Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 9
Have you ever wondered what it’s like to travel all over the globe to unearth stories about extraordinary people and circumstances? How do narrative nonfiction writers first find and then craft and sell their stories?
Seasoned writers will share their experiences penning stories of all kinds for national publications. Featuring Jaed Coffin (author of Roughhouse Friday), Michael Paterniti (author of Love and Other Ways of Dying: Essays), and Vanity Fair’s Senior Editor Keziah Weir (author of The Mythmakers). Mira Ptacin (author of The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna) will facilitate.
Free event with RSVP.
PRINT: A Bookstore will sell books.
Jaed Coffin is the author of the memoirs A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants and Roughhouse Friday. His work has been featured in the New York Times, The Sun Magazine, Snap Judgment, Moth Radio Hour and TED Channel. A regular contributor to Down East magazine, he teaches writing at the University of New Hampshire and lives with his family in Maine.
Michael Paterniti is a journalist, an essayist, and the bestselling author of Driving Mr. Albert and The Telling Room, named one of the best books of the year by NPR, Entertainment Weekly, and The Christian Science Monitor. Nominated for the National Magazine Award eight times, he is also the recipient of an NEA grant and two MacDowell Fellowships. His stories have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, National Geographic, Harper’s, Outside, Esquire, and GQ, where he works as a correspondent. He is the co-founder of a youth storytelling center in Portland, Maine, where he lives with his wife and their three children.
Mira Ptacin is a literary journalist, memoirist, New York Times best-selling ghostwriter, editor, and professor of creative writing. She is the author of the award-winning memoir Poor Your Soul (Soho Press, 2016), which was named a best book of the year by Kirkus Books, where it received a rare “starred” review. She’s also the author of the genre-blending book of feminist history, memoir, and ethnography, The In-Betweens: The Spiritualists, Mediums, and Legends of Camp Etna (Liveright-W.W. Norton, 2019), which the New York Times lauded as the best book to read during a pandemic. Mira’s writing frequently appears in the New York Times, New York Times Book Review, Vogue, Poets and Writers, Harper’s, Tin House, LitHub, and more. She received her MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where she was editor-at-large of their literary magazine, LUMINA. Mira lives on Peaks Island, Maine, and is currently working on her next book.
Keziah Weir is the author of the novel The Mythmakers, which was named a New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice and a best book of the year by Harper's Bazaar and Barnes & Noble. She is a senior editor at Vanity Fair. Her writing has also appeared in Elle, Esquire, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Review of Books and Vol. 1 Brooklyn. She grew up in San Francisco, California and on Salt Spring Island, British Columbia, and now lives in Maine.