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The Camden Public Library welcomes author Elizabeth Garber for a reading and discussion of her memoir, Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year on Tuesday, July 11 at 6:30 PM. You won’t want to miss this riveting and moving true story!
This event will take place in the Picker Room as well as on Zoom. To attend virtually, register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_sKQh-L36QLOsp5icSXY97w
In 1971, Elizabeth Garber’s domineering father announced he was sending his “problem children”—seventeen-year-old bookish Elizabeth and her fourteen-year-old brother Woodie—to a school on a sailing ship, in order to “shape up and learn to work.” Sailing at the Edge of Disaster: A Memoir of a Young Woman’s Daring Year is the story of how a bookish teen and her younger brother are sent by their dominating father to “shape up” on a sail training school ship, where they discover the rigors, joys, and triumphs of being at sea. As they scour the decks, learn to splice ratlines, and climb the rigging, they also survive an act of piracy, a near-sinking, and being held hostage by armed gun boats. The book chronicles a transformative year in the throes of late adolescence that leads to courage, grace, and a reclamation of selfhood.
Elizabeth W. Garber is also the author of Implosion: A Memoir of an Architect’s Daughter (2018). She has published three books of poetry: True Affections (2012), Listening Inside the Dance (2005), and Pierced by the Seasons (2004). Maine (Island Time) (2013) is a collaboration of her poetry with paintings and photographs of Michael Weymouth. Her essays and excerpts have appeared in Salon, Maine Homes, Johns Hopkins Magazine, and her poems have been included in several journals and anthologies. Three poems have been read on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac.
She received an MFA in Creative Nonfiction from University of Southern Maine’s Stonecoast Program, was awarded writing fellowships at Virginia Center for Creative Arts and Jentel Artist Residency, and received a BA in Humanities from Johns Hopkins and a Masters in Acupuncture from the Traditional Acupuncture Institute. She has maintained a private practice as an acupuncturist for nearly forty years in mid-coast Maine, where she raised her family. Visit her at elizabethgarber.com
