Maine authors celebrate their book releases at Mechanics' Hall, in partnership with PRINT: A Bookstore.
Sarah Braunstein is the author of Bad Animals (W.W. Norton, March 2024). Her first novel, The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (W.W. Norton), was the winner of the 2012 Maine Literary Award for Fiction and a finalist for the First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Harvard Review, The Sun, Playboy, and other publications. She teaches at Colby College.
Bad Animals is a sexy, propulsive novel that confronts the limits of empathy and the perils of appropriation through the eyes of a disgraced small-town librarian.
Debra Spark has published five novels, two short story collections, two books of essays about writing and two anthologies. Her short work has appeared in Dwell Food and Wine, the New York Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and elsewhere. She's received grants or fellowships from the National Endowment of the Arts, Radcliffe College's Bunting Institute, Dora Maar, MacDowell, and Yaddo, among other places. She lives in Maine and teaches at Colby College and in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.
How does art mirror and shape our lives? Can it transcend the boundaries of time, wealth, and circumstance? With a trio of important paintings missing, Discipline weaves together three narratives that span almost a century. From an inhumane boarding school in Maine in the late 1970s to a contemporary Boston art appraiser struggling with raising a teen to the long-lost love letters between a painter and his wife, Discipline is a propulsive literary mystery about family strife and devotion, ambition and authorship, and the abiding and mysterious power of art.
MONICA WOOD is a novelist, memoirist, and playwright; the 2019 recipient of the Maine Humanities Council Carlson Prize for contributions to the public humanities; and a recipient of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Distinguished Achievement Award for contributions to the literary arts. She lives in Portland, Maine, with her husband, Dan Abbott, and their cat, Susie.