University of New England

UNE Maine Women Writers Collection featured as "Library of the Month" by Maine State Library district

The University of New England's Maine Women Writers Collection is the featured "Library of the Month" for December 2005 by the Southern Maine Library District of the Maine State Library.

The Maine Women Writers Collection is located in the Abplanalp Library on UNE's Westbrook College Campus, 716 Stevens Ave., Portland. It is a pre-eminent special collection of published and non-published literary, cultural and social history sources, by and about women authors, either native or residents of Maine. These sources document and illustrate the times, circumstances and experiences of Maine women writers, revealing their public actions and private thoughts.

Founded in 1959 by Westbrook College faculty members and administrators Grace Dow and Dorothy Healy to honor, preserve, and make available the writings of Maine women achieving literary recognition, the Collection now has more than 4,000 volumes on more than 500 Maine women writers. The collection also includes correspondence, photographs, personal papers, manuscripts, typescripts, artifacts, and audiorecordings that provide insight into the lives and writing of both well-known and obscure Maine women authors.

Westbrook College and the University of New England merged in 1996, and the Maine Women Writers Collection was dedicated as a national Literary Landmark on June 20, 1998, by the Friends of Libraries USA.

Earlier this year UNE celebrated the acquisition for the Maine Women Writers Collection of one of the finest collections of material from author Sarah Orne Jewett, one of Maine's greatest literary masters. The acquisition saved this important collection for the state of Maine.

In September, the Maine Women Writers Collection celebrating the acquisition of critically-acclaimed Maine author Cathie Pelletier’s papers. Cathie Pelletier is the critically acclaimed author of six novels published under her own name - most recently "Beaming Sonny Home" - and of several novels published under the pseudonym K. C. McKinnon.

(Press release issued December 15, 2005)