STRATTON — The Carrabassett Valley Library will host a book launch for “Maine Stories,” a collection of columns by award-winning Maine author Lew-Ellyn Hughes, Friday, Feb. 24, from 4:30-6 p.m. in the Begin Family Community Room. The author will be in attendance.
Hughes is the author of the popular bi-monthly newspaper column, “Away with Words,” that runs in The Original Irregular. “Away with Words” is a six-time winner in the Maine Press Association’s Better Newspaper Contest. “Maine Stories” is a collection of those columns.
As a storyteller, Hughes writes about love, parenting, grand-parenting, aging, friends and family. From her love of words and her ability to pick out a single fleck of gold from the vast river of moments that flow through a day, she creates humorous, often poignant or insightful stories about Maine and its people.
Hughes’ Maine ancestry dates to the pre-Revolutionary War era, but because her father’s military career took her family to everywhere but the state they loved the most, she spent only summers in Maine — on Moosehead Lake. Because of this, many of Hughes’ tales give a unique view of a Mainer living in exile — like how to deal with finding a South Carolina cockroach in your LL Bean boots (while your foot is in it!) or avoiding snake holes in Oklahoma or planning a mutiny with your four teenage siblings at the prospect of spending Christmas school vacation in the south, not on Maine’s ski slopes.
Her stories have appeared in several newspapers and magazines across Maine —from Down East to Rangeley.
For more information on “Maine Stories” visit: lewellynhughes.com
