My first novel, The Hour of Blue, was published by North Country Press. It was optioned by Warner Brothers, but the film was never made. Since then I’ve written three more novels, all of them literary fiction and all published by a tiny press connected with the Flat Bay artist’s collective in Downeast Maine. The novels have received strongly positive reviews regionally, but outside the state of Maine they remain largely unknown. Lately I have turned to writing short fiction. My stories have appeared or will be appearing in Ascent (story nominated for a Pushcart Prize), The Catch, The Sonora Review, Prick of the Spindle, and Blackbird. I taught creative writing and film at the University of Maine. Since retiring, I’ve been dividing my time between Maine and New Mexico.
Aesthetic
As a writer I am accustomed to feeling my way along, often very slowly. I try to get the words right. There is an undeniable beauty in a plain sentence. And clarity, I find, leads to more interesting places. Writing fiction occasionally boils down to explaining or arranging the world, say for the sake of some character, some episode of plot. I lose patience then. I want something else. I prefer little forays into the territories of my own ignorance. At times this runs the risk of fantasy, but the familiar terrain of our understanding is also certainly a kind of fantasy. I am trying to get at those spaces and slices of time just outside the range of what we know, or think we know. My books and stories are substantially about the natural world, about the ecstasy, discomfort, and dumbfoundedness of people who venture there, paying attention.