Where did the idea for Dead Writers originate?

I came up with the idea for the show after I’d spent several years trying to save the Harriet Beecher Stowe House in Brunswick. I met so many interesting people and came up with several reasons why literary houses are important. That’s when I discovered my now-cohost Brock Clarke’s book, An Arsonist’s Guide to Writers’ Homes in New England, which I found hilarious. I thought it would be cool if we made a podcast recording some of our conversations, and he did too. Our amazing producer, Lisa Bartfai, appeared miraculously on the scene, and the rest is podcast history.

What’s unique about Maine’s literary landscape?

I’d say what’s unique about Maine’s literary landscape is the same thing that is unique about its geography: Maine is beautiful. Writers are attracted to beauty; they need it to write. I think it’s no accident that many of the writers we talk about on the show write about the beauty of Maine’s landscape—Edna St. Vincent Millay and Sarah Orne Jewett’s work come immediately to mind. But then there are the people, or the characters, that make Maine unique, which you can find in poems by Edwin Arlington Robinson as well as in Nathaniel Hawthorne’s stories. Most of these characters are what you’d call “isolatoes.” I guess you find quite a few isolatoes living in Maine.

How did visiting these literary sites—as opposed to just reading about the authors and their lives—affect your understanding of the individuals?

Going to these sites gave me a better sense of how these writers lived. I had read and studied Uncle Tom’s Cabin for many years before I visited Stowe’s home, and being in the house where she wrote the novel—looking out the window, moving through its various rooms—gave me a different sense of the story and how it was written. I think going to the houses allows you to step into an author’s shoes, which helps you think about the life of a writer—but not so much about the books themselves, as my cohost reminds us.

Did you see how the home may have influenced the works by these authors? For example, do you think Stowe’s Maine home affected Uncle Tom’s Cabin?

Stowe was all about celebrating domestic life, and the importance of a well-run household is an important feature of her novel. I’m not sure how well run her own household was, but she spent a lot of time thinking about her house: heating it, cleaning it, moving furniture around, and making sure her kids were healthy and happy in it. There are several scenes in the novel where houses—particularly kitchens—are featured, and I have a hunch that these scenes were based on Stowe’s kitchen in Brunswick.

Given the time of year, we must ask: do any of these dead writers’ homes have ghosts or an unusual history that may not appear on the historic home’s website?

I recently heard from someone who used to work at the Stowe House that, when it used to be an inn back in the 1990s, the basement was full of ghosts. She never saw one herself, but she did say that most of the staff refused to go down there because of “sightings.”