Tony Horwitz

National and New York Times bestsellers, his books are Midnight Rising, A Voyage Long and Strange, Blue Latitudes, Confederates in the Attic, and Baghdad Without A Map. His other work includes “Mississippi Wood,” a documentary on PBS about Southern loggers; “The Devil May Care,” a collection of fifty tales about intrepid Americans; and contributions to State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America and The New Gilded Age: The New Yorker Looks at the Culture of Affluence.

Horwitz has also been a fellow at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University, and a visiting scholar at the John Carter Brown Library at Brown University. He lives with his wife, the author Geraldine Brooks, and their sons in Massachusetts. More information about Horwitz can be found on his website, www.tonyhorwitz.com

The festival’s goal is to encourage a dialogue between authors and readers through programs that feature readings, performances, parties and panel discussions.  Last year more than 2000 people attended the festival.

Programs this year include poetry, fiction, a history panel, a cookbook club program, a travel writers’ panel, crime as presented by a former NYPD undercover detective, a biography panel that includes the author of the new biography of Kurt Vonnegut.  In addition, a range of hands-on programs for children and youths will be presented.

More than 75 authors and artists will participate.  Many of the programs are audio-visual.

Programs focus on genres, such as memoir and biography.  They also reveal the craft of writing and themes this year include The Quick and Dead: Writing about Someone You Knew or Admired, Illness as an Opportunity in Fiction, and I Hated These Characters. Free parking is available all day Saturday in the Abromson Center garage.

Presenters scheduled for the Maine Festival of the Book 2012 include:  Pulitzer Prize-winner Tony Horwitz, author of the Civil War books Confederates in the Attic and Midnight Rising, fiction writers Heidi Julavits, Caroline Leavitt, Brock Clark, Debra Spark, J. Courtney Sullivan, Peter Behrens, Clark Blaise, and nonfiction writers Elizabeth Peavey, Barbara Walsh, Michael Willrich, Lou Ureneck, Angus King,  and Colin Woodard.  Debut novelists include Morgan Callan Rogers and Tupelo Hassman, as well as paranormal writers Amalie Howard, Alma Katsu and Elizabeth Miles.  Children’s authors and illustrators include Jeannie Brett and Rebekah Raye, and offer many hands-on programs such as make-a-book with The Telling Room.  Programs for youth include a panel on how paranormal books offer guidance, and a presentation by Ben Bishop and Lynn Plourde around their new graphic novel version of Lost on a Mountain in Maine.

An additional day has been added this year.  On Thursday evening March 29  in collaboration with Maine Humanities Council and the Kate Cheney Chapell Center for Book Arts at the University of Southern Maine (USM), at 7 pm at the Glickman Library at USM, John Cole, Founding director of the Center for the Book, Library of Congress, will give a talk.

The festival officially kicks off Friday evening March 30 with the Opening Night program at 7:30 pm, which will feature Tony Horwitz.  Unlike most festival events, Opening Night is a ticketed event. Tickets are available at www.mainereads.org starting in February and benefit Maine Reads.

On Saturday, March 31, free programs for all ages run from 9:30 am to 5 pm at the Abromson Center at the University of Southern Maine in Portland and feature more than 50 writers.  Saturday afternoon at 5 pm there will be a filming of O Brother Man: The Art and Life of Lynd Ward, followed by a conversation with its director Michael Maglaras.

Saturday events continue that evening in downtown Portland with the annual Poetry Party. On Sunday, in conjunction with the Maine Festival of the Book, the Kate Cheney Chappell ’83 Center for Book Arts at USM will present a Book Arts Bazaar featuring handcrafted books from 10 am to 3 pm at the Wishcamper Center at USM.  Sunday evening at Portland Stage there will be a dramatic reading by the Portland Stage Affiliate Artists.

“As always, our goal is to continue expanding our programming and to feature the best writers,  the newest books, and original programs that have not been offered elsewhere,” said Sarah Cecil, Executive Director, Maine Reads. “We work to highlight literature in its broadest form so that the fine and performing arts are also represented.”

Dedicated to the fight for a more literate Maine, Maine Reads provides meaningful programs that teach reading, encourage literacy, and celebrate Maine’s rich literary heritage.

For photographs of presenting authors or images from past festivals, please contact Maine Reads.

“Linda Killian has been an acute observer of national politics for over two decades, first winning renown for her path-breaking book on the GOP freshman class of ’94. She now brings similar insight and shoe-leather reporting to one of the least understood groups in America – swing voters – who will likely hold the key to 2012 and beyond.” —David Gergen, Senior Political Analyst for CNN and New York Times Bestselling Author of Eyewitness to Power.

Mrs. Baldacci will join Maine author and illustrator Rebekah Raye on Tuesday, August 23 at 10 a.m. at the Armory on Western Avenue in Augusta.  They will help more than 50 volunteers prepare 18,700 books with accompanying bookmarks to be distributed to every incoming kindergarten student in more than 400 schools throughout Maine, as well as participating homeschoolers.

Through Read With ME., each kindergartner in the state has the opportunity to receive a book, which this year will be The Very Best Bed. Written and illustrated by Rebekah Raye, a resident of Blue Hill, Maine.

In The Very Best Bed, a gray squirrel searches for a place to sleep as night falls. The creature moves from den to cave to nest, as he finds each potential bed already occupied in his coastal, woodsy setting. Raye’s watercolors complement her gentle story that weaves interesting facts about animal sleep habits into the narrative.

Tilbury House, Publishers of Gardiner, Maine, has printed a special paperback edition of The Very Best Bed for Read With ME.  It includes activities for young readers and well as resource materials for parents developed by the Maine Department of Education and illustrated by Raye.  A custom-designed bookmark accompanies the book.

Recently, principals at each school in Maine that has kindergarten students were contacted and invited to participate in the program.  The students at those schools that do participate will receive books for the opening of school.

All of the books and information are provided at no cost to the participating schools and students.  FairPoint technicians and members of the Maine Army National Guard are among the volunteers delivering books to the schools, swelling the program’s volunteer number to almost 100.

Each year the featured book is selected by a committee of educators, parents, teachers, librarians, literacy professionals, and authors.

“In the twelve-year existence of Read With ME., countless children have treasured the books and shared them with family and friends.  We greatly appreciate the support of FairPoint Communications and the Law Offices of Joe Bornstein, which help make it possible, “said Baldacci.

For more information log onto www.mainereads.org.

His other books are The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators, and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier, a cultural and environmental history of coastal Maine; Ocean’s End: Travels Through Endangered Seas, a narrative non-fiction account of the deterioration of the world’s oceans; and The Republic of Pirates: Being The True And Surprising Story Of The Caribbean Pirates And The Man Who Brought Them Down , which is available in Spanish, and Danish translation. He also writes for The Christian Science Monitor, Down East and The Chronicle of Higher Education, and has reported from more than fifty foreign countries and six continents, and lived for more than four years in Eastern Europe. More information about Woodward can be found on his website, www.colinwoodard.com

Justin Wolff

Wolff received a Ph.D. in Art History from Princeton University in 1999. Professor Wolff taught for three years in the Expository Writing Program at Harvard University, received a 2005-06 Research Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and served for two years, from 2006 to 2008, as the Joanne Leonhardt Cassulo Assistant Professor of Art History at Roanoke College in Salem, Virginia.

Michael Willrich

Willrich has been teaching American History at Brandeis University since 1999. He has won numerous awards for his work as a professor, most recently the Dean’s Award for Outstanding Mentoring of Students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences in 2011.