WESTBROOK
Dancers preparing for Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade
Twenty student dancers from Drouin Dance Center have been selected to perform in the annual Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade in New York City to be broadcast Thanksgiving Day on NBC.
The group has begun rehearsals for the choreography they will perform at Herald Square in front of millions of people, and will continue to rehearse and prepare until they leave for NYC on Nov. 20.
In addition to learning the choreography, the dancers are preparing for a whirlwind week of rehearsals to prepare for the parade. With their fellow performers, they will also attend the Radio City Christmas Spectacular and take in a Broadway show.
The dancers are the only participants from Maine, and with one other dance school from Massachusetts, are among the only performers from New England. This is the fourth time Drouin Dance Center has been selected to dance in the parade. They previously performed in the 2011, 2014, 2017. The team was scheduled to participate in the 2020 parade, which was modified due to the pandemic.
“We are very honored to have been selected for a fourth time for this event, known all over the world,” says Danielle Drouin, owner and director. “The hard work of all of these dancers earned us another invitation, which we are very excited about. It’s been a long wait since we started planning in late fall of 2019!”
The team of dancers heading to NYC are: Ellie Backman, Madison Boucher, Mackinna Campbell, Emilia DePeter, Lily Grant, Ashley Keef, all of Westbrook; Jocelyn Snow of Windham; Brooke Chason and Michelle Scannell of Portland; Tedi Gould, Kyra Hamblen, Olivia Hopkins, Abigail Houp, Annika Mankin, Sofia Mankin, Julia Ordway, of Gorham; Hannah Bristol-Watson and Sydney Mueller of Scarborough; Jada Poisson of Lyman, and Stella Crawford of Cape Elizabeth.
SANFORD
Nonprofit honors recipients of community awards
Caring Unlimited recently recognized key supporters of their work to end domestic abuse while supporting victims and survivors and getting them safe access needed resources.
The 2021 Community Partner of the Year was presented to Kyocera-AVX of Biddeford (formerly AVX Tantalum), with the AVX Kyocera Foundation. Thanks to a connection fostered locally by Kyocera-AVX, the AVX Kyocera Foundation has provided consistent and growing financial support to Caring Unlimited’s programs and services since 2016. Their $25,000 gift in the midst of the pandemic helped to ensure Caring Unlimited was able to respond quickly, flexibly, and creatively to the changing needs of individuals experiencing domestic abuse in York County.
The 2021 Community Impact Award was presented to Wayne Dumas of Kennebunk Auto Center for 15 years of partnership and commitment to Caring Unlimited’s Freedom Wheels car repair and donation program. Since the program’s inception in 2006 Kennebunk Auto has been an essential partner, and has facilitated the donation of 106 safe, road-ready vehicles to survivors of domestic violence, and assisted another 624 people with reliable repairs needed to maintain their vehicles.
The 2021 Volunteer of the Year Award will presented to volunteer helpline advocate Brandon York, who has volunteered over 1,000 hours of his time in service to Caring Unlimited since 2019.
For more details, visit caring-unlimited.org or call the helpline at 1-800-239-7298.
PORTLAND
MWPA congratulates fall fellows and scholars
The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance announced the recipients of fall fellowships and scholarships to support writers across the state who are at different stages of their careers.
New this year, the Ashley Bryan Fellowships are named in honor of the life and work of Bryan, author of more than 50 books and recipient of many awards including MWPA’s Distinguished Achievement Award in 2017. Bryan Fellows receive a five-year membership to MWPA with some free workshops each year as well as other forms of support; fellowships are awarded to emerging Maine writers who are Black, people of color, and/or members of one of the Wabanaki Nations or other Indigenous peoples. Two award-winning writers of color acted as the jurors to select seven writers as the first Bryan Fellows. Those recipients include: musician, writer, tutor, and translator Johan Alexander Fenney of Belfast and Portland; writer and copywriter Liz Iverson of Portland; writer and podcaster Zahir Janmohamed, a visiting assistant professor of English at Bowdoin College; writer and social worker Ariele Le Grand of Mount Desert Island; writer, mother, and Portland resident Coco McCracken; writer, playwright, mother, and Portland native Christina Richardson; and scholar, data analyst, research consultant, and writer Ning Sullivan, who grew up in mainland China and has lived in Wells for 22 years.
In 2022 and in each year to follow, five Bryan Fellowships will be awarded through an open application process with a subset of the current fellows and/or other BIPOC writers acting as jurors.
In September, the MWPA awarded a Martin Dibner Memorial Fellowship to Rosanna Gargiulo to attend the Harvest Writers Retreat, all expenses paid, and work on her fiction with writer and Bates College teacher Jessica Anthony. Gargiulo’s award-winning work has appeared or is forthcoming in the Tahoma Literary Review, Bacopa Literary Review, Sweet: A Literary Confection, New South, and elsewhere. She is the editor of The Maine Review and holds an MFA in writing from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Thanks to a partnership with Monson Arts, three MWPA jurors recently selected poet Robert Carr, nonfiction writer Stephanie Harp, and fiction writer Loie Rawding to receive residencies at Monson Arts in 2022.
And, finally, thanks to the ongoing support of NYT-bestselling writer Christina Baker Kline, two MWPA jurors recently selected Zoë Romano as this year’s Christina Baker Kline Scholar. Romano will receive a membership and free workshops at MWPA, as well as a chance to meet and consult with Baker Kline. Romano is a writer and teacher at Waynflete School, where she works one-on-one with students, tutoring reading, writing, and Spanish. She is a trained Narrative4 Story Exchange facilitator and has led story exchanges with eighth-graders and faculty at Waynflete. In 2018, Romano completed a fiction MFA through Queens University. As a Rotary Global Scholar during her graduate program, she completed semesters of service in Argentina, where she taught creative writing and English, and attended writing residencies in Brazil, Chile, and Argentina.
STATEWIDE
Essay contest seeks solutions to global issues
The Maine Chapter of Citizens for Global Solutions is sponsoring an essay contest that asks students in high school, college or university to write about potential solutions to global problems such as climate change, pandemics, loss of biodiversity, poverty and disparities in wealth, hunger/famine, and uncontrolled migration.
The need for global solutions has grown dramatically since World War II and becomes more pressing with each passing day as global problems continue to be dealt with in piecemeal, short-term, and otherwise inadequate ways. A tripling of population since WWII and the demands it places on natural resources, together with weak environmental laws, is severely damaging the world’s life-support system with predicted dire consequences. Students are invited to share solutions they may have.
Essay contestants must be younger than 30, and essays should be no longer than 1,500 words. The deadline for submission is Nov. 15. Winner prizes are $500 for first place, $300 for runner up and $200 for third place.
For more details, contact sldavis@maine.edu or go to globalsolutions.org.
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