Saturday August 15
2:00 at Chase Emerson Memorial Library
Main Street
Deer Isle, Maine 04627
co-sponsored by Chase Emerson Memorial Library
Writers Margery Ivine and Annaliese Jakimides will read from Threshold, Deborah Cummin’s recently published posthumous memoir about the deaths of her brother and mother. The panel, moderated by Stuart Kestenbaum, will examine Deborah’s writing life and her relationship with Deer Isle, a place she loved deeply.
About the book: Deborah Cummins is “a stranger to death”—until, in 2007, she learns that her brother, Joe, is dying. In the months that follow, as Joe’s health declines, Deborah confronts hidden truths in an attempt to make sense of her brother’s death while he’s still alive—truths that, in retrospect, where perhaps not so hidden after all.
But before she’s able to fully grasp her brother’s worsening condition, Deborah is confronted with another family crisis: between complications following a recent surgery and her heartbreak over her son’s condition, Deborah’s mother’s health is waning as well. After the death of her brother at only forty-five years old, her mother’s death shortly follows, and Deborah must navigate grief compounded.
Spanning the country from a small town in Maine to the sprawling metropolises of Chicago and Phoenix, Threshold skillfully and poignantly examines familial relationships between child, parent, and siblings, providing evocative portraits of each.
Deborah Cummins authored three poetry collections and a collection of linked essays, one of which was listed as Notable in Best American Essays 2013. She received her MFA in creative writing, and her work has appeared in eight anthologies and more than 60 journals, including Yale Review, Gettysburg Review, Orion, Fourth Genre, and New England Review.
From 2001 to 2005, she was the Board Chair of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, and more recently, from 2016 to 2023, she served as Board President of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. In 2014, Deborah and her husband, Bob, relocated from Chicago to Maine, dividing their time between Portland and Deer Isle.
She passed away in the summer of 2023.
Annaliese Jakimides lives in Bangor overlooking the dome of the library. More than 1,000 of her short works, poetry and prose have appeared in magazines, journals, and anthologies, on radio and stage. Recent or upcoming publications include an essay on liminal spaces, a flash fiction on obsession, a lyric essay on life, and ekphrastic works—all in anthologies—as well as a limited Off-Broadway showing this spring of the musical Café Berlin, of which she is the co-writer.
Margery Irvine has made the transition from Brooklyn NY to Brooklin Maine, writing all the way. She’s read her essays on Maine Public Radio, has had bi-weekly columns in two newspapers, and has been included in several anthologies. Recently retired from teaching at the University of Maine, she lives on the edge of the Blue Hill Bay with her husband, the artist William Irvine.
Stuart Kestenbaum served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021 and was the director of the Haystack Mountain School of Crafts for 27 years. His most recent book is A Quiet Book (Brynmorgen Press 2024) collaborations in visual arts and writing with artist Susan Webster.