PRESQUE ISLE – The University of Maine at Presque Isle is throwing the best kind of welcome home party for a writer with Maine roots, and the community is invited to attend.
The University will present Cathie Pelletier: A Night with the Author at 7 p.m. on Friday, Feb. 15, in the Campus Center. Pelletier, an award-winning novelist, screenwriter and literary agent who was born and raised in Allagash, will read from her recently completed manuscript – her next Mattagash novel – which will be published in 2009. The event also will include a question-and-answer session and a book signing.
Pelletier returned home to the County in mid-January to serve as the University’s first-ever Writer-in-Residence. She is offering two eight-week courses for the campus and community. In delivering the courses, Pelletier brings her wide-ranging experiences as a writer. She has written nine novels – two of which have been turned into movies – and has collaborated with some of the top names in Hollywood and Nashville.
According to Dr. Deborah Hodgkins, chair of the School of English and Fine Art, the evening will provide the entire community – and not just those taking Pelletier’s courses – with the opportunity to sit down and enjoy an hour or two with this successful and prolific writer.
“Cathie Pelletier has touched so many hearts and made so many people laugh with her stories and her characters,” Hodgkins said. “This is really the community’s chance to come together, delight in those stories and characters, and welcome her home.”
Pelletier wrote her first novel, “The Funeral Makers,” in 1986, and followed with such novels as “The Bubble Reputation” and “Beaming Sonny Home.” In 1998, she made international literary news when Doubleday paid her a million-dollar advance for her novel “Candles on Bay Street,” written under pen name K.C. McKinnon. “Candles” became a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie starring Alicia Silverstone that aired last fall on CBS. Her other McKinnon novel, “Dancing at the Harvest Moon,” has been translated into 18 languages and, in 2002, became a CBS movie starring Jacqueline Bisset and Valerie Harper. Her latest novel, “Running the Bulls,” won the 2006 Paterson Prize for Fiction. Coming full circle, Pelletier has adapted her first novel for director Doug Liman (“Bourne Identity” and “Mr. and Mrs. Smith”). Filming begins in upstate New York this fall.
In other forays into the publishing world, Pelletier has written “The Christmas Note” with Grand Ole Opry star Skeeter Davis, and “The Ragin’ Cajun” with fiddler Doug Kershaw. She has been a literary agent for singer Tanya Tucker; actors James Woods, Lolita Davidovich, Dixie Carter and Hal Holbrook; and artist Don Bachardy, whose work encapsulates his 30 years with literary icon Christopher Isherwood.
For more information about the event, please contact the Media Relations Office at 768-9452 or susan.pinette@umpi.edu.
