Margaret Hathaway

Margaret Hathaway is the author of the memoir The Year of the Goat: 40,000 Miles and the Quest for the Perfect Cheese, the guides Living With Goats: Everything You Need to Know to Raise Your Own Backyard Herd and Food Lovers' Guide to Maine, and the cookbook, The Portland, Maine Chef's Table: Extraordinary Recipes from Casco Bay. A native of Wichita, Kansas, Margaret is a graduate of Wellesley College and spent time as a Fulbright scholar to Tunisia. She worked in book publishing and as a manager of New York City's famed Magnolia Bakery before settling with her husband, Karl Schatz, and their three daughters on Ten Apple Farm, a homestead in southern Maine where they tend dairy goats, assorted poultry, a large garden, and a small orchard.        

Eric Dimbleby

Eric Dimbleby is a horror writer who was born and raised in Rhode Island. He moved to Maine 10 years ago and currently resides in Brunswick with his wife and three children. Eric has been published in dozens of anthologies in the US, Canada, and Australia. In 2012, Eric won the "Best Speculative Fiction" award from the Maine Writer's and Publishers Alliance, for his debut novel Please Don't Go. Eric's most recent novel is entitled The Klinik. For more information and for his complete list of works please visit www.ericdimbleby.com

Katie Clark

Katie Clark lives in Brunswick with her husband, children and many assorted animals.  When she is not writing or tending to things at home, Katie works at Tri-County Literacy in Bath as the program coordinator of the Read With Me Family Literacy Program.

Walter Bannon

Walter Bannon, of Bridgton, Maine, has been writing songs and performing most of his life.  His songs opened doors to meet a US President and perform on the US Capitol steps.   They have also traveled the internet in support of child protection agencies.  His recording of Don’t Shake Jake is part of the shaken baby awareness program.  His Christmas song, I Wouldn’t Trade, plays across Cracker Barrel restaurants’ dining rooms during the holiday season. 

Walt’s first book, Digger Down, delighted antique bottle collectors as he shared stories of his digging adventures.  Digger Down was published by Publish America in 2005.  The White Pocketbook turns to the serious topic of his mother’s amazing path to survival during WWII while growing up in occupied Belgium.  While work on a music video is ongoing and a soundtrack has been released, Walt dreams of one day seeing a movie come from this survival story that parallels Anne Frank’s plight.

Maria Padian

Maria Padian is a young adult novelist who makes her home in Brunswick, Maine.  Her most recent book, Out of Nowhere (Knopf, 2013), is set in the imaginary town of Enniston, Maine, and is about the friendship that develops between a Somali refugee boy and a white Franco boy who are high school soccer teammates.  Out of Nowhere has received starred reviews from School Library Journal and the Bulletin of the Center for Children's Books, and is one of the selections in this year's "I'm Your Neighbor" community read in Portland Maine.  Maria's other books for young adults include Jersey Tomatoes Are the Best (Knopf, 2011) and Brett McCarthy: Work in Progress (Knopf, 2008) , which was an ALA-YALSA Best Book for Young Adults and received a Maine Lupine Honor Award and a Maine Literary Award. To learn more about her, visit www.mariapadian.com or Maria Padian Books on Facebook.

Chris F. Holm

Chris F. Holm was born in Syracuse, New York, the grandson of a cop who passed along his passion for crime fiction. His work has appeared in such publications as Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine, Needle: A Magazine of Noir, and THE BEST AMERICAN MYSTERY STORIES 2011. He’s been an Anthony Award nominee, a Derringer Award finalist, and a Spinetingler Award winner. His Collector novels, published by Angry Robot books, recast the battle between heaven and hell as Golden Era crime pulp. He lives on the coast of Maine with his lovely wife and a noisy, noisy cat.

Lea Wait

Edgecomb author Lea Wait writes the Agatha-finalist Shadows Antique Print Mystery series, whose protagonist, Maggie Summer, is an antique print dealer and college professor.  The sixth in the popular series, SHADOWS ON A CAPE COD WEDDING, was published this spring.

Lea also writes acclaimed historical novels for ages 8-14 set in nineteenth century Wiscasset, which are on student choice award lists all over the country and have been praised for their authenticity and unique use of actual people who lived in small town Maine. The next of Lea’s books in this group, UNCERTAIN GLORY, set during the first two weeks of the Civil War, will be published in early 2014.

Lea grew up in Maine and New Jersey, worked at AT&T while raising the four daughters she adopted as a single parent, and is now married to artist Bob Thomas, who shows his work at the Stable Gallery in Damariscotta. She is also a 4th generation antique dealer who has been an antique print dealer herself since 1977. She blogs with other Maine mystery authors at www.mainecrimewriters.com, and invites readers to friend her on Facebook and check out her website at www.leawait.com

V. Paul Reynolds

V. Paul Reynolds is editor of the Maine Northwoods Sporting Journal and cohosts a weekly outdoors talk radio program, Maine Outdoors, on the Voice of Maine News-Talk Network. He also writes a self-syndicated weekly outdoors column for a number of Maine newspapers. His outdoor columns and photography have won a number of first place awards from the New England Outdoor Writers Association.

Kieran Shields

Kieran Shields grew up in Portland, Maine where he now sets his critically acclaimed series of historical novels. His new book, A Study in Revenge, is a gripping stand-alone mystery that follows the same investigators from his 2012 debut, The Truth of All Things. That first novel was recently featured as one of Target’s “Emerging Author” selections for February of this year. Kieran graduated from Dartmouth College and the University of Maine School of Law. He lives in Bath with his wife and two children.

Amy Faircloth

Wicked Good is Amy Faircloth’s first published novel. Amy is a lawyer in Bangor, Maine.  She is on the Board of Directors of the Bangor Humane Society and RSU 22 (a school district encompassing Hampden, Winterport, Newburgh and Frankfort). She is on the steering committee for the Greater Bangor Bark for Life, a canine and kid-friendly fundraiser for the American Cancer Society.  She is a copy editor for Telemachus Press, an independent press located in Florida.  She lives with her three dogs and two sons, and enjoys bicycling, walking in the woods and reading.

Written with her sister, and very loosely based on her life, Wicked Good is the story of a mother and her teenage son with Asperger’s Syndrome. Kirkus Book Reviews calls it “a funny, frazzled tale of extreme parenting,”

Jennifer O’Connell

Jennifer O’Connell’s new picture book, The Eye of the Whale, brings to life the dramatic rescue of an entangled humpback whale and the profound connection she made with the four divers who risked their lives to free her.

To research The Eye of the Whale, Jennifer traveled to San Francisco, where she met Captain Mick Menigoz and rode his rescue boat, Superfish, to the site of the event. This experience fueled her inspiration as she created the images and words of this extraordinary story, which has been praised by famed anthropologist, Jane Goodall.

Jennifer O’Connell is the author and illustrator of the bestselling picture book, Ten Timid Ghosts. She is the author of It’s Halloween Night! and the illustrator of A Garden of Whales, among others. A two-time recipient of the Christopher Award, Jennifer also creates illustrations for book covers and magazines.

She lives with her husband, Kevin, in Bethesda, Maryland, and speaks frequently about her books and her creative process. Visit her online at www.JenniferOConnellArt.com

Paul Molyneaux


Born in 1958, Paul Molyneaux, grew up in Pennsylvania and spend most of his youth in the woods of Delaware, Montgomery, and Berks counties. At 17 years old he left home and went to sea as a commercial fisherman. In 2010, looking out from a wooded ridge on the Appalachian Trail in Pennsylvania, he said: “I realize now that the reason I went to sea was because it was the last wilderness. But here in these woods is where it all started.”

During his twenty-five year career on the water, Molyneaux worked in numerous areas: from fisheries development consultant to Native Peoples in Maine and Alaska, to harpooning swordfish on Georges Bank. After earning a degree in Fisheries and Marine Technology from the University of Rhode Island in 1985, he walked away from the industrial sector and fished from a dory (an ocean worthy rowboat) for ten years. In 1997 he earned a BA in Writing and Literature from Goddard College.

Since 1998 Molyneaux has been writing about the political, socio-economic, and environmental aspects of fisheries and aquaculture for The New York Times, National Fisherman, and other publications. He is the author of two books, The Doryman’s Reflection: A Fisherman’s Life (Thunder’s Mouth Press, 2005), and Swimming in Circles: Aquaculture and the End of Wild Oceans (TMP, 2007).

As a 2007 Guggenheim Fellowship winner, Molyneaux spent a year researching sustainable fisheries practices in India, Chile, Iceland and several other countries, and has a finished manuscript currently being prepared for publication.

The Barbarian Utopia will actually be Molyneaux’s fourth book. He and his wife and their two children split their time between Maine, and Sonora, Mexico (and more recently, the Appalachian Trail.)