Conversations From the Pointed Firs

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs, host Peter Neill speaks with author Caroline Bicks whose latest book, "Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King" chronicles what she discovered when the Master of Horror himself granted her extended access to his private archives. And she shares stories of the year she spent reading never-before-studied drafts of his most iconic stories. Today King calls it “the best book about my process that I have ever read.”

Caroline Bicks is the Stephen E. King Chair in Literature at the University of Maine. Her previous books include Cognition and Girlhood in Shakespeare’s World; Shakespeare Not Stirred: Cocktails for Your Everyday Dramas (co-authored with Michelle Ephraim); and Midwiving Subjects in Shakespeare’s England. "Monsters in the Archives: My Year of Fear with Stephen King" (Hogarth, 2026) is her latest book. 

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Carl Little, poet, editor, journalist, exhibit curator, art critic, writer, poet, and historian of the art of Maine. He and Peter Neill are discussing that history from indigenous petroglyphs to the latest museum exhibitions and gallery openings, in search of the place of art at the center of “the spirit of Maine.”

Carl is a prolific contributor to publications such as "Art New England", "Maine Boats, Homes, and Harbors", the "Bangor Daily News" and "Maine Times." He is the author of books on the panoply of Maine artists such as Winslow Homer, Edward Hopper, John Singer Sargent, Bernard Langlais, and Connie Hayes, as well as the histories of art on Maine islands and craft in Maine. His collections of poetry include "3000 Dreams Explained" and "Ocean Drinker: New and Selected Poems." He lives in Somesville, Maine.

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs: Charles Cantalupo, literary critic and historian specializing in indigenous writing and poetry; poet and author of Clooscape the Poet, an interpretation of a Wabanaki folk figure and legendary presence and spirit of “homeland” in along the Atlantic coastlands of New England and the Atlantic Provinces of Canada. Charles is Professor Emeritus of English, Comparative Literature, and African Studies at Penn State; co-author of the Asmara Declaration on African Languages and Literature; critic and translator of African writers from Eritrea; author of a personal memoir, Joining Africa, about his African experience, and author of several published anthologies.

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs: Carol Gardner, author of "The Divided North, Black and White Families in the Age of Slavery" (2025) written as part of a series, "Black New England." Divided North is a beautifully researched history of two families from Portland, Maine, one black, one white, who represented two multi-generational paths through the history of slavery in Maine, one as a founder of the abolitionist movement and underground railroad, and the other as captains and traders of slaves between Africa, Cuba, and the United States. These parallel histories are astonishingly evocative of the history of race in Maine, the north, and the larger USA from the mid-19th century to present day. 

This month on Conversations From The Pointed Firs, host Peter Neill speaks with Daniel Bartlett, the current Grand Secretary and former Grand Master of the Free Masons of Maine, and historian of the Masonic movement in the State, an organization that contributes to many often-unknown activities, grants, and programs that accrue to the social benefit of our communities large and small. The Free Masons of Maine is a civic society that quietly applies traditional values to civic engagement and public service. It is a complicated and often misunderstood organization, with a long history and widespread influence across the state. 

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs, Peter Neill and Earth Shettleworth are discussing historic preservation in Maine. A native of Portland, Earle G. Shettleworth served as architectural historian for the Maine Historic Preservation Commission beginning in 1973 and director in 1976. He retired from that position in 2015. He has lectured and written extensively on Maine history and architecture and has served as Maine State Historian since 2004. 

A monthly 1-hour audio series with Maine-connected authors, artists, innovators, thinkers, doers, and exemplars, discussing literature, creative projects, art, music, and more that invokes the spirit of Maine, its history, its ecology, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life. Hosted by Peter Neill of Sedwick, Maine.

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs, host Peter Neill sits down with Richard Parsons, author of "Storm Warriors of the Maine Coast: Stories of the Life-Saving Station at Biddeford Pool" to discuss the iconic coastal structures, their preservation, future, and the stories of the Coast Guard life saving service, all but forgotten to history. 

Richard Parsons taught history and English for thirty years in public schools before joining the staff of the Institute for Learning Technologies at Columbia University. There, he worked with others to digitize resources held by the Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt Institute and the Library of Congress, among others, to make them available to scholars and educators. Later, as a member of the Center for Technology and School Change at Columbia University Teachers College, he worked with pre-service and in-service teachers to bring more effective uses of technology into public school classrooms. Today, Richard serves as historian for the Friends of the Wood Island Lighthouse. He is the author of two books, Wood Island Lighthouse: Stories from the Edge of the Sea, (2022) and Storm Warriors of the Maine Coast. Stories of the Life- Saving Service at Biddeford Pool (2025). His articles have appeared in Wreck & Rescue, The Journal of the U.S. Life-Saving Service Heritage Association. 

Learn more at pointedfirs.org/

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs: a discussion between Peter Neill and Jane Crosen, a self-taught mapmaker who has spent four decades making and interpreting maps, and exploring Maine’s landscape. She found her niche in maps and editing working at DeLorme Publishing in Yarmouth, where she compiled the Gazetteer listings for the all-new 1981 edition of the Maine Atlas and began discovering the natural and historic treasures of her home state. 

Her affinity with maps, Maine, and design inspired her to create a series of hand-drawn maps of Maine coast and lake regions. Along the way she began sharing her passion for map-reading and landscape interpretation through “map-sleuthing” slide talks and workshops. 

With a growing interest in Downeast Maine’s mapping history and heritage landscape, she discovered George N. Colby’s historic 1881 atlases of Hancock and Washington counties and found them a fascinating source. Since the original and facsimile editions were out of print, she decided to publish new editions of both atlases, arranging the maps in a more geographically consistent layout. Pairing Colby’s archival maps with period photos and excerpts, with an introduction and captions for context, her Coastwise Geographic Edition atlases capture Downeast Maine in the age of sail, in the last glow of a 19th-century coastal economy. 

FMI visit PointedFirs.org

Join us in conversation with NOEL RUBINTON, journalist, essayist, and author of “Looking for a Story: A Complete Guide to the Writings of John McPhee”. 

Noel Rubinton’s writing has spanned many fields, including government, politics, culture, transportation, and history. His essay about H.P. Lovecraft and Providence is collected in the New York Times book Footsteps: Literary Pilgrimages Around the World and he wrote the foreword to Repression, Re-invention, & Rugelach: A History of Jews at Colgate. A graduate of Deerfield Academy and Brown University, he has been reading John McPhee's writing for many decades. He is a regular visitor to Maine and had a book talk at the Blue Hill library in July 2025 to promote his new book, “Looking for a Story: A Complete Guide to the Writings of John McPhee” published by Princeton University Press this year.

Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a monthly 1-hour audio series with Maine-connected authors, artists, innovators, thinkers, doers, and exemplars, discussing literature, creative projects, music, and more that invokes the spirit of Maine, its history, its ecology, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life. https://www.pointedfirs.org/

Our guests for June 2025 on Conversations from the Pointed Firs are CIPPERLY GOOD and KEVIN JOHNSON, curators of Sardineland, a new exhibit at Penobscot Marine Museum in Searsport, Maine that tells the stories of the maritime communities affected by the boom and bust of Maine’s Sardine Industry and Herring Fishery. Photographs, tools of the trade, art, and cultural artifact explore the industry’s ongoing impact on those who handled the herring—from the net to the can.

FMI: visit https://penobscotmarinemuseum.org/sardineland/