"Unsettled" e-book release party, Oct. 16, Portland, Maine

"Unsettled", the 29-part series on the epic story of Maine's Passamaquoddy people over the past half century, is now available as an e-book and the Portland Press Herald is throwing a reception.

If you live in the vicinity of Portland, Maine -- or have frequent flyer miles to burn -- consider coming to the Oct. 16 event at the Salt Institute. Photographer Gabe Souza and myself will be there to answer questions about the series, with Press Herald Executive Editor Cliff Schechtman moderating. It kicks off at 6:00 pm, but space is limited so do RSVP using this link.

Here's the invite:

The ebook, published by the Press Herald, will be available free to subscribers and from iTunes and Amazon for everyone else. [Update, 10/16/14: The ebook is out now; links to download or purhase here.]

Hope to see you there.

Salt Institute's faculty resign en masse

My former colleagues over at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies tell me that the entire faculty resigned last week, including veteran teachers Rob Rosenthal (director of the radio program) and Kate Philbrick (director of photography), who regular readers may remember for their powerful Malaga Island documentary.

I am not an unbiased observer, having headed the writing program during the 2008-2009 academic year. (I left of my own accord to finish my fourth book.) I'm a great believer in Salt's mission (even if the board has had trouble articulating it): cultivating thoughtful, ethical, honest, and technically skilled storytellers through engagement in real documentary projects. In its nearly forty years of existence, Salt students have produced an impressive body of work, and many of its graduates have gone on to big things in the worlds of radio documentary, documentary photography, and narrative journalism. The institution is an asset to Maine and to the wider, endangered world of thoughtful journalism.

Unfortunately, Salt is not without its problems, the most obvious and longstanding being its near-total dependence on student tuition. A continuing mystery among the faculty when I was there was why the board and executive director Donna Galluzzo were resistant to embarking on a focused development effort, or even to recruit board members with professional development experience. Salt, we were told, was not suited to such a campaign. Perhaps opinion has changed in the two years since I taught there, but the underlying cash flow vulnerabilities clearly have not: last year the faculty shrank by nearly half in an effort to cut costs.

There's also the matter of turnover. Of the twelve full- and part-time faculty and staff who worked at the institution when I was there, Ms. Galluzzo is the only one who remains. The board -- currently chaired by Portland Press Herald columnist Bill Nemitz -- might ask themselves if this has been the best outcome for the institution.

[Update, 6/1/2011: The Portland Daily Sun follows up on this story.]

[Update, 7/8/2011: For more on Galluzzo's point of view, there's this from the Portland Phoenix, a story demonstrating the pitfalls of single-source reporting.]

New book project: speaking in Boothbay, July 1

I've been at work on my new book, a history of North America's rival nations, by which I mean not the U.S., Canada, and Mexico, but rather Yankeedom, the Deep South, New Netherlands, etc. I'll be talking about this work in progress July 1 at the Boothbay Region Historical Society in Boothbay Harbor, Maine, at 4pm. (For the book itself, you'll have to wait: Viking-Penguin publishes it in late 2010.)

Unfortunately, the project's rapacious demands of time, travel, and energy have meant that I can't teach the writing track this coming academic year at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

I do have a few more speaking events around Maine this summer on Republic of Pirates and The Lobster Coast (which will be Scarborough's Community Read this year.)

Salt Institute students' show - opening this Thursday

If you live in or near Portland, Maine and have an interest in documentary photography, narrative journalism, or documentary radio, this semester's Salt students are showing off their work this Thursday, May 21st, at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies.

Inside Out There opens at 5pm (and closes June 2) and is an event not to be missed. (It includes projects on beekeeping, stand up comedy, roller skating, alien abductions, and wrinkle harvesters.) For more information, visit the exhibit's Facebook page.

Maine: The Malaga Island story, this Friday

Readers of The Lobster Coast may recall the story of Malaga Island, whose African-American residents were evicted -- and imprisoned at a state mental health facility -- by the State of Maine to make way for tasteful summer resort in 1912.

My Salt Institute colleagues Rob Rosenthal and Kate Philbrick have just completed a radio/photography documentary project on the Malaga story, and it opens in Portland, Maine on Friday (6 to 9pm), complete with historical artifacts and a guest panel discussion. The radio portion of Malaga Island: A Story Best Left Untold will be broadcast on local alternative station WMPG on February 26 at 7:30.

[Update, 7/16/2010: I report on some new developments in the Malaga story.]
[Update, 9/14/2010: The governor apologizes to descendants for his predecessors' actions.]

Salt Institute term underway

Among my many projects, I currently teach the writing track at the Salt Institute for Documentary Studies here in Portland., where classes started this week.

Salt, which also trains aspiring documentary photographers and radio producers, moved into a swank new space on Congress Street last fall, complete with all the 21st century gadgetry. Its hallmark is a prolonged documentary field experience, often involving cross-track collaboration with photographers or radio students. It's a fifteen-week program and, while Salt doesn't award a degree, credits earned there can be transferred to institutions that do.

My class is essentially a crash course in the basic nuts-and-bolts skills of journalism, the structural, investigative, and field skills of the narrative or literary journalist, and an intense magazine writing seminar all rolled into one. Several Maine-based editors have been kind enough to come to speak to my class, and many of them have ended up publishing student's stories.

As I need to be in Portland most weeks, expect more New England dispatches and fewer foreign ones over the next three months.