Lewis Robinson
YORK VILLAGE - A renowned American historian, a celebrated Maine fiction writer, a memoirist who witnessed Kenya's independence from Britain and Portland's first Poet Laureate will all be part of the next York Public Library Writers' Night.
The evening will begin at 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 29, at the library.
Dr. Harvard Sitkoff, professor of history at the University of New Hampshire, is the author of a new biography of Martin Luther King, Jr., entitled "King: Pilgrimage to the Mountaintop." He has authored and edited several books dealing with the predominant social issues of the 20th century and his articles have appeared in American Quarterly, Journal of American History and Journal of Southern History, among others. A frequent lecturer at universities abroad, Sitkoff has been awarded professorships in the Netherlands and Ireland. As David Bradley of The Washington Post Book World has written, "Sitkoff is an excellent storyteller; he captures the drama of events, the calculations, the horror, the unbelievable sadness of struggle."
Portland resident Lewis Robinson is the author of "Officer Friendly and Other Stories," winner of the PEN/Oakland-Josephine Miles Award. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Robinson teaches fiction writing in the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA program. His new novel, "Water Dogs," is due out from Random House next winter. Esquire magazine called "Officer Friendly" a "faultless debut collection. Robinson is tremendously adept at building menace slowly, quietly, and the shocks as these stories unfold is one of their greatest pleasures."
"Kwa Heri Means Goodbye" is Dorothy Stephens' memoir chronicling the two years she spent in Kenya during its last tumultuous days as a British colony in the late 1950s toward the end of the Mau Mau uprising. There she faced many challenges, including safari ants, wild bees, an attack by a vicious monkey and, to her astonishment, an invitation to the governor's garden party to meet Queen Mother Elizabeth of England. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, Miami Herald, Los Angeles Times and other national publications. Author proceeds will go to the Kelly Stephens Scholarship Fund for Indonesian teachers at Boston University School of Education.
Martin Steingesser, Portland's first Poet Laureate, is the author of a poetry collection titled "Brothers of Morning." Also a performance poet, he is currently touring a program of poems, "The Thinking Heart", with another reader and a cellist, based on the journal and letters of Etty Hillesum, a Dutch woman who died in the Holocaust. Individual poems have appeared in many publications, including national magazines and literary journals, on Garrison Keillor's "The Writer's Almanac" and in "Inkwell," which nominated his poem for a Pushcart Prize.
"A musician and acrobat, his book is ablaze with imagination," wrote fellow Poet Laureate Anne Bosselaar.
Admission to Writers' Night is free and refreshments will be served. For more information, call 363-2818 or visit www.york.lib.me.us.
