Members of Jesup Memorial Library's weekly online writer's group read and talk about their writing, how the group works, and how you can become a member. Jesup Memorial Library's Write On! group has been meeting, in person and remotely, on Saturday mornings since 2014. Attendees share group leadership, bringing manuscripts of fiction, memoir, poetry, and just about anything else for individualized feedback, and in turn offering feedback for each other.
About the writers:
Carol Woolman published her first story about a rafting trip in the Arctic that changed her life. In 2013 she self-published a book for the Library of Congress Veterans History Project about her father that is both a family history and a WWII memoir. Her current work, Ecology of Grief, A Mother’s Witness, is about living through the violent death of her 25-year-old son Mark Horner. It includes the penetrating and numbing sorrow but also adventure, surprise, mystery, and meaning. She is working with Maine Authors Publishing and expects it to be available in 2025.
Steven Roiphe holds a nonrefundable degree from Harvard. His prose has appeared in a number of literary magazines, garnering a Pushcart Prize nomination. He lives with his wife and young son in Lamoine, where he is working on one novel and seeking a book agent for another. Tonight he’s reading from the newer one, in which sentient clown puppets battle for America’s soul.
Andrew McQuinn got his degree in video production from the New England School of Communications. After graduating, he spent six years in Las Vegas, working as a stagehand. He now resides in Bangor where he works as a care coordinator. When he’s not writing, Andrew is spending time with his amazing partner Louis, or his feline fur baby Marty. Andrew has several novels in the works he hopes to get published over the next year or two. Playing it out Straight is his debut novel.
Dona Parker, an art & education major with a graduate degree in counseling, has followed her passions throughout her life through painting, sculpting, writing, and whatever creative pursuits piqued her interest in the moment. Her work with Hospice helped hone her skills to hold groups for caregivers and those in bereavement. She developed & taught classes on Julia Cameron’s The Artist's Way, encouraging others to bring their creativity to life. She moved back to Maine for the second time in 2009. When her husband died in 2017, she began writing grief poems & stories, which became her way to heal over the years. She has a completed manuscript she will self-publish soon. The poems she will read are from this upcoming book, working title Grief Time.
Before children, Joan FitzGerald was an award-winning financial news reporter. Since children, she has written short stories and essays, and a middle grade, environmental fantasy. She is currently at work on an adult dystopian novel. Joan lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and has been a summer resident of Mt. Desert Island since birth. The Jesup Writers group has been an essential support for her work. She writes all year ’round but writes best here, on this island in Maine.
Lisa Boblett is a recently retired Social Worker who resides in Asheville, North Carolina. She stayed in Bar Harbor, Maine for several months in 2024, working as a seasonal employee at a local inn. While in Bar Harbor, she discovered the Jesup writing group “Write On.” She continues to enjoy being a part of the group via Zoom. Lisa is currently working on poetry and a short story collection. In 2013, she self-published her first novel Dreams of Sand written under the pen name Annalise Bernadette. Dreams of Sand depicts a young couple in a small Michigan town impacted by Desert Storm in the early 1990s. Her latest short story “Clown Dreams” resulted from an online fiction competition hosted by Writer’s Playground.