His appearance is co-sponsored by Unity College and the Maine Woods Forever Roundtable.

Andrew Vietze writes in the back bedroom of an old Maine farmhouse and a cabin deep in the woods of Baxter State Park. He’s the author of six books, including Boon Island: A True Story of MutinyShipwreck, and Cannibalism, a #1 Amazon Bestseller (US History), winner of a Gold at the 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards in New York and a 2012 Book of the Year finalist. It was featured on the Travel Channel at the end of June 2014.

His previous book Becoming Teddy Roosevelt: How a Maine Guide Inspired America’s 26th President, won a silver medal at the IPPYs – the Independent Publisher Book Awards – and was honored by the Maine State Legislature.  This book was a 2010 Book of the Year Award finalist in the biography category. It also spent weeks on the Maine Sunday Telegram‘s bestseller list.  Comprehensive information about the book is available online here.

The former managing editor of Down East: The Magazine of Maine, Vietze has written for a wide variety of magazines and online publications, including Time Out New York, The New York Times’ LifeWire, Weather.com’s Forecast Earth, Crawdaddy!, AMC Outdoors, Popmatters, Hooked on the Outdoors, Explore, Offshore, Big Sky Journal, MaineBiz, and Maine Times. Two of his pieces for Down East have won awards for feature writing from the International Regional Magazine Association.

A huge fan of Liverpool Football Club, and former singer/guitarist in several indie rock bands, he spends six months of each year as a ranger in the wilds of the Katahdin region. He is currently hard at work on a book about the eastern white pine and its role in American history, due next year. He is also adapting Becoming Teddy Roosevelt for a young audience, also due next year.

Celebrating its tenth year, the Maine Woods Forever Roundtable is a network of over 65 conservation and land management organizations from across the state of Maine.  Among their projects are to organize and host three roundtable meetings a year.  These are intended to enable likeminded organizations supporting the protection and use of the Maine woods to network, share resources, and update each other on their ongoing [projects.  They are beginning the 2014-2015 series with a roundtable meeting at the UCCPA, which also recognized a new partnership between the organization and Unity College.

For more information about either the reading by Andrew Vietze or roundtable, contact Unity College Associate Professor Tom Mullin at tmullin@unity.edu or by phone at (207) 591-7291.

Tuesday, September 16, 2014