The 2009 festival has an impressive group of poets and artists from around the state of Maine, many of whom have never read in Belfast, and some interesting collaborations.
Adrian Blevins The Brass Girl Brouhaha won the 2004 Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Blevins is also the recipient of a Rona Jaffe Writer's Foundation Award, a Bright Hill Press Chapbook Award for The Man Who Went Out for Cigarettes, and the Lamar York Prize for Nonfiction. A new book, Live from the Homesick Jamboree, is forthcoming from Wesleyan University Press. Blevins teaches at Colby College. 
Arielle Greenberg is the author of My Kafka Century and Given, as well as several chapbooks, and the co–editor of several poetry anthologies, including, with Rachel Zucker, the forthcoming Starting Today: Poems for Obama's First 100 Days. and Women Poets on Mentorship: Effort and Affections. She is an associate professor at Columbia College Chicago and also teaches in the Stonecoast MFA program through the University of Southern Maine. 
Carl Little is the author of 3,000 Dreams Explained and Ocean Drinker: New and Selected Poems. His poems have appeared in many publications, including The Hudson Review, Paris Review, Off the Coast, Puckerbrush Review and Narramissic Notebook, and in The Maine Poets, edited by Wesley McNair. His poem “Ten Tourists Visit Baker’s Island, ca. 1900” won the 2002 Friends of Acadia poetry competition. Author of several art books, including Paintings of Maine, he lives and writes on Mount Desert Island. 
David Sloan helped found, and is the lead teacher at Maine's only Waldorf high school – Merriconeag Waldorf High School in New Gloucester. He graduated from the Stonecoast MFA program in poetry, and is the author of two books on Waldorf education—Stages of Imagination: Working Dramatically with Adolescents, and Life Lessons: Reaching Teenagers through Literature. He has also had numerous articles published in Renewal, and poetry in Western Poetry Quarterly and Infinity Limited. 
Helen Tirone has lived in Maine since the age of two, when her parents moved their family from Philadelphia to Mt. Desert Island. She always told her father it was the greatest decision he ever made. She graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a dual B.A. in Creative Writing and Geography. Upon returning to Maine she pursued a career in Garden Design/Landscaping. She and her family live on a farm in Freedom. More bios coming soon for Stephen Petroff and Mark Melnicove.
Ellen Goldsmith is the author of two chapbooks – Such Distances and No Pine Tree in This Forest Is Perfect, which won the Hudson Valley Writers’ Center 1997 chapbook contest. Her poems have appeared in a number of journals and magazines including Bangor Metro, California Quarterly, the Kerf, Off the Coast and Wolf Moon Press Journal. She is the recipient of Creative Incentive Awards from the City University of New York. A resident of Cushing, she is a professor emerita of The City University of New York. 
Joel Lipman is Professor of Art & English at the University of Toledo, and Poet Laureate of Lucas County (Ohio). His poetry, which has been published since the 1960’s with independent press books, include Machete Chemistry/Panades Physics (Cubola New Arts, with Yasser Musa), and the Luna Bisante Prods chapbook The Real Ideal and Ransom Notes. Among his bookworks, mail art and visual poems are the lengthy sequences, Jesse Helms’ Body, and Origins of Poetry, a selection of which was published in Poetry and republished in Harper’s. 
Dave Morrison is like a carpenter missing fingers — do you worry about his ability or applaud his devotion? A high school graduate and above-average guitar player, Dave has published two novels and three books of poetry, and his poems have been published in literary magazines and anthologies. 
Lauren Murray was advised by her grandmother to make sure she had an interesting life if she wanted to be a poet. She moved to Maine in 1983 and works as an occupational therapist. She is a collaborator with Ova Dreams. 
Jonathan Skinner’s poetry collections include With Naked Foot and Political Cactus Poems. Skinner edits the journal Ecopoetics and teaches in the Environmental Studies Program at Bates College in Central Maine. 
Karin Spitfire’s full fledge debut as a poet came in 2005 with the publishing of her first book, Standing with Trees. Her poetry includes rants, prayers, polemics and free verse influenced by her years as a dancer, healer and activist. She has enjoyed the opportunity to collaborate with visual artist Susan White, Kenny Cole and performing artist David Dobson in previous Festivals and the Women’s Work Dance Collective Summer 2009 “Landscapes Show.” 2009 Collaborative Artists
Dyan Berk holds an art/ art education degree from the University of Miami. Her mixed media paintings and soft sculptures have been shown in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout New England. For the past 8 years she has been working on a series of collages and 3D work. She presently lives and works on Monhegan Island and Lincolnville. This summer she will be installing her first Percent for Art installation entitled "A Story Inside" at the Mt. View Elementary School in Thorndike. Richard Mann made his way back home to Maine after studying intaglio,lithography and papermaking at the University of Hawaii. He lives in Belfast and is a partner at Aarhus Gallery.
Paul Oberst earned a BA in Studio Arts from Centre College, Danville, Kentucky. He worked for 4 years at the Cleveland Center for Contemporary Art (now Cleveland MOCA) and was a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown. The subject of his work is the architectural "temple" (imagined sacred space) in sculptural form or in graphic studies, dance costume/set designs and museum site-specific installations. His pieces are in private, foundation, corporate and museum collections and have been shown in gallery, university and museum exhibitions. 
Willy Reddick grew up in an encouraging family of professional artists. She studied at the Massachusetts College of Art and has been working professionally as a painter and white-line woodblock printmaker for over 20 years. Currently she has been combining miniature paintings with semi-precious metals as brooches and other two-dimensional or sculptural pieces. She also designs and manufactures her own line of Willy Wires jewelry, is a freelance designer and a founding partner of Åarhus Gallery in Belfast. 
Abbie Shahn thinks of herself as the last of the "artists with a summer place in Maine" and the first of the “back to the landers;” or maybe she’s neither. She paints. She gardens. She agitates. She reads. She thinks. Shahn was a co–host on a radio show of world music for over 20 years. That music had a great influence on her art. 
David Estey is an award-winning painter/printmaker in Belfast. He has a BFA degree from Rhode Island School of Design and a MSA degree from George Washington University, with extensive study in Rome, Italy, at Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts and at Haystack Mountain School of Crafts. His work is primarily abstract oil paintings and charcoal figure drawings. He has exhibited widely in Maine, Mid-Atlantic Region, and North Carolina. 
Jan Owen is a Belfast calligrapher and book artist who often collaborates with Maine poets. She shows her work nationally and is a Finalist for the Minnesota Center for International Book Arts Award. 
Abbie Read moved to Maine in 1998, after (what felt like) a lifetime trying to find a way to live here. She received her B.A. from Oberlin College and her M.F.A. from the University of Michigan School of Art, majoring in Mixed Media. While making art has been a lifetime pursuit and passion so has gardening, and in 1995 she received a degree from Michigan State in Landscape Design; as a result she has owned and operated ARTgarden, a landscape design and maintenance business. 
Brian Reeves Certified Master of Fine Arts, is cofounder of the thriving multinational retail giant Slop Art Dot Com and inventor of the Painting Simulator and other compact innovations in Premium Expression distribution, including engineering quality Slopware for the iPhone. Through elevating contemporary "Fine Art" to the level of consumer culture, Slop Brand has provided shelter from the advancing norm since 1995, promoting the production of less forgettable work. 2009 Performers
Also, in the mix, a diverse group of performers. Come and enjoy the sights and sounds of poetry, art, music and dance. The Grand Opening at 11 a.m. on Saturday will be a jazz and poetry writing and reading jam with Agharta Quartet at Waterfall Arts. The event is open to anyone who would like to write in response to live jazz, maybe read their new work with the band, or just listen.
Tom Luther (pianist and composer) lives in Union, Maine, where he composes solo works as well as for his group Agharta. He is also as a performer. Recent projects include recordings of keyboard music of Johann Sebastien Bach, an ambient soundscape video project, and his own large scale solo piano collection “Watersongs.” 
Leslie Stein (keyboardist) has been a musician since her early days, playing piano and guitar in a wide range of bands and singing in vocal groups of all sorts. She has also enjoyed acting with local theater groups over the past ten years and is a collaborator with Ova Dreams. 
Joan Proudman (dance) studied with the Classical Ballet Academy of Connecticut and later performed with the Boston Ballet at the Music Hall and with the Lyric Opera Company of Chicago. She moved to Portland in 1980, joined the Ram Island Dance Company and the Portland Ballet, and later moved to the Belfast area where she continues to dance with Women's Works and Ova Dreams. Jeffrey Densmore (percussionist). More info coming soon.
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