakout Netflix hit Love is Blind — spoke with NPR’s Michel Martin about their unique perspective on social distancing. 

The premise of Love is Blind is that contestants date without ever seeing each other’s faces, at least until they become engaged. Fan favorites Hamilton and Speed have been married for more than a year. 

The pair spoke with Martin about their own relationship and how to date at a distance — but some of Hamilton’s advice can apply to relationships more broadly, romantic or not. 

“I think the power of communication is key here and truly listening to what the other person has to say,” he said. “I mean, it’s easy to hear them, but to really focus in and take a beat and try to process what they’re saying and respond to that.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” NPR, March 22, 2020

See also: 

• “,” Bangor Daily News, Feb. 26, 2020

Jessica Anthony ’96

Political satire Enter the Aardvark is wonderfully weird — Time 

For Time, Annabel Gutterman reviewed Enter the Aardvark, a new novel by Jessica Anthony ’96, a lecturer in English at �ֲ���ý.

The novel starts with Alexander Paine Wilson, a young Republican politician, receiving a taxidermied aardvark on his doorstep. The story follows the politician as well as two friends in 19th-century England, all of whom have to hide the fact that they are gay.  

“T��dzܲ��� Enter the Aardvark is certainly satire, Anthony’s depiction of Wilson’s repressed sexuality cuts beneath the surface,” Gutterman wrote. 

“Her dissection of Wilson’s political beliefs, particularly his anti-abortion stance, isn’t just sharp commentary on polarization, identity, and power in the U.S. It’s also a poignant examination of what happens when we deny ourselves the ability to love and be loved.” 

Read the review: 

• “,” Time, March 18, 2020

Amy Bradfield Douglass

Questions loom over the future of police lineups — Phys.org 

Australia’s Flinders University announced that a review of studies on eyewitness identification in criminal cases resulted in revised and new recommendations for setting up identifications, in the hope of avoiding false or faulty evidence. 

Professor of Psychology Amy Bradfield Douglass was part of the team that modified four existing recommendations and created five more, including recording lineups on video and having police put in writing the reasons behind suspecting someone of a crime. 

The review led one of the co-authors, Flinders’ Neil Brewer, to write a paper advocating for getting rid of traditional lineups altogether. 

Read the story:

• “,” Phys.org, Feb. 25, 2020

Emily Kane

How to raise feminist boys — The Week

For The Week, Claire Gillespie wrote about her own, often-difficult, efforts to raise her two boys to accept and promote gender equality. 

Gillespie wrote that she makes a wide variety of toys, colors, and opportunities available to her children; with her husband, tries to model equality — and worries that sexism and gender roles are so entrenched in the world around her that harmful patterns will prevail anyway. 

Professor of Sociology Emily Kane had some words of wisdom for Gillespie. “When parents enforce gendered expectations, it is often out of fear their children (especially their sons) will be teased, ostracized, or otherwise excluded if they don’t fall into line with those expectations,” she said. 

“We can all help by avoiding judgment, and those small, everyday assumptions about what a kid will enjoy or be good at based on their gender.”

Read the story:

• “,” The Week, Feb. 27, 2020

Mary Wheelwright Mitchell, Class of 1869

The ‘unconquerable’ Mary Wheelwright Mitchell — Sun Journal 

Steve Collins of the Sun Journal profiled Mary Wheelwright Mitchell, �ֲ���ý’ first female graduate, whose refusal to leave the college helped keep it true to its founding commitment to coeducation. 

�ֲ���ý was the first Northeastern college to admit women, and for that reason surrounding colleges looked down on it. This kind of pressure and others caused the first female �ֲ���ý students to withdraw without degrees. Mitchell was the first to stay the course. 

�ֲ���ý founder and president Oren Cheney secured Mitchell a scholarship from the state of Maine to help her through her studies. Reflecting both her independent spirit and, perhaps, how dramatically a college education’s price point has changed in the ensuing 150 years, Mitchell famously refused to take the help. 

“I cannot take that, Mr. Cheney,” Mitchell said. “Give it to the brethren. I can take care of myself.”

Read the story: 

• “,” Sun Journal, March 1, 2020

Matt Charest ’20

After thousands of miles in the same pool, this Maine swimmer is moving on — 207, WCSH-TV

News Center Maine’s show 207 featured the uplifting story of Matt Charest ’20 of Lewiston, Maine, whose entire swimming career has been based in �ֲ���ý’ Tarbell pool. 

Head swim coach Peter Casares started giving Charest private lessons when Charest was 8 years old, and when he was old enough, he started attending swim camps at Tarbell. When it came time to go to college, it was only natural for Charest to keep swimming, and to swim for �ֲ���ý. 

“While no one keeps track of such things, it’s possible that in his 13 years of swimming in Lewiston he has spent more time in the college pool than any other human being,” reporter Rob Caldwell pointed out. 

“It’s definitely a home,” Charest told the news program. “I feel at home when I’m in the water.”

Read the story: 

• “,” 207, March 5, 2020

Rebecca Herzig 

Why women feel pressured to shave — CNN 

Rebecca Herzig, professor of gender and sexuality studies, talked to CNN style reporter Marianna Cerini for an in-depth piece about how hairlessness in women came to be a beauty ideal in the United States, and how society’s views of body hair vary by time period and geography. 

Herzig said that an early example of the United States’ current ideal of hairlessness is none other than Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man, which associates body hair with primitivity and regards hairlessness as “more evolved.” 

Now, American culture considers body hair, at least for women, “abject,” or worthy of disgust and shame. “It’s worth noting that those are ideas about cleanliness, contingent social norms, rather than about actually removing ‘dirt,’” Herzig told CNN. “Most hair removal practices tend to introduce new opportunities for abrasion and infection.” 

Read the story: 

• “,” CNN, March 3, 2020

One of Maine’s most respected poets, Wesley McNair visits �ֲ���ý at 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 28.

His appearance, part of the Language Arts Live series of literary readings at �ֲ���ý, takes place in Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave., and is open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact 207-786-6326 or 207-786-6256.

Language Arts Live brings highly regarded writers to �ֲ���ý to read from and discuss their work. The series is sponsored by the English department, the Learning Associates Program, the �ֲ���ý Humanities Fund, the programs in African American studies and American cultural studies, and the John Tagliabue Poetry fund.

One of Maine’s most effective advocates of the art of poetry, poems have won praise from readers, reviewers and fellow poets alike for more than 40 years. Intended to be “both accessible and complex,” as a reviewer for the Minneapolis Star Tribune wrote, his lines find truth in the small, often overlooked events of our common existence.

His most recent book is Lovers of the Lost: New & Selected Poems (David R. Godine, 2010), which showcases some of his best poetry from six previous volumes and a sampling of new work. He has authored or edited 18 books, including poetry, nonfiction and anthologies.

In 2006, McNair was selected for a prestigious United States Artists Fellowship, awarded annually to America’s finest living artists. He has held grants from the Fulbright and Guggenheim foundations, two Rockefeller Fellowships, an NEH Fellowship in literature and two NEA fellowships.

McNair served four times on the nominating committee for the Pulitzer Prize in poetry, and in 2010 served as guest editor in poetry for the Pushcart Prize anthology. His poetry has appeared in two editions of The Best American Poetry and in more than 50 anthologies, and has been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition and 14 episodes of The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor.

McNair, of Mercer, served as a professor at the University of Maine at Farmington from 1987 until his retirement in 2004; founded and directed the Creative Writing program there; and is now UMF’s Writer in Residence.

He was a visiting professor at Colby College from 1999 to 2004. Colby acquired his personal papers in 2006 and has created an interactive McNair archive and teaching site on the Web.

�ֲ���ý has a long tradition of welcoming poets and fiction writers to read from their work. During a 1932 U.S. tour, William Butler Yeats read his poetry to a large audience in the �ֲ���ý Chapel. For 30 years, the inimitable �ֲ���ý professor and poet John Tagliabue brought many distinguished writers to campus, including Allen Ginsberg and Gwendolyn Brooks.

Since 1991, when it formally instituted a concentration in creative writing within the major, the English department has hosted public readings, class visits and residencies by more than 75 acclaimed poets and writers, among them Nobel Prize laureates Seamus Heaney and Derek Walcott; Pulitzer Prize winners Paul Muldoon, Donald Justice, �ֲ���ý alumna Elizabeth Strout, Yusef Komunyakaa and Richard Ford; Carolyn Forché, Grace Paley, Galway Kinnell, Marge Piercy, Robert Pinsky and Sarah Manguso.

Recent �ֲ���ý alums who have authored prize-winning first books have also returned to read: Jessica Anthony (class of 1996), Christian Barter (1990), Gabriel Fried (1996), Christina Chiu (1991) and Craig Teicher (2001).

EDITOR’S NOTE: The appearance by novelist Paul LaFarge described below has been rescheduled for May 13.

Three established novelists, including the �ֲ���ý alumna who wrote the acclaimed debut The Convalescent, read from their work in March and April in �ֲ���ý College’s Skelton Lounge, Chase Hall, 56 Campus Ave.

The readings are part of �ֲ���ý’ Language Arts Live series of literary events. Sponsored by the �ֲ���ý English department, the programs in environmental studies and Spanish, the Humanities Fund, the Learning Associates Program and the John Tagliabue Poetry Fund, they are open to the public at no cost. For more information, please contact this eosucha@bates.edu.

James Hannaham, author of God Says No (McSweeney’s, 2009), reads from and discusses his work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 4. “God Says No” follows gay African-American protagonist Gary Gray in his return to his home state of Florida as he struggles to define his own identity. In a review of the novel, the Austin Chronicle wrote that Hannaham’s prose, characterized by its “impressive discipline,” was what allowed for “such a thorough inhabitation of his character … There is no outsider salvation here, merely the small, funny tribulations of an American life.”

Hannaham’s short stories have appeared in the journals The Literary Review, Open City, One Story and Nerve. A recipient of fellowships from the MacDowell Colony and Blue Mountain Center, Hannaham teaches creative writing at Pratt Institute.

�ֲ���ý alumna Jessica Anthony reads from her work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, March 18. Her debut novel, The Convalescent (McSweeney’s, 2009), was selected as an Editor’s Choice by the San Francisco Chronicle and appears on the American Library Association’s 2010 Notable Book List of Outstanding Fiction.

The Convalescent focuses on Rovar Pfliegman, a Hungarian meatseller in Virginia who lives in his portable meatselling shop: a bus. Integrating the stories of his Hungarian ancestors into Pfliegman’s own, the tale brings together past and present.

The San Francisco Chronicle called her work a dance “between then and now, painting history’s and Rovar’s unusual tragedies with traces of sympathy, shock and sadness, but mostly humor and resignation. . . . He belongs in the bus the same way his ancestors belonged on the sidelines of history, numbers dwindling … until there is only one Pfliegman left, Rovar, who, faced with extinction, instead finds himself reborn in the most awkwardly beautiful of ways.”

Anthony’s stories have appeared in anthologies such as Best New American Voices and McSweeney’s New American Writing. A member of the �ֲ���ý class of 1996, she is a lecturer in English at the college.

Writer and critic Paul LaFarge discusses his work at 4:15 p.m., Monday, April 5. LaFarge is the author of The Facts of Winter (McSweeney’s, 2005), Haussman, or the Distinction (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2001) and The Artist of the Missing (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999).

A recipient of grants from the Guggenheim Foundation and the Macdowell Colony, LaFarge is the 2005 winner of the Bard College Fiction Prize and the winner of the California Book Award for The Artist of the Missing. He has taught creative writing at Wesleyan and Columbia.

The Facts of Winter and Haussman place LaFarge on the perimeter of the tale, purporting that he acts as a mere translator for obscure French writer and minimalist “Paul Poissel.” In an interview with the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, LaFarge said that Poissel “came into strange existence a long time ago. I don’t remember exactly how. But I thought, ‘God, it would be great to invent a minor French poet!’ “