On authors against breast cancer, a story of radical hospitality, and the Maine Literary Awards

New book tells the Wellspring House story

What a powerful idea it is to welcome a stranger into your home, and how foreign a concept it can seem to us now. In the 1980s, a group of seven people on the North Shore had “a simple but radical idea: We wanted to live together and share our home with people in crisis who needed one.” This simple, radical idea led to the birth of Wellspring House in Gloucester and now a book. “Radical Hospitality: Transforming Shelter, Home, and Community, the Wellspring House Story” by Nancy Schwoyer, Rosemary Haughton, with Kimberly French (Peter Lang), explores the creation and existence of this model of mutuality. The founding group was dissatisfied with established structures — work, the church, the government — and were alert to the growing divide between the richest and the poor. They wondered together: Are there better ways to thrive? Are there better ways to help each other? How can we work together? “We wanted to create a community where people took care of each other,” they write, one guided by a stance of “Power With” as opposed to “Power Over.” The importance of their work, and what this book shows, is not just the power of hospitality, of what it is to open your door, but also the example they demonstrated of new ways to live and work together. They looked not to the government or to expensive consultants, and instead asked their guests directly, what do you need? The book is a powerful look at what alternative modes of community and non-profits can look like.

2024 Maine Literary Award winners announced

The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance recently announced the winners of the 2024 Maine Literary Awards. The award for poetry went to Adrian Blevins for “Status Pending.” The award for fiction went to Shannon Bowring for “The Road to Dalton.” The nonfiction prize went to Gretchen Cherington for “The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry.” The memoir prize was shared between Ian Fritz for “What the Taliban Told Me” and Emerson Whitney for “Daddy Boy.” Cameron Kelly Rosenblum won the young people’s category with “The Sharp Edge of Silence,” and “Hidden Hope: How a Toy & a Hero Saved Lives During the Holocaust,” written by Elisa Boxer and illustrated by Amy June Bates took the children’s category. The award for crime fiction went to Katherine Hall Page for “The Body in the Web.” Brandon Ying Kit Boey took the speculative fiction award with “Karma of the Sun.” The Telling Room won for best anthology with “From the Edge of the World.” “Mary Shelley: Year with No Summer” by Jule Selbo took the drama category. And the award for excellent in publishing went to Emily Stoddard Burnham’s “Downtown, Up River: Bangor in the 1970s,” published by Islandport Press. In the youth categories, Oliver Black won for poetry, Avery Olson won for fiction, and Sophie Kilbreth won for non-fiction. And the distinguished achievement award went to Tess Gerritsen and Gary Lawless.

Coming out

“Dancing on My Own: Essays on Art, Collectivity, and Joy” by Simon Wu (Harper)

“The Liquid Eye of a Moon” by Uchenna Awoke (Catapult)

“Fog at Noon” by Tomás González, translated from the Spanish by Andrea Rosenberg (Archipelago)

Pick of the week

Paul Theriault of the Brookline Booksmith recommends “White Holes” by Carlo Rovelli (Riverhead): " Rovelli never fails to astound, to elevate, and to soothe. The very boundaries of our understanding of the universe prove to be gloriously interesting and somehow comprehensible in the hands of the greatest living physicist/poet. A slim book that contains a cosmos of inspiration for a world-weary reader.”⠀

Nina MacLaughlin is the author of “Wake, Siren.” She can be reached at nmaclaughlin@gmail.com.