Author: Margaret

Stoop Storytelling: Gimme Shelter

Photo by Baynard Woods, courtesy of What Weekly. Right to left: Julie Hackett, Faith Ward, Luke Wesby, and Meg Adams

Photo by Baynard Woods, courtesy of What Weekly. Right to left: Julie Hackett, Faith Ward, Luke Wesby, and Meg Adams

I got to go onstage with Stoop Storytelling this year for their February show, Gimme Shelter: Stories about finding, creating, and losing a home. It was a great show with a standing-ovation finale, and it was a whole lot of fun to be part of it. Baynard Woods’ article on the show can be found here. I opened the storytelling with some anecdotes from the time I spent living at South Pole Station, Antarctica, and you can listen to an audio recording of my story online.

Interview with Meg in The Round Table

RT coverI’m famous! …at least in Penobscot County.

The JBMHS magazine, The Round Table, has just come out with “A conversation with Meg Adams about her latest endeavor–nursing school at Johns Hopkins University.”

In addition to the interview, which was conducted as I was switching gears from columnist to nursing student, the magazine has also published a transcript of the commencement speech I delivered to the graduating class of 2010.

 

Down East Magazine

A short piece that I wrote almost four years ago (back when “winter break” meant “home from college”) has just been published in the February issue of Down East Magazine, in their “My Maine” section. “Cabin Noises” is an essay about winter mornings in Maine and the close proximity of cabin living with your family.

feb-cover

Future Readings/Performance

9/26/10 Reading at The Writer’s Center

The Writer’s Center in Bethesda, Maryland is hosting a Delmarva Review reading at 2p.m., Sunday, September 26th. I have been invited to be one of the five authors who will be reading their work that afternoon, all of whom are featured in the 2010 volume ofThe Delmarva Review.
I’ve been hearing a lot about The Writer’s Center ever since I moved to Maryland, and I am looking forward to this opportunity to visit. The Center is an independent literary organization, “one of the premier centers of its kind in the nation,” dedicated to “cultivating the creating, publication, and dissemination of literary work.” This will be a good opportunity to meet some of the more seasoned writers and editors in the area, and  put my fingerprints on the much peered-into windows to the world of future publications.
Plus there will be a reception. Fingers crossed for some of those little mini-eclair things.
2/7/11 Stoop Storytelling
Kin to storytelling movements across the nation like NYC’s “The Moth” and San Francisco’s “The Porchlight Storytelling Series,”Stoop Storytelling shows feature seven storytellers who get seven minutes each to tell a true, personal, unscripted story about a specific theme. Funny, honest and intimate, the Stoop is probably my favorite part of the Baltimore art scene, so I’m pretty excited to be on next season’s lineup.
February’s show will be themed “Gimme Shelter: Stores about finding, creating, and losing a home.” I plan to do some yarn-spinning about the experiences of living out of my frame pack, the 1984 Mazda Bongo, and of course, the dear old Jamesways of South Pole Station.
Check out old podcasts to get an idea of the flavor of the Stoop Storytelling series–I highly recommend Chriss Ferrera’s piece(“Kitchen Confidential”) and Ethel Weld’s piece (“First Times”).

All Good Things…

After many long hours of deliberation, I am leaving my position as a weekly columnist for the Bangor Daily News.

DSC_6271_2I began writing for the BDN in 2007. Originally, my column was intended as something of an adventure-travelogue, giving readers a window into the people and daily life of South Pole Station, Antarctica. Over time, the column became “Being There,” a weekly journey of insight and experiences from wherever I was. I brought readers from my home state of Maine along with me to Mexico, New Zealand, Colorado, and back home. I brought them to migrant camps, resettlement centers, through public transportation systems, kitchens, quiet afternoons and hiking trips. For the last year I have been writing from Baltimore, Maryland, constantly seeking adventures within a new, relatively stable lifestyle.
This fall I begin my tenure as a nursing student. This is a new stage in my life, with a new scope. While it is one that I find deeply absorbing, and an eventual springboard into future years of experience and adventure abroad, I feel that this turning point is a crossroads where my Maine readership cannot follow.
It will be a very strange thing for Friday to come and go unfettered by deadlines and unmarked by email exchanges with readers. But make no mistake: I will continue to write. My hope is that closing this one chapter will make it easier to open the next, with new forms of writing, new challenges, and new venues. Prune to grow, they say. Stay tuned.

JBMHS Commencement Speech

bapstfr07frontLast Sunday I had the privilege of addressing the John Bapst Memorial High School graduating class of 2010 at their commencement. It was a unique honor to be able to go back to my own old high school in Bangor, Maine, this time in the capacity of the graduation speaker. Unique, and not a little surreal.

The article I wrote for the Bangor Daily News on the experience of delivering the speech can be found here.

 

The Next Frontier

This fall I am returning to school, having found what I believe will be a trade that will best allow me to travel, contribute meaningfully to wherever the world takes me, and write: I am pursuing degrees in Nursing and Public Health at Johns Hopkins University. After working this year with many of the faculty and staff at the JHU School of Nursing (SON), I am thrilled to be joining the company of such adventurous, passionate, and committed people–including faculty like Beth Sloand, whose work in Haiti I have already chronicled in the Bangor Daily News, and Nancy Glass, whose presentation last fall on her work in the Democratic Republic of Congo had me slack-jawed with admiration.

One of the nice things about Hopkins is how flexible they are; there is room for time-off, part-time, full-time, and everything in between, and the school is very encouraging of global health experience and study abroad. Who knows where this may take me!

To read previous articles on my decision to go to nursing school, go here and here.JHU SON

Short Story Published in The Delmarva Review

Delmarva_20Review_20Cover_20190dpiOne of my short stories, “Tetherball,” has just been published in the third volume of The Delmarva Review.

The Delmarva Review is a literary journal of stories, essays, poetry, and reviews of select works. Published by the Eastern Shore Writers Association, the Review prints original, evocative writing from authors in the Chesapeake and tri-state Delmarva region as well as new prose and poetry from writers beyond those boundaries.

If you are interested in a copy, just let me know–they are $10 apiece, $8 if you’re buying more than ten copies. I’d be happy to send one your way.

READING at Lit & Art at the Watermark–April 25, 2010

Hello Everyone! Just in case anyone is in the Mid-Atlantic area, some news:  I’m going to do a reading at Lit & Art at theWatermark Gallery in downtown Baltimore.

Lit and Art at the Watermark takes place on Sunday, April 25th from 2 to 5 p.m. and is free and open to the public. The event is part of a series organized by Eric D. Goodman.

Featured authors this time include Kathy Cottle, Rafael Alvarez, Barbara Friedland, Sonia Linebaugh,  Eric Goodman, and Meg Adams.  Nitin Jagdish emcees.  

The Watermark Gallery is located in the Bank of America Center Skywalk Level, right across from the Inner Harbor, at 100 S. Charles Street, Baltimore, Maryland.

The piece I will be reading, “Tetherball,” is a short story due in print later this spring.

Manzar Rassouli-Taylorr’s artwork will be on display in the gallery.