Dave Robinson: Writer-in-Residence, Portugal Checking in with writer, poet, and multifarious arts guy Dave Robinson, we learned that he’s back from a Writer-in-Residence gig at Cultívamos Cultura in São Luis, Portugal. He was at the arts center in a dual role with his wife and creative partner, Anna Isaak-Ross, an…
Tom Sexton sent us a new poem from his outpost on the edge of northeast Maine. He and his wife Sharyn split their time between Maine and Alaska. Our readers will recognize Tom’s name from past contributions to this blog. He drops back in to Lowell when he’s on the…
Helena Minton: Recent Book, New Poems, & Frost Foundation Work I’ve known Helena Minton since the 1980s, when she was publishing with Alice James Books, a collective effort to bring out the best new poetry, particularly by women writers. Her book The Canal Bed (1985) includes a long poem centered…
Here’s another in my series of updates on active writers with a local/regional connection. I can see Exeter, N.H., from my house on a hill in Amesbury, so Matt W Miller is close by. Readers of this blog may know him from his Lowell days growing up and during high…
Here’s the second update on writers in the area. Watch for a few more next week. — PM Emilie-Noelle Provost: First Novel & Back in the Magazine Biz Lowell writer Emilie-Noelle Provost, formerly editor-in-chief at 512 Media Inc. in Methuen, publisher of Merrimack Valley Magazine and The Bean Magazine, is…
In the next two weeks, I’ll post several updates about writers in the area who are familiar to many readers of this blog. The activity of these writers is interesting and substantial. They don’t have big marketing budgets to promote themselves, so it’s not easy for the public to keep…
I’m cross-posting this from the blog on my paulmarion.com website. This is a sidebar piece from my book Mill Power: The Origin and Impact of Lowell National Historical Park (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014). I worked in Lowell for decades, including many years when I helped to create the national park. Everybody in…
This is cross-posted from my personal blog at paulmarion.com. I’m happy to see the landscape and public art improvements at Lucy Larcom Park, where artist Ellen Rothenberg in her artwork titled Industry, Not Servitude made permanent or at least pretty indestructible selected words, lines, and phrases by women writers of…
Not exactly a scoop, but a funny coincidence at least. Surprise of the day: on Boston.com the Boston Globe posted a preview of this coming Sunday’s Globe Magazine photo-essay and article by Peter Simon about two communes in Vermont that rose up in the late 1960s and lasted about two…
Raymond Mungo is a writer whose books should be more familiar than they are to readers in the Merrimack Valley. He has lived in Southern California for many years, but he was born in Lawrence and graduated from Boston University, where he gained national attention as the politically radical editor…