Conversations From the Pointed Firs

Our guests for May 2025 on Conversations from the Pointed Firs are TOM AND LEE ANN SZELOG, often described as Maine's most renowned wildlife photographers. Together they promote wildlife conservation and preservation through their films, lectures, exhibits, writings, and photographs. The Szelog's specialize in photographing wildlife in remote locations, using the most ethical wildlife photography practices. A monthly 1-hour audio series with Maine-connected authors, artists, innovators, thinkers, doers, and exemplars, discussing literature, creative projects, music, and more that invokes the spirit of Maine, its history, its ecology, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life. Broadcast the first Friday of the month from 3-4pm on WERU-FM 89.9.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is KARIN R TILBERG, author of “Loving the North Woods: 25 Years of Historic Conservation in Maine”, published by Down East Books in late 2024. Karin is also a lawyer, conservationist, past-President/CEO of The Forest Society of Maine. She and Peter discuss her recently-published book, which chronicles environmental protection and innovation in Maine's north woods, as accomplished by land trusts, government agencies, forest land owners, and the work of individuals who foresaw the protection of a vast segment of Maine as natural asset and contribution to our shared quality of life. 

Vegetarianism has deep roots in Maine. There is a fascinating history: join AVERY YALE-KAMILA in conversation with Peter Neill about the history of Maine's food ways and the untold story of vegetarianism in Maine. Author of “300 Years of Maine's Untold Vegetarian History”, Avery is an American journalist, food writer and community organizer in Maine. She has written a vegan food column for the Portland Press Herald /Maine Sunday Telegram and its affiliated newspapers since 2009. 

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is CLAIRE ACKROYD, author, inspector of organic maple syrup production in Maine. Claire Ackroyd, author of Murder in the Maple Woods, her first novel, a detective story set in the sugar camps in the northern forests of Maine, published in cooperation with Maine Authors Publishing, and a finalist in the 2021 Maine Literary Awards. She is a landscape designer, and for many years has been studying the history of production and conducting certifications of organic maple syrup in Maine. 

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs, host Peter Neill engages in a fascinating conversation with Ian Ludders, author of "Didn't Do Much but a Little of Everything", a micro-history of Dalton Raynes who's workday diary from his 19th year, in 1897, serves as the book's center, and of Bob Quinn who worked the land up into the 2000s. Ian Ludders, who annotated the text, worked as a day laborer with Bob Quinn before he moved to the island to work and fish with Bob and to manage Eagle for the Quinn family. "Didn't Do Much but a Little of Everything" encapsulates life on the small community of Eagle Island, and was produced primarily for the small community of people who know and love it, though it will be of interest to anyone who loves Maine, island, and coastal living.

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Peter Ralston. Peter is a marine photographer, photographing the coast of Maine since 1978, drawn especially to the working communities that define the coast's enduring character. Instrumental in forming the Island Institute in 1983, Peter Ralston served as its executive vice-president until 2010, and contributed most of the photography and served as art director for the Institute's Island Journal since its inception. Peter's work has been reproduced in many books and magazines, exhibited in galleries, collections and museums throughout the United States and abroad. He is currently working on a major book about the Maine coast. Although, as a young man, Ralston studied very briefly under Ansel Adams, he acknowledges the greater artistic influence of a lifetime of association with the Wyeth family: close friends and life-changing mentors. He continues to spend as much time as he possibly can on and around islands.

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Lucas St. Clair. Lucas was born in Dover-Foxcroft, Maine and spent his childhood in a hand-built log cabin with few amenities and a focus on living in harmony with nature. After graduating from high school Lucas immersed himself in outdoor wilderness adventures: hiking the Appalachian Trail, paddling the Northern Forest Canoe Trail, and fine-tuning leadership and technical skills with the National Outdoor Leadership School in Patagonia. He then pursued an interest in organic and sustainable food, and graduated from the prestigious Le Cordon Bleu Cooking School in London. Following his graduation he worked in the food and wine industry for nearly a decade in New York City, Seattle, and Maine. Lucas is an avid fly fisherman, boater, and mountain climber. Lucas is now the President of Elliotsville Foundation, Inc., a private operating foundation in Maine whose mission is to advance the dynamic relationship of innovative land conservation and community-based economic and community development in Maine. On August 24th, 2016, Elliotsville Foundation completed a multi-year campaign to establish Katahdin Woods and Waters National Monument with an 89,000-acre donation of land to the National Park Service. Elliotsville continues to support the Katahdin Woods and Waters as well as conduct work to build more outdoor recreational infrastructure in Maine. Lucas is a former congressional candidate in ME-2 and now serves on the boards of the Quimby Family Foundation, Maine Conservation Voters, Friends of Katahdin Woods and Waters, Maine Public, and the Northern Forest Center. He chairs the National Board of the Trust for Public Land and serves on the National Park Foundation's National Council. He lives in Falmouth, Maine with his wife, Yemaya, and their two children.

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Peter Ralston, who has been photographing the coast of Maine since 1978, drawn especially to the working communities that define the coast's enduring character. Instrumental in forming the Island Institute in 1983, Peter Ralston served as its executive vice-president until 2010, and contributed most of the photography and served as art director for the Institute's Island Journal since its inception. Peter's work has been reproduced in many books and magazines, exhibited in galleries, collections and museums throughout the United States and abroad. He is currently working on a major book about the Maine coast. Although, as a young man, Ralston studied very briefly under Ansel Adams, he acknowledges the greater artistic influence of a lifetime of association with the Wyeth family: close friends and life-changing mentors. He continues to spend as much time as he possibly can on and around islands.

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs, host Peter Neill sits down with Siri Beckman, visual artist, wood engraver, print maker, and co-author of the new book "The Prints of Siri Beckman: Engraving a Sense of Place." Beckman, born in Chicago, Illinois, moved to Maine in 1975, and was called to wood engraving quite by accident, and has been practicing the art form for more than forty years. Beckman's early wood engravings are strongly influenced by her surroundings and daily life in the Maine fishing town of Stonington where she lived. She recently moved to Bath, Maine, where she continues to maintain her studio. 

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Kristie Billings. A wearer of many hats, Kristie is a long-time DJ for ‘Daydream Nation' on the WERU Community Radio in Orland, Maine. From small-town grocery clerk to working in a fish market, owning her own shoe store, being an Arts Educator at a local theater, a lobster fisher, and an antiques seller, Kristie has done it all. Kristie comes from a long line of lovers of the sea: fishermen, clamdiggers, and sardine packers. The ocean is home. She is a poet, a photographer, and a year-round swimmer. She is currently living in Ellsworth, Maine, and a native of Stonington, on Deer Isle in downeast Maine. A great lover of music, art, and life, Kristie is drawn to beauty, even in the ordinary, the mundane and the unnoticed. Her latest book, "Sea Witch: Photographs, Poems and Forget Me Nots from a Mainer Growing Up" (Seaport Books, Nov 2023) is filled with images and words of the sea, nature, folk art, dolls, loss, grief, love, acceptance, rage, music, and life. 

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs, host Peter Neill sits down with Gary Lawless, poet, bookstore owner, book editor, publisher, and educator. He has published many books of poetry and co-owns Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick and owns Blackberry Books Publishing in Nobleboro. He has run writing residencies in Newfoundland, Alaska, Italy, and Maine, and community writing workshops for adults with disabilities, unhoused, refugee and immigrant populations, and veterans groups.

Our guest this first month of 2024 on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is LAUREEN LABAR, recently retired curator at the Maine State Museum and author of "Maine Quilts: 250 Years of Comfort and Community", published in 2021 by Down East Books. She and Peter discuss quilts and quilting in Maine, as an example of unique craft, history, and social engagement invoking the spirit of Maine.

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Sarah Alexander, Executive Director of MOFGA (the Maine Organic Farmers and Gardeners Association.) Sarah has been in her position since, 2018, and has over 20 years of experience advocating for sustainable, local and fair food systems. This year MOFGA is celebrating the 50th anniversary of its founding. Peter and Sarah discuss the historical moment of MOFGA's inception, the state of farming in Maine, and what MOFGA might become over the next 50 years. Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a monthly audio series with Maine-connected authors, artists and innovators discussing books, art and creative projects that invoke the spirit of Maine, its history, its ecology, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life. Online at pointedfirs.org

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs, host Peter Neill sits down with Joan (Jo) Radner, of Lovell, Maine, professor emerita of literature at American University, holds a Ph.D. from Harvard University, and is enjoying a second career as an oral historian, writer, and professional storyteller in her family's home region of western Maine. Jo has been studying, teaching, telling, and collecting stories most of her life, and has performed from Maine to Hawaii to Finland. Past president of the American Folklore Society and the National Storytelling Network, she has published books and articles on subjects ranging from early Irish historiography and Anglo-Irish drama to women's folklore, Deaf culture, and New England social history. Her new book (University of Massachusetts Press, 2023) is Wit and Wisdom: The Forgotten Literary Life of New England Villages. She has also published two award-winning CDs grounded in New England history, Yankee Ingenuity: Stories of Headstrong and Resourceful People and Burnt Into Memory: How Brownfield Faced the Fire 

This month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs host Peter Neill sits down with Steve Tatko, Vice President of the Appalachian Mountain Club. Steve is a lifelong Mainer, born in Monson, graduate of Colby College, shaped by the Maine woods, and now dedicated to its preservation for all of us to use and enjoy. In the past years, Steve and his colleagues have increased the AMC's Maine Woods Initiative lands to 100,000 contiguous acres, and helped to advance the state's 30×30 goal (a national project aiming to conserve 30 percent of each state's natural resources by 2030). Steve and his colleagues have also determined to remove every barrier to pass of sea-run Atlantic salmon and eastern brook trout on AMC land and to work with partners to conserve the entirety of Maine's One Hundred Mile Wilderness. In recognition of his work, the Maine Northeaster Loggers Association presented him its award for “Outstanding Management of Natural Resources” for 2022.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is JOHN BUNKER, Homesteader, farmer, orchardist, author, apple historian, co-founder of FEDCO Trees, and founder of MOFGA's Maine Heritage Orchard, 10-acre preservation and educational orchard located in Unity Maine home to over 360 varies of apples and pears traditionally grown in all 16 counties of Maine dating back to 1630.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is TOMMY CARBONE, author of both fiction and non-fiction, outdoorsman, photographer, publisher, and collector of Maine lore and the work of forgotten or over-looked authors who invoke the spirit of Maine. Tommy is a son of Brooklyn, New York but has found another life in northern Maine, exploring the trails, ponds, mountains, streams and bogs. He has also found many of the authors who preceded him, reissuing the books of Dr. Lucius Lee Hubbard, Thomas S. Steele, and Fannie Hardy Eckstorm, whose book "Exploring the Maine Woods", first published as articles in Field & Stream Magazine in 1891, has been edited and annotated by Tommy in a new edition by Burnt Jacket Publishing, Greenville, Maine.

Our guests this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs are Julia Lane and Fred Gosbee, musicians and musicologists, who for many years have been researching their personal heritage by exploring the traditional music connections between the Celtic lands, the Canadian Maritimes and Maine. In this Conversation from the Pointed Firs episode we explore the early music of Maine, and our cultural heritage through story and song. Through Castlebay, as their musical home, they have released more than two dozen recordings. Their new book, "Bygone Ballads of Maine-Songs of Ships and Sailors", contains many of their findings including lyrics, tunes and relevant lore.

This month we are rebroadcasting a July 2021 conversation with Rob McCall, who passed away in April. We, and many in Maine and beyond, are mourning the loss of this great man: minister, fiddler, writer and creator of the Awanadjo Almanack. Rob and Peter discuss the tradition of Nature writing in Maine, the characteristics of the genre, and the various methodologies and principles that underlie this special means by which to evoke and understand the natural world that surrounds us.   Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a monthly interview podcast where Peter Neill talks with authors and artists who live in Maine, work in Maine, or otherwise derive their creativity from the essence of Maine.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Peter Beckford, Maine farmer and storyteller who will introduce the work of the late Holman F. Day, journalist, poet, and raconteur, whose accounts of neighbors and friends, often in dialect, are classic evocations of the spirit of Maine.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Martha White, writer, editor and literary executor for the estate of her grandfather, E.B. White.  In 2006, White edited the revised and updated Letters of E. B. White (HarperCollins) and, since then, she has compiled three more collections of E. B. White's work: In the Words of E. B. White: Quotations from America's Most Companionable of Writers (Cornell University Press, 2011) and E. B. White on Dogs (Tilbury House, Publishers, 2013). Her most editorial endeavor is Chickens, Gin, and a Maine Friendship, The Correspondence of E.B. White and Edmund Ware Smith (DownEast Books, 2020.) 

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Dean Lunt, Editor-in-Chief, Islandport Press on the writings of Ruth Moore.DEAN LUNT is founder and the editor-in-chief at Islandport Press, an award-winning publisher of books and other media that strives to tell stories that are rooted in the sensibilities of Maine and New England. An eighth-generation native of downeast Maine, Dean Lunt was born and raised in the island fishing village of Frenchboro. His ancestors arrived on Mount Desert Island in the late 1700s and many of them moved across the bay to settle Long Island in the early 1800s. In 1999, Lunt founded Islandport Press, an award-winning independent book publishing company that produces books with New England themes. The company published its first book, Hauling by Hand: The Life and Times of a Maine Island, in the spring of 2000. Lunt has edited dozens of books as is the author of Here for Generations: The Story of a Maine Bank and its City. Later this year he will release an anthology of Ruth Moore's work for which he is writing a lengthy forward describing the ways in which their lives intersected, and the encuring importance of Moore's work. 

The guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Samaa Abdurraqib, Executive Director of the Maine Humanities Council, educator, poet, writer, advocate and justice organizer.  

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Stuart Kestenbaum, arts innovator and poet.STUART KESTENBAUM is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Things Seem to Be Breaking (Deerbrook Editions 2021), and a collection of essays The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press).  He was the host of the Maine Public Radio program Poems from Here and was the host/curator of the podcast Make/Time. He was the director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts from 1988 until 2015. More recently, working with the Libra Foundation, he has designed and implemented a residency program for artists and writers called Monson Arts. Stuart Kestenbaum has written and spoken widely on craft making and creativity, and his poems and writing have appeared in numerous small press publications and magazines.  He served as Maine's poet laureate from 2016-2021. CONVERSATIONS FROM THE POINTED FIRS is a monthly audio series with Maine-connected authors and artists discussing new books and creative projects that invoke the spirit of Maine, its history, its ecology, its culture, and its contribution to community and quality of life.Learn more at pointedfirs.org

November's guests on Conversations from the Pointed Firs are David Greenham, Executive Director of the Maine Arts Commission, and David Hopkins, Chair. They and host Peter Neill discuss the arts in Maine, the creative economy, and the essential contribution and expression of the arts and the creative spirit of Maine. 

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Jefferson Navicky, author, poet, playwright, and archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection. He and host Peter Neill  discuss the long history of women writers in Maine, their work well-known and sometimes forgotten, representing an essential contribution and expression of the unique place and creative spirit of Maine.  Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a monthly interview-style podcast wherein Peter Neill talks with authors and artists who live in Maine, work in Maine, or otherwise derive their creativity from the essence of Maine.

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, poet, fiction writer, teacher and non-profit leader. Gibson's first collection of poems, "Death of a Ventriloquist", won the Vassar Miller Prize and was featured by Poets & Writers as one of a dozen debut collections to watch. His second book, "Deke Dangle Dive" was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021. Gibson's poems have appeared in magazines including The New Republic, Tin House, Narrative, Poetry Northwest, and Orion, and his prose in Kenyon Review online, Portland Magazine, and Slice. He has taught writing at conferences, schools and universities including Fordham, Haystack, and University of Southern Maine, and helped lead community arts organizations including The Telling Room, SPACE Gallery, and Hewnoaks Artist Colony. He currently serves as the Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and lives in Portland with his family. 

Our guest for this month is Kerri Arsenault, author of “Milltown: Reckoning with What Remains”, published in 2020 by St. Martins Press.  Kerri is winner of many distinguished literary prizes such as the 2021 Rachel Carson Environmental Book Award and the Maine Literary Award for Non-Fiction. “Milltown” is a book of narrative non-fiction, investigative memoir and cultural criticism that illiminates the rise and collapse of  the working class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxins and disease with the central question: Who or what are we willing to sacrifice for our own survival?

Our guest this month on Conversations from the Pointed Firs is Julia Bouwsma, poet laureate of Maine and author of “Midden”, an award-winning collection of poems published by Fordham University Press in 2018, an intimate and raw set of poems addressing a dark and important piece of Maine history that transpired on Malaga Island in Casco Bay in 1912.

Host Peter Neill's guest this month is Gretchen Legler, author of Woodsqueer: Crafting a Sustainable Rural Life published by Trinity University Press, an evocative examination of the back-to-the-land experience in Maine with her partner, Ruth Hill. Gretchen is a professor of creative writing at the University of Maine Farmington where she lives. She and Peter discuss her most recent book, an intimate portrait of life in Maine, as well as the power of observation for creative writers, and her Master's of Divinity from Harvard Divinity School, where her interests focused on exploring human connections to the sacred in the natural world.  

Our guest for March is Kimberly Ridley, science writer, essayist, award-winning author, and resident of Brooklin, Maine. Her books for children include The Secret Pool and The Secret Bay, both illustrated by Rebekah Raye, and Extreme Survivors: Animals That Time Forgot. And published this year is a new book of essays and historical renderings of natural things: Wild Designs: Nature's Architects. Kim is an elegant writer, teacher and communicator of her affinity and sense of wonder of things observed in her own backyard in Maine. In this episode Kim and Peter discuss Kim's many books, nature writing in general, the power of unstructured time for children, and the power present in close observations of our natural world. 

Our guest for February is William (Bill) Carpenter, author of "Silence", published by Islandport Press in 2021, as well as other works of poetry and fiction. He and host Peter Neill discuss the new book; the traumas and the scars of war; the past and future of human ecology and the importance of better understanding and living within our natural systems; the complexities of social stratification of island communities; inheritance versus native belonging; and the nature of conflict and loss.

Guests for this edition of Conversations from the Pointed Firs are Glenn Libby and Antonia Small, authors of the book "Caught: Time, Place, Fish". Glenn is a working fisherman, proprietor of Port Clyde Fresh Catch, and an advocate for fishing policy in Maine; Toni is a photographer, educator and ocean advocate. In this episode they discuss their book, portraits and essays on fisheries and fishers, an essential aspect of the spirit of Maine. 

Peter Neill's guest this month is Lincoln Paine, maritime historian and, author of "The Sea and Civilization: A Maritime History of the World", and “Down East: An Illustrated History of Maritime Maine”. This is a fascinating discussion about the history of our coastal places in Maine--from the days when England declared every white pine in the State to be the King's property, to the future of Maine's coasts—from industry to how and where we go for recreation and renewal. 

This month's Pointed Firs conversation is with Christopher Packard, author of "Mythical Creatures of Maine: Fantastic Beasts from Legend and Folklore". Chris is a full-time high school science teacher, and prior to taking up teaching and writing he worked as an ecological restoration technician, field biologist, naturalist, and outdoor educator. His new book explores rich Maine folklore---tales of humans confronted by strange beasts, both wonderful and terrifying. Based on meticulous research into legend and folk tale, the resulting book is an encyclopedia, a field guide to the mythical creatures that maybe can be found in Maine and beyond—if you're looking in the right places. 

This month we're talking with Kathy and Bill Kenny, authors of "Historic Taverns and Tea Rooms of Maine" published by the History Press of Charleston, South Carolina. The conversation centers around the social history and political culture of Maine as nurtured in unexpected places. 

Our guest this week is Earl H Smith, a native of Waterville, Maine,  a 40-year veteran of Colby College, former dean of the college, recently retired, and author of "Downeast Genius: From Earmuffs to Motor Cars, Maine Inventors who Changed the World"

This month our guest is Gordon Bok, sailor, singer, songwriter, storyteller, woodworker, sculptor, and keeper of Atlantic memory and traditional music. He and host Peter Neill will discuss traditional ways of thinking that are unique to Maine, to the Atlantic coast, and to the cultural flow of humanity as informed and shaped by our ocean world. 

This month's guest is Rob McCall, minister and musician and creator of the Awanadjo Almanack heard on WERU-FM and circulated across Maine in various publications and through his most recent book, Some Glad Morning, Holding Hope in Apocalyptic Times. Rob and Peter discuss the tradition of Nature writing in Maine, the characteristics of the genre, and the various methodologies and principles that underlie this special means by which to evoke and understand the natural world that surrounds us. 

What is the spirit of Maine? Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a new one-hour interview program with artists and authors attempting to capture the elusive elements of this special place in which we live. Our guest this week is Chris Newell, director of the Abbe Museum in Bar Harbor, proud citizen of the Passamaquoddy Tribe, a member of the Mystic River Singers, educator and a storyteller. The conversation revolves around the role of museum as keeper of artifacts and stories specific to Maine, and how to release that power and inform through the shared understanding of wilderness and tradition. 

What is the spirit of Maine? Conversations from the Pointed Firs is a new one-hour interview program with artists and authors attempting to capture the elusive elements of this special place in which we live. Our first guest  is Mihku Paul, indigenous native of Maine, poet, educator and activist. She and host Peter Neill will discuss concepts of wilderness, relationship with nature as established by first peoples, and her experience growing up in Maine as expressed through her reading of eloquent personal poems, and thoughts on spirit of place. Next month: a conversation with Chris Newall from the Abbe Museum.