In their latest issue, the editors of Down East Magazine compiled a list of “New Maine Classics,” 25 films, plays, books, digital projects, and animated shorts from the past 25 years that “will hold up in another 25 years.” I’m honored that my cultural and environmental history of coastal Maine, The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier made the list.
Doubly so in that it’s quite a list. There’s Morgan Talty’s blockbuster short story collection, Night of the Living Rez, which I chose as one of two books for the 2023 Maine Humanities Council’s ReadMe selections. (More on that soon.) And Andy O’Brien and Hanji Chang’s “Temp Tales” animated short. And Robert Eggers acclaimed 2010 film The Lighthouse. And even S1:E5 of The Sopranos, where Tony’s high school aged daughter Meadow visits Colby, Bates and Bowdoin. Good company all around!
As for Lobster Coast the editors say it “the story of how generations of explorers, exploiters, excursionists, and exurbanites have shaped [Maine’s] mythology — and whether the state actually lives up to it — makes for a page-turner.” Thanks kindly!
COLIN WOODARD is a New York Times bestselling author and award-winning journalist. He is the author of six books that have been translated into a dozen foreign languages and inspired an NBC television drama. He is currently Director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Affairs at Salve Regina University. As State and National Affairs Writer at the Portland Press Herald and Maine Sunday Telegram he won a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize in 2016. He is a contributing editor at POLITICO and his work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian and dozens of other major publications.