Poets
 Marcia F. Brown, Cape Elizabeth, ME, is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA Program. Her chapbook, The Way Women Walk, was selected first prize winner in the 2005 Sheltering Pines Press Chapbook Competition. Poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in the journals, Poet Lore, Alimentum, Animus, Off the Coast, Words and Images, Wolf Moon Journal and Bangor Metro among others. She received nominations for Pushcart Prizes in 2005 and 2006. This is Marcia Brown’s fourth year collaborating with Belfast artist, Archie Barnes for the Belfast Poetry Festival. Their book, Home to Roost, Paintings and Poems from Belfast, Maine features their art and poetry from previous festivals.
 Michael R. Brown is author of four books of poetry, including The Man Who Makes Amusement Rides (2004 Cambridge Poetry Award). Founding Boston slam master, he was a teacher from the South Side of Chicago to South Korea. He lives in Robbinston, Maine, where he and his partner Valerie Lawson publish the poetry journal Off the Coast. For more about Micheal Brown visit his website; michael.brown.name
 Ruth Bookey was born in Heidelberg, Germany. Her family emigrated to the US because of Hitler in the late thirties. Ruth's mother was an artist and art was "her thing" until over a decade ago, when she discovered poetry. Ruth's husband is a poet and from him she became inspired to try her hand at it. Ruth's chap book of poetry Life Class was published by Moon Pie Press in November of 2007. Many of the poems stem from her memories of living in Nazi Germany. I have found it a wonderful way to revisit the past and understand the young me, Ruth writes. For the past 6 years she has been teaching "Hands-on-Art for Beginners" at UMA Senior College and is involved in both worlds of art and poetry. Ruth lives with her husband, Ted and thier cat Murry, in the forest on the shores of Maranacook lake.
Linda Buckmaster doesn't write about what she sees, but rather what she thinks she sees – the imagination of place. Growing up in Florida, thirty-three years in Waldo County, and international travel deeply inform her work. She has published three chapbooks of poetry, most recently Heart Song & Other Legacies, and her work has appeared in numerous literary journals.
 Kathleen Ellis is the author of three collections of poems, most recently Vanishing Act, and she co-edited the anthology,The Eloquent Edge: 15 Maine Women Poets. She has received artist fellowships in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts and Maine Arts Commission, and her poems and translations of Latin American women poets have appeared in numerous literary magazines and anthologies. She coordinates the annual POETS/SPEAK!
reading at the Bangor Public Library and teaches literature and writing at the University of Maine in Orono, where she lives with her partner Rolf Estela and
Maine coon cat Pica near the Penobscot River. Visit Kathleen Ellis online.
 Maggie Finch Maggie Finch has been making poems for eighty-four years, has brought out two books of poetry, appeared in various magazines and anthologies, and won a membership-awarded prize by the Poetry Society of America.
 Jacob Fricke has been performing poetry in Belfast and environs for ten years. He has read on WERU, at the New Vaudeville Revue, at the Waterfall Arts bi-weekly open mic, and on community access TV in Belfast and Burlington, Vermont. With the Minimal Press of Burlington he published a cigarette machine chapbook, Notes from the Hawkweed, and at Saint Michael's College he had a weekly radio appearance. He has done time as the co-editor of Bern Porter International, a zine devoted to the work of Belfast's original and founding Poet Laureate. He lives in Belfast.
 Elizabeth Garber was Belfast’s 2006 Poet Laureate coordinating the Belfast Poetry Festival and Poetry and Art Walk that year. She is the author of two books of poetry, Listening Inside the Dance: A Life in Maine Infused with Tango (2005) and Pierced by the Seasons: Living a Life on the Coast of Maine (2004). Three of her poems have been read on The Writer’s Almanac. She is the founder of The Illuminated Sea Press, encouraging the independent publishing of fine Maine poets. Currently she is a student at the Low Residency MFA program in Creative Writing at Stonecoast (part of USM) focusing on creative non-fiction.
 Gary Lawless grew up in Belfast and now co-owns a bookstore in Brunswick. He is the editor of Blackberry Books and has published poetry widely. Dr. Gary Lawless was awarded an honorary Phd., by the University of Southern Maine, spring 2008. You can see his recent writings at mygrations.blogspot.com
 Valerie Lawson has published poetry in BigCityLit, Main Street Rag, Sensations Magazine, anthologies, and on websites. Lawson has been twice nominated for a Pushcart Prize and won awards for poetry and performance at the Cambridge Poetry Awards. Her first book, Dog Watch, was released in 2007. Lawson has traveled to Europe and the UK performing her poetry and was invited as a Legacy Poet to the first Women of the World Poetry Slam in March. A long time advocate and organizer in the literary and arts community, Lawson is a member of the New England Poetry Club, Stage East Theater Company, and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Lawson recently became co-editor of Off the Coast magazine, formerly published in Bristol Maine.
 Michael Macklin works as a poet, carpenter, teacher, and editor on the Portland area and divides his time between there and Islesboro. He is an editor with The Cafe Review, a quarterly journal of poetry and art, and has published in various reviews and journals. His chapbook, Driftland, was published by Moon Pie Press in 2003. He is supported in his work by his wife, Donna, and his Buddha-like yellow dog, Murphy. If wishes were wings, he'd be flapping toward Ireland.
 Barbara Maria is the author of two books of poetry, Crossing Time and Palace Boulevard, and several choreopoems written for the stage, including The Song of Creation, 108 Names of the Divine Mother, and Excuse Me, But... The founder/director of the Intercom Interactive Theater project, which served three Maine school districts, and Rising Sound Arts & Education, a creative writing, performance, and media project for teens and young adults, she has been teaching creative writing classes, leading workshops, and coaching writers of all ages for twenty-three years. She has taught and performed in schools and communities throughout New England and leads Spoken Word poetry workshops as a visiting artist.
 David Moreau lives in Wayne, Maine, with his wife, son, daughter, dog and two cats. He has worked for nearly thirty years with adults with developmental disabilities and has a book coming out soon with Inclusion Press, If You’re Happy and You Know It Clap Your Hand, about his experiences as a helping professional. He has also published three chapbooks of poetry, including Children Are Ugly Little Monsters (But You Have to Love Them Anyway) with Snow Drift Press and Sex, Death and Baseball with Moon Pie Press. In 2006 David was honored to work with Susan Toby White at the Belfast Poetry Festival and to read poems about dancing, which he knew little about. This year it will be sardines and happy boats with Kate Beuhner.
 Patricia Smith Ranzoni was born in Katahdin country to a Canadian-American woodcutter and farmgirl from Castine, and grew up “across the river” in Bucksport when “across the river” was thought of as another country. Her poetry documenting the upriver and coastal cultures of her people, published across the country and abroad, is untaught but for deep folk schooling and self-directed practice. Books: CLAIMING (Puckerbrush Press, 1995) and SETTLING (Puckerbrush Press, 2000); ONLY HUMAN– Poems from the Atlantic Flyway (Sheltering Pines Press, 2005); and from Pudding House’s invitational GOLD archive, PATRICIA RANZONI: GREATEST HITS, 1982-2008, 12 Significant Poems. She is one of the poets at Words from the Frontier–Poetry in Maine – poetryinmaine.org.
Andrea Read has published her poems in numerous journals, including Painted Bride Quarterly and 3rd Bed, and has recently completed her first book-length manuscript. She has taught writing and literature in New York, London, New Jersey and Maine. Much of her writing springs from her childhood on a farm in central Ohio. Her poems are a meditation on language and the body, the physical nature of conceptual language and the commingling of physicality and spiritual existence. Andrea lives in Brooks, Maine, where she is Director of Newforest Institute, a non-profit dedicated to cultivating the full spectrum of human capability rooted in a renewed relationship to the land, to the self and the larger living community.
 Kathryn Robyn has 30 years of experience presenting her and others’ writing in front of audiences. She has led and directed numerous workshops and theatrical performances, joyfully helping participants get out of their speaking ruts and into their most authentic vocal expressions.
 Hila Shooter 13, is home-schooled, and has written poetry and fiction for 4 years, tied, first runner up, in 2008 Waldo County Young Poet Laureate, and had a poem published in Fall Edition of Off the Coast poetry journal.
 Chuck Smith's work has appeared in numerous poetry journals and magazines including The Aurorean, The Cafe Review, the 2008 Goose River Anthology, and The Puckerbrush Review. His first collection of poetry will be available in 2009. He is a carpenter in Belfast, Maine where he lives with his wife, Jill, and his son, Issa.
 Poet: Karin Spitfire is the current Poet Laureate of Belfast and is the organizer of the festival. Her first book Standing with Trees came out in November 2005. Her poems are polemics, prayers, shouts and cries for mercy. Spitfire is now combining her words and paintings into artist books.
Contact
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or email kspit@gwi.net
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Artists
 Meredith Alex is a fashion designer/installation artist whose signature has become known as a fusion of fashion, sculpture, performance art, and educational awareness. Her installations have been seen throughout Maine and New England, always leaving the viewer with a sense of whimsical joy and a whole new outlook on the "art" of fashion.
 Archie Barnes has lived in Belfast, Maine, for 12 years. Opening the Phoenix Loft Gallery in 2001, the artist continues to paint and exhibits as well as host art events in the new gallery located at 159 High Street.
Shana Bloomstein has been dancing professionally for 12 years and began her dance training with Lisa Newcomb at Forest Friends pre-school in Montville, ME. She danced for 4 years in New York City with Nia Love's Blacksmiths Daughter Dance Co. as a modern dancer and as rehearsal director. She has performed with Guido Tuveri, Arthur Hall, Sara Yarborough, and Jesse Phillips-Fein, she has studied dance abroad in Senegal, West Africa with Babacar N'Daye. She has produced and performed in Women's Works-an annual performance of female choreographers from both Maine and NYC for the last three years. She is a mother of two, a licensed Massage Therapist and Physical Therapist Assistant, and a Yoga and Dance Instructor. She is currenty teaching an African Inspired class at the Belfast Dance Studio on Thursday evenings from 6-7:30. Contact: cyclesoflife@fairpoint.net
 Joan Braun's work over the past 30 years seems embedded in the matrix of survival, whether that of women, the people of Central America, Iraq, Nazi Germany, or in the fragility of the natural world, the fragility of seeing. It has used collage with its layers of transparency and accumulation, in sculptural constructions, installations, wax collage, and digitally layered prints. Lucy Lippard wrote, Collage brings separate realities together in endlessly different way. It represents a dialogic approach… it makes something of contradictions. More of Braun's work can be seen at www.joanbraun.com
Kate Buehner Making art has been a life long pursuit. My mediums and subject matter have changed over time, but my constant is my love of color, line shape and form. I shy away from detail and try to capture the essence of what I see. This particular show of my work is a combination of paintings and artists books. These paintings were developed both from memory and on site. All of them are about Maine. I have spent many summers in Lubec, Maine where sardines were the major source of income for the locals. David Moreau and I spent time emailing each other, meeting in person and talking sardines. We brainstormed. David said he didn’t like sardines. I worked for one month in a sardine factory back in the summer of 1972. I’ve hated sardines ever since. I agree with David, they stink. But they are fun to draw and to paint and make into books. This is our collaboration. –Kate J. Buehner
 Kimberly Callas has been sculpting the figure for over fifteen years. Drawing from her rigorous figurative training and her interest in indigenous sculptors’ use of natural materials, Callas combines representation and abstraction to explore the body’s ecological relationship with spirit and earth. Visit online at jonathanfrostgallery.com
 Diane Brott Courant I began to create my small Assemblage works following the tragedy of September 11, 200l. Trips to the Southwest sparked a natural interest in Native American carving . Incorporating the small figures and fetishes into the Doorways and Pathways series returned the carver's work to the "sacramental"status of the originals -- a uniquely American spiritual language giving shape to archetypal symbols we can all humanly relate to on many different levels" : the inherent power of ancient memory wedded to evolving consciousness is always implicit. There will always be fibers and weaving itself, one way or another, in my work, thanks to my DNA and on-the-job-training for many years, but the images are still pulling me along in this new-to-me way. I hope they speak to other hearts as well. – Diane Brott Courant
 Alan Crichton is a visual artist, musician and teacher living in Liberty, Maine. Educated at the University of Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Goddard College and the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, he has taught at the Farnsworth Museum, Colby College and the MFA program at Vermont College. He has exhibited throughout Maine for over twenty-five years. His award-winning column of art appreciation, criticism and opinion, Hi-Lo Art, appeared in the Waldo Independent, the Camden Herald and Art New England. Crichton’s sculpture, drawings and paintings are in numerous collections throughout Maine, New England and New York. He sings and plays saxophone for the love of it. In 2000, Crichton and a group of friends founded the Arts Center at Kingdom Falls, a non-profit, artists’ residency and arts education organization, now known as Waterfall Arts, with locations in Montville and Belfast, Maine. You can see Alan's work at caldbeck.com
David Dodson "Without a doubt one of the most entertaining performers on the folk scene today..." —says Paul Hoffman of the Rug Room Coffeehouse— "...what sets him apart are his songs, which range from hilarious to poignant, and his uninhibited physicality." David's songs dance you through life in America, performing with ease and authority in the genres of folk, rock, blues, jazz and country. Berna Derby of Isleboro says "You will find yourself nodding in agreement or bursting into laughter as you recognize yourself in his lines."
 Andrea Goodman's vocal expression weaves together her technical voice study with John Devers in New York, her many years of performing non-verbal experimental music/dance/theater with Meredith Monk, and her long exploration of sound-healing. Living in Maine since 1989, she performs with other Maine artists, including Figures of Speech Theatre, Heartwood Theater, Anna Dembska, Carl Dimow, Mark Tipton, Pam Wiley, and Martin Steingesser. She is the founder of Ruby-Throated Spirit, Sanctuary & Studio in Boothbay, where she offers voice lessons, sound-healing, Cosmic Harmony Class, astrology and tarot readings, sacred ceremonies, blessings and retreats. Ordained as a priestess/minister of the Ministry of Maat, she considers all aspects of her work to be her ministry. She is author of the forthcoming Lightning Holds My Hand, A Woman’s Journal of Guidance. Visit online rubythroatedspirit.com
 Mark Kelly Born and raised in Amityville, New York, Mark Kelly moved to Boston in 1990, and earned his BFA from the Massachusetts College of Art in 1997. He lives in Belfast with his wife Michelle and their three daughters. While his work focuses primarily on drawing, Mark also works with collage, Polaroid photography, and plays percussion and turntables in an improvisational experimental music project. He is a founding partner of Aarhus Gallery in Belfast. Exhibitions include the 18th Annual Drawing Show at the Boston Center for the Arts/Mills Gallery; The Lincoln Street Center for the Arts 2005 Invitational, Rockland; the Out of Bounds Altered Book Show, Rockport; Art From Intuition, Northampton Center for the Arts, Northampton,MA and The Crossing of Time and Environment: Micro Installation, Tainan County, Taiwan.
Alex McGregor is a songwriter and multi-instrumentalist in Ponies in the Surf, a critically noted indie-pop band on Darla Records he started with his sister. Their music is admired on at least 5 continents we know of. He will be drawing to accompany the poetry of Chuck Smith.
 Beverly Mann is an actor, mask theatre performer/educator and mask maker. She is an independent artist and tours with several theatre companies including Faustwork Mask Theatre, based in Toronto, and Figures of Speech Theatre based in Freeport, ME. Beverly has performed in over 40 states, Canada, Mozambique, South Africa and Peru, with an appearance on "Good Morning, South Africa." She was a company member of IMAGO Theatre based in Portland, Oregon from 1986 – ‘89 and again in 1992-‘93 performing mask, movement and visual illusion touring the U.S., Germany, Taiwan, Singapore and Hong Kong with appearances on “Good Morning, America” and the Disney special “New Vaudevillians, Too.” She was a company member of TheatreSports, an improvisational theatre company based in Seattle, Washington. For the past seven years she has been busy collaborating with several artists in the state of Maine. Beverly has taught numerous workshops and residencies in mask making, mask theatre techniques and theatre improvisation throughout Maine, across the U.S. and abroad. She is listed on the Maine Arts Commission Artist’s Roster and The Alaska State Arts Council Artist-in-Residence Program and is affiliated with The Maine Alliance for Arts Education.
Cathy Melio is an artist, educator, and radio producer who lives in Stockton Springs, Maine. She has exhibited widely, including Courthouse Gallery, University of Maine Museum of Art, Maine Art Gallery, Unity College, and elsewhere. She is currently education director at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (CMCA)in Rockport.
 Dina Petrillo, a transplant from New York City and mid-coast artist, teaches sculpture and printmaking at UMaine’s Hutchinson Center and works out of her Post Office Studio in downtown Belfast. A show of her light sculptures with mixed media and encaustics hung this March at Carver Hill Gallery in Rockport and were shown in April at College of the Atlantic's Blum Gallery in Bar Harbor. This May, Ms. Petrillo taught "Human Tracks in the Urban Landscape", an experimental one month arts and ecology intensive in site-based sculpture and digital media at Brooklyn College in New York City, and recently did a residency in printmaking at Vermont Studio Center. Ms. Petrillo received her B.A. in Human Ecology from COA and her M.A. in Arts and Art Education from Columbia University. She will be collaborating with poet Barbaria Maria, in conjunction with The Belfast Poetry Festival in October. Their work will include a performance and show of work for the month at Aarhus Gallery. Dina will be teaching Art of the Handmade Print at the Hutchinson Center starting in October. Her sculptures, paintings and photographs have been exhibited in Maine, New York, North Carolina and South America and can be seen at the Post Office Studio on Friday nights in July, August and September. Her work Threshold is featured on this year's Belfast Poetry Festival's media. Contact her at 568-3224 and dnpetrillo@gwi.net
 Joy Vaughan is an artist and teacher. She lives in South Bristol where she tends her gardens, kayaks in the Damariscotta River, paints in her studio, stacks wood, has dinner with friends, walks on islands, gets older, poorer and more faithful.
 Susan Tobey White taught elementary art for 15 years in the Belfast Area before opening High Street Studio & Gallery in Belfast six years ago. The gallery features her work as well as that of guest artists and craftspeople. She is best known for her vibrant paintings of energetic dancers and recently has been working on a ‘Cherished Memory’ series of mothers and children. She has designed the 2004 and 2007 North Atlantic Blues Festival Poster and the 2008 Maine Celtic Festival. Susan continues her role of educator by teaching private and group lessons in watercolor, acrylic, drawing and sculpting. highstreetgallery.com, stwhite1@verizon.net
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