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Book Signings in Kennebunkport

AUTHOR EVENT – LOU SALOME – NOVEMBER 14 @ 5:30 PM

You might know him as our “visiting professor.” News reporter and editor, Lou Salome will be at the Louis T. Graves Memorial Public Library on Thursday, November 14 @ 5:30 pm to talk about his new book, Two Hundred Miles from Bagdad: Cultures, conflicts, and the lost art of hitchhiking.”  Copies will be for sale and signing after the discussion. No registration is required.

In September, 1958, Lou Salome hurried past Barney McNeil’s blacksmith shop to the town’s blinking traffic light and began hitchhiking to college.  He was seventeen.  Decades later his hitching experience led Salome through deserts and hostile zones in Asia, Europe, and Africa.  At the end of his International life, he thumbed in the New Hampshire woods to gauge how times had changed.  This is his story of the adventures, risks and fun he embraced while engaging in a lost art.

A New Englander by birth, Lou Salome holds a bachelor’s degree from Holy Cross College in Worcester, Massachusetts where he was a classmate of Dr. Anthony Fauci’s. He also has a Master’s Degree in American History from Boston College, and a Ph.D in hitchhiking and news reporting on four continents. Mr. Lou, as he was known in foreign climes, hitched to college for two years in the late fifties, hitched into and out of battle zones in Asia, Africa, and Europe in the nineties, and hitched for fun, but with little success, in the New Hampshire woods in 2004 while writing books. A newspaper reporter and editor for thirty-five years and an author since 2010, Lou has written three books, the latest about his hitching experiences, the lost art of hitchhiking, and the social and economic changes that doomed the art. As the editorial page editor of The Miami (FL) News, Lou Salome won numerous journalism prizes. In 1981 and 1984, he won the National Society of Professional Journalists Sigma Delta Chi Distinguished Service Award for Editorial Writing. In 1984, he won the Jamaica Daily Gleamer Editorial Writing Award given by the Inter-American Press Association, In 1987, he won the first annual Thomas Jefferson First Amendment Award given by the Cultural Action Network.

The Louis T. Graves Memorial Public Library is located at 18 Maine Street, Kennebunkport.  Please call is for details (207-967-2778).

MAINE AUTHORS FOR LEWISTON – A BOOK SIGNING – NOVEMBER 28 @ 2:30 PM

Maine Authors for Lewiston – Book Signing

November 28 – 2:30 to 5:00 PM

Maine Authors for Lewiston, an informal group of more than 70 Maine authors, have banded together to support the victims of the recent tragedy in Lewiston. The group has organized a series of 10 book signings, all free and open to the public so that people can purchase books and meet the authors. There will be fiction writers, children’s book authors, non-fiction writers, and poets among the participants.

This is a wonderful opportunity for Maine book lovers to support local authors, and most importantly, to help our fellow Mainers as they begin to heal and recover.

All of the participating authors have agreed to donate all, or most, of their proceeds from these events to help the healing and recovery efforts in Lewiston. All are volunteering because they care.

The authors scheduled to appear at the Louis T. Graves Memorial Public Library are Bruce Robert Coffin, William Chanler, Irene Drago, Maya Williams, Jean Flahive, Jennifer Lunden, Mike Bove, Susanne Dunlap, Mike Culver, Jennifer Dupree, Brenda Pollock, Skip Simonds, Kate Kearns, Matt Cost, David Florig, Jason Trask, Norma Salway, Robert Spencer, Didi Cooper, Annaliese Jakimides, Barry Somes, Wayne Burton, Maryann Cocca-Leffler…and others!

The Graves Library is located at 18 Maine Street, Kennebunkport. Parking is available at the Village Fire Station lot (North Street), Maine Street, and at the Library. We hope to see you here.

JOURNALIST SHANNON MULLEN AND GUEST GOVERNOR JANET MILLS – NOVEMBER 5 – 2:00 PM

We hope you will join us on Sunday, November 5 at  2:00 p.m. for a very special event.  Journalist Shannon Mullen will be here (with a special appearance by Governor Janet Mills) to talk about her book  In Other Words, Leadership:  How a Young Mother’s Weekly Letters to Her Governor Helped Both Women Brave the First Pandemic Year.

 

This trip to the “Vacationland” of Maine — where the state motto is I Lead — offers an inspiring tale of civility and purpose, of doing the right thing and not just surviving, but prevailing.

The first woman to serve as Governor of Maine, Janet Mills, had been in office a year when COVID-19 reached the United States. The recently-widowed 72-year-old wrote in her journal there is “no playbook for a pandemic” as she imposed unprecedented restrictions on her state.

When early support for the governor’s response curdled to rampant opposition, a young mother named Ashirah Knapp sent a letter of support from a remote homestead in the woods of Maine. Ashirah’s handwritten dispatch detailed how the public health emergency was upending her family’s life and livelihood, and she promised to keep writing “every week until we are through this time” to remind the governor how many Mainers supported her despite the disruption.

Ashirah’s letters, with their simple wisdom and striking penmanship, stood out in a flood of correspondence Governor Mills was receiving that ranged in tone from appreciative to furious. They helped keep her grounded as she made wrenching, often unpopular choices.

Shannon A. Mullen weaves from these two women’s letters and the governor’s journal, which were never intended for publication, an intimate and compelling true story that is a celebration of civility and compassion in the face of rancor and of resolve in the face of adversity.

Copies of the book will be for sale.  Light refreshments will be served.  Doors open at 1:30.    Parking available at the Village Fire Station (North Street) and Consolidated School (Route 9).  Please call (207) 967-2778 for more information.

Governor Janet Mills:

Janet Trafton Mills is the 75th Governor of Maine and the first woman elected to that office. She was sworn in for her second consecutive term in January 2023 after winning re-election, having earned more votes than any previous Maine governor. She was also the first governor since 1970 to be elected with a majority of the vote, in her case for both terms. Under her leadership during the global COVID-19 pandemic Maine had one of the highest vaccination rates and lowest death rates in the US, as well as one of the strongest economic recoveries among the states. Governor Mills previously served as Maine’s first female Attorney General and its first woman district attorney, as well as in the state’s House of Representatives. She is step-mother to her late husband’s five daughters and a grandmother of five.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Author Shannon Mullen:

Shannon A. Mullen is a journalist, author, screenwriter and film producer, playwright and podcast host. She grew up in the White Mountains and Lakes Region of New Hampshire and studied pre-veterinary medicine at UNH after misinterpreting her love of storytelling, inspired by James Herriot’s books, as an inclination toward animal husbandry. She then earned a graduate degree in broadcast journalism at Boston University. Shannon went on to report for national programs on public radio for two decades, including Marketplace, Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Her print journalism has been published by The New Yorker, The Boston Globe and Boston Magazine, among other outlets. She is also developing multiple projects for the screen and stage through her production company Broad Reach.