The Blue Hill Library and Blue Hill Books are cosponsoring an author talk with local Maine authors Shanna Compton and Caroline Sulzer on Thursday, September 18 at 7PM in the library's Howard Room. Both visual artists as well as poets, Shanna Compton & Caroline Sulzer will each read from their new books—Deep Whoosh (Compton) and Tell Me the Moon (Sulzer)—and discuss how imagery and sound influence their interrelated verbal and visual practices.

Shanna Compton's Deep Whoosh collects 50 handmade cut-and-paste collages by the poet, printmaker, and book designer into a vibrant artist's book, with an essay on their making and two related poems. The collages were created over a period of four months with the use of closed-caption sound effects that serve as the titles, images from print sources, her own hand-printed papers, drawings and linocuts, and other mixed-media detailing. Deep Whoosh provides a window into a process of handmade creation that elevates the meaning hidden in the incidental details of the noisy world around us. Readers are invited to recalibrate their attention and reconsider how we spend it in our media-saturated and increasingly digital lives.

Tell Me the Moon is a collection of poems, described by former Maine Poet Laureate Stuart Kestenbaum as "precise and eloquent....She has created a liminal space where we can move back and forth in time and experience the complexities of loss and love."

Shanna Compton is a poet, printmaker, and book designer in Blue Hill, ME. Her most recent book is Deep Whoosh, a collection of collages incorporating closed-caption sound effects, published in August 2025 by Black Square Editions. Her solo exhibition, Room Tone, ran at Anodyne in Searsport for the month of June. More information can be found on her website, shannacompton.com 

Caroline Sulzer's paintings have been exhibited most recently at the Triangle Gallery in Rockland, ME (currently on view), The Blue Mountain Gallery in NYC and The George Marshall Store in York, ME. Her recent book, Tell Me The Moon, was published by Deerbrook Editions in 2024.  More information can be found at her website, https://carolinesulzer.studio/

This program is free and open to all and will be held in the library's Howard Room. For more information, please email Assistant Director Kayleigh Thomas at kayleigh.thomas@bhpl.net or call 374-5515. Copies of the books will be available for purchase.