Terrell S. Lester is a self-taught landscape photographer who first picked up a camera when he was thirty-two years old. In the early 1980s he began moving around the country, taking pictures wherever he went, honing his craft. In 1986, during his first trip to Maine, he visited Deer Isle, and he has lived there ever since. He has focused his lens exclusively on Maine for the last fifteen years, and his work is represented in collections around the world and by galleries throughout the United States. Terrell Lester and his wife, Ginger, are co-owners of the Terrell S. Lester Gallery in Deer Isle. This is his first book. Elizabeth Strout is the author of the best-selling novel Amy and… Isabelle. She grew up in Portland. Ann Beattie is the author of six story collections and seven novels, including Chilly Scenes of Winter and Perfect Recall. She lives in Maine and Key West. Richard Russo is the author of five novels, including Nobody's Fool and Empire Falls (set in Maine). He lives mid-coast. Richard Ford is the author of two story collections and five novels, including Independence Day (winner of the Pulitzer Prize). He lives in Maine and New Orleans.
Ann Beattie was born in Washington, D.C. on September 8, 1947. She received a B.A. from American University in 1969 and an M.A. from the University of Connecticut in 1970. She began her writing career when she was just twenty-five, with the short story A Platonic Relationship, published in The New Yorker. Regular contributions to the magazine resulted in her first collection of short stories, Distortions, published in 1976. Her first novel, Chilly Scenes of Winter, was also published that year. Later works include Park City, Another You, Where You'll Find Me, and Walks with Men. Her work was honored with a Guggenheim fellowship in 1978, an Award in Literature from the American Academy of… Arts and Letters in 1980, and the Rea Award for the Short Story in 2005. She has taught at Harvard College, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Virginia.
Novelist and screenwriter Richard Russo was born in Johnstown, New York on July 15, 1949. He received a Bachelor's degree, a Master of Fine Arts degree, and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Arizona. He taught at numerous colleges including Southern Illinois University Carbondale and Colby College. He has written numerous books including Mokawk, The Risk Pool, Straight Man, Bridge of Sighs, and That Old Cape Magic, as well as a short story collection, The Whore's Child. His novel Empire Falls won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and Nobody's Fool was made into a movie starring Paul Newman, Bruce Willis and Melanie Griffith. He also co-wrote the 1998 film Twilight with… director Robert Benton and the teleplay for the HBO adaptation of Empire Falls.
Elizabeth Strout (born January 6, 1956) is an American author of fiction. She was born in Portland, Maine. After graduating from Bates College, she spent a year in Oxford, England. In 1982 she graduated with honors, and received both a law degree from the Syracuse University College of Law and a Certificate of Gerontology from the Syracuse School of Social Work. Strout wrote Amy and Isabelle over the course of six or seven years, which when published was shortlisted for the 2000 Orange Prize and nominated for the 2000 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction. Amy and Isabelle was made into a television movie starring Elisabeth Shue and was produced by Oprah Winfrey's studio, Harpo Films. Strout was a… NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) professor at Colgate University during the Fall Semester of 2007, where she taught creative writing. She was also on the faculty of the MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina. In 2009 Strout was honored with a Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for Olive Kitteridge, a collection of connected short stories she wrote about a woman and her immediate family who lived on the coast of Maine. Strout also wrote The Burgess Boys in 2013 which made The New York Times Best Seller List.