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 others. Join them to hear more about their work and find out how to become a member.
Read on to find out more about the writers!
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.
Nina Barufaldi St. Germain, working on a MFA at Stonecoast, 3 beautiful kids, married, yappy little dog named Twinkle, self employed, small business, ice fishing, Florence + the Machine, messy house, hustle ‘til it hurts, looking to focus, get down, small town, friends.
Steven Roiphe holds a nonrefundable degree from Harvard, where he studied creative writing, literature, and history. 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’s putting the finishing touches on a novel that charts the tortured journey of Divine Justice through American history. He’ll be reading an excerpt from this, featuring the early twentieth-century populist and perennial presidential candidate William Jennings Bryan, known today almost solely for losing the Scopes Monkey Trial, which he actually won. You can follow Steve on Twitter, @StevenRoiphe.
Jack Wilson lives in Seal Cove and works on Mount Desert Island. He writes as a hobby and is a recent participant in the Jesup Memorial Library’s Write On! writer’s group, where he has found great advice and considerate friends. He enjoys swimming and reading.
Carol Woolman was a closet writer from age 11 to 37 when she published her first story about a rafting trip in the Arctic that changed her life. She calls her nonfiction “mission writing,” stories she feels called to write. One was about a multiply handicapped girl whose extraordinary mother of five children loved her into an unimaginable life. In 2013 she finished 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 beloved son Mark Horner at 25. It includes the penetrating and numbing sorrow but also adventure, surprise, mystery and meaning. She feels a sense of urgency to find a publisher for this book in order to reach others who suffer similar loss. This is the book that she wanted and needed but did not find when her son died.