TALKING SHOP & FRIENDSHIP – Zoom with Writers Monica Wood & Christina Baker Kline-Authors Series

This ZOOM afternoon is going to be sublime. Join us as Denmark Historical Society, Public Library and Arts Center Collaborative presents the Authors Series time with Christina Baker Kline and Monica Wood.

Christina Baker Kline A #1 New York Times bestselling author of eight novels, including The Exiles, Orphan Train, and A Piece of the World, Christina Baker Kline is published in 40 countries.

Her novels have received the New England Prize for Fiction, the Maine Literary Award, and a Barnes & Noble Discover Award, among other prizes, and have been chosen by hundreds of communities, universities and schools as “One Book, One Read” selections. Her essays, articles, and reviews have appeared in publications such as the New York Times and the NYT Book Review, The Boston Globe, The San Francisco Chronicle, LitHub, Psychology Today, and Salon.

Christina Baker Kline was born in England and raised in the American South and Maine. She is a graduate of Yale (B.A.), Cambridge (M.A.), and the University of Virginia (M.F.A.), where she was a Hoyns Fellow in Fiction Writing. A resident of New York City and Southwest Harbor, Maine, she is married to David Kline and has three sons: Hayden, Will, and Eli.

Kline’s latest novel, The Exiles (2020), captures the hardship, oppression, opportunity and hope of a trio of women’s lives—two English convicts and an orphaned Aboriginal girl — in nineteenth-century Australia. A Piece of the World (2017), an instant NYT bestseller, explores the real-life relationship between the artist Andrew Wyeth and the subject of his best-known painting, Christina’s World. Orphan Train (2013), about a little-known but significant piece of American history, spent more than two years on the NYT bestseller list, including five weeks at #1. Orphan Train and A Piece of the World have been optioned for film.

Kline has written six other novels — The Way Life Should Be, Bird in Hand, Desire Lines, Sweet Water, and Orphan Train Girl— and written or edited five nonfiction books: The Conversation Begins (with Christina L. Baker), Child of Mine, Room to Grow, About Face (with Anne Burt), and Always too Soon (with Allison Gilbert).

Interview with Christina Baker Kline

Monica Wood is a novelist, memoirist, and playwright. Her most recent novel, The One-in-a-Million Boy, has been published in 22 languages in 30 countries and won  a 2017 Nautilus Award (Gold) and the New England Society Book Award. She is also the author of When We Were the Kennedys, a New England bestseller, Oprah magazine summer-reading pick, and winner of the May Sarton Memoir Award and the 2016 Maine Literary Award. Her novel Any Bitter Thing was an ABA bestseller and Book Sense Top Ten pick. Her other fiction includes Ernie’s Ark, which has been excerpted on NPR’s “Selected Shorts” and selected by several towns and cities as their “One Book, One Community” read; My Only Story, a finalist for the Kate Chopin Award; and Secret Language, her first novel.  Her widely anthologized short stories have won a Pushcart Prize and been featured on public radio. She also writes books for writers and teachers. Her nonfiction has appeared in Oprah, New York Times, Martha Stewart Living, Parade, and many other publications. Her first play, Papermaker, debuted at Portland Stage in an extended run, its bestselling play ever. Her second play, The Half-Light, will debut at Portland Stage in 2019.

Monica was born in Maine, New England to an Irish Catholic family, and worked as a guidance counselor and in a nursing home before becoming a full-time writer. She lives in Maine with her husband.

Interview with Monica Wood

Funded by support from the Maine 200 Bicentennial Commission, Kendal C. & Anna Ham Charitable Foundation, and Maine Humanities Council