A Gateless Garden: Quotes by Maine Women Writers Liza Bakewell editor, Kerry Michaels photographer, MWWC Collaboration

Maine Women Write invites you to the opening of its exhibit of quotes by Maine women writers, paired with black and white images by Maine photographer, Kerry Michaels.  

The exhibition, edited by Dr. Liza Bakewell, Director, Maine Women Write, pairs 53 quotes by Maine women writers with black and white images by photographer Kerry Michaels. Quotes are letterpress printing by Scott Vile of Freeport, Maine. This is a free event and open to the Public. 

Maine has been home to great women authors—erudite, wise, and passionate—whose writing has changed the world. Maine women, armed with pen and paper, have influenced the outcome of the Civil War, mobilized women’s political and domestic rights, and powered the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. They have upset the status quo again and again. Many of them—not only the well known—have made this world a better place.

Most of the women writers gathered for the exhibit and book have lived in Maine for many years—some their entire lives—and have produced in Maine the works quoted in this book. Others who are represented, passed through.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was born and died in Connecticut, but she wrote Uncle Tom's Cabin in Brunswick, Maine, where she lived for two years. The story line, which came to her during a service held at the First Parish Church down the street from her home, was sharpened by discussions with local, abolitionist friends. Louise Bogan was born in Maine and lived here off and on as a young child before she moved away, but her Maine childhood, tumultuous as it was, seeded her poetry and feminism of later years.

Edna St. Vincent Millay left her home in Camden at the age of twenty-one to attend Vassar College. She did not return to live year-round, yet Millay considered Maine her home, visiting her mother in Camden frequently as well as spending summers on Ragged Island in Casco Bay.

Rachel Carson was born in Pennsylvania and worked in Washington, D.C., but it was when she first came to Maine on a visit as an adult that she truly felt at home; here was a place where she could write peacefully, while observing the intricacies of the natural world. A common theme emerges, not only among these notable authors, but among all others in the exhibit and in the catalogue that accompanies it: for more than two hundred years Maine has inspired women to write. The interplay of words and photos enlivens each other and in their synergy celebrate the essence of place, women’s lives, and the singular world that is Maine.