Millay House Rockland Board of Directors

  • Michelle is a native of Rockland, Maine and believes that poetry and the arts are what makes being a human worthwhile.

    As a Realtor and historian, Michelle enjoys connecting others to the riches of living in Mid-coast Maine and introducing the literary history of her hometown. She is the mother of three amazing women and spends time in the garden and hiking the shore. As a founding member of Millay House Rockland, she endeavors to promote the life and arts of Edna St. Vincent Millay for future generations.

  • Austin Rodenbiker is a poet and editor living in Rockland, Maine. He holds an MA in gender studies from the University of Texas at Austin and an MFA in poetry from the New Writers Project. His poems have appeared in Poetry, Gulf Coast, Tin House, and The Columbia Review, among other publications.

  • An award-winning writer, Cynthia Reeves is the author of three books of fiction, most recently the novel of Arctic survival The Last Whaler. After a decade in fund-raising and management consulting, she earned an MFA from Warren Wilson College and taught creative writing at Bryn Mawr and Rosemont Colleges before “retiring” to devote herself to writing full-time. Though she lived in Pennsylvania for most of her life, she spent childhood summers on her paternal grandparents’ blueberry farm in South Hope and brought her father to Camden High School reunions for several years until he passed away in 2019. Four years ago, she relocated with her husband to Camden, to a home across from the harbor where her grandfather laid the stone walls and not far from the farm where her father grew up.

  • Diane Norton is a Massachusetts native who spent five glorious summers at camp in Maine, where her mom was the camp nurse. Being immersed in nature and the beauty of Maine made an impact and in 1979 she returned to attend the University of Maine, graduating with a degree in art & journalism. After a long career in newspapers, she currently serves as executive director of The Maine Press Association, and director of corporate engagement at the University of Maine Alumni Association. She attributes her mother Marie with introducing her to the poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and especially Renascence for which she had a deep affinity. Norton’s admiration for ESVM as a trailblazer and extraordinary poet coupled with The Millay House’s mission to champions poets, as well as creators and practitioners of all the arts, inspired her to join The Millay House board.

  • John has delivered and managed Interim CFO and Outsourced Accounting services for client engagements in the nonprofit and social enterprise sectors since 2004.

    With more than 40 years of experience working with over 210 pre-revenue to multi-billion dollar companies, including Acumen Fund, Ashoka, Barnes and Noble, Share Our Strength, Grameen Foundation and the National Cooperative Business Association, John leverages his in-the-trenches CFO expertise to guide CEOs and boards on how to grow their enterprises in a strategic manner, implementing specific courses of action to improve the bottom line. John has been featured in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, NonProfit Times, Entrepreneur.com, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Investors’ Circle Entrepreneur Newsletter and other publications.

    John is currently the Board Treasurer for the Curtis Memorial (Brunswick, ME) library, and is on the boards of the Sea Meadow Marine Foundation and Millay House Rockland (the birthplace of the poet Edna St. Vincent Millay). He is a member of the finance committees of the Mid Coast Hunger Prevention Project and the Maine Health Mid Coast Hospital.

    John received his MBA in Accounting (1977) from Boston College, where he was awarded the “Most Valuable Contribution to the MBA Program”. His undergraduate BA degree was in Communications from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1973).

  • Jefferson Navicky was born in Chicago and grew up in Southeastern Ohio. He is the author of four books, most recently Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands, a finalist for The Big Other Book Award in Fiction, as well as Antique Densities: Modern Parables & Other Experiments on Short Prose, which won the Maine Literary Award for Poetry. Jefferson works as the archivist for the Maine Women Writers Collection, which has a small, but mighty Edna St. Vincent Millay Collection, and he lives in rural midcoast Maine with his wife, cats, and chickens. He enjoys spending as much time as possible in his barn.

  • Liz Kalloch is a visual artist, book designer, and writer who relocated to the midcoast area in 2020 and currently lives in Belfast. It was a coming home of sorts – though she never lived in Maine full time – she spent parts of her childhood in Rockland and Thomaston, visiting her grandfather, sailing Penobscot Bay, and listening to his stories about their Maine ancestors. Her family has been in Maine for six generations, and upon her return, so many of the stories her grandfather told her have resurfaced – her distant cousin relationship to Edna St. Vincent Millay is one of those stories – and they gave rise to a desire to give back in a meaningful way to a place that has given her grounding as to who she is and how that connects to her own creative work.

  • Born in Portland, Maine, Mark Raymond grew up in Rockland and Owls Head, spending his first 3 years on Claremont Street, two blocks away from the Millay House. He started writing poetry as a student at Rockland District High School (now Oceanside) and as a teenager published in the Courier-Gazette, Maine Times, and Hanging Loose Magazine.  He graduated from Bates College and received his PhD in English Literature from New York University. Now a writer and teacher at the University of Maine’s Honor College, his recent work (poetry and essays) has appeared in Poet Lore, The Catch: Writings from Downeast Maine, and the Portland Press Herald (an article on succotash). In his academic career he specializes in 18th Century and Romantic poetry, and his scholarship and publications focus on the interplay of genre, allusion and melancholy among successive generations of writerly communities. Dr. Raymond lives with his wife, MWPA Book Award winning poet Claire Millikin, in Owls Head and Portland.

  • Being friends with fellow board member Michelle Gifford, I was inspired by her effort  in 2015 to save the Millay birthplace. Also friends with philanthropist Roxanne Quimby, I forwarded to her a Free Press story on the old house and she asked how she could help acquire it. I gave her the phone number for Michelle, who was the real estate broker for the property. Okay, so then I was involved and excited, ready to help. I love Vincent's free spirit, her compassion, her humanity. I love her acerbic, wry vision, her liberated lifestyle. I grew up in bohemian Greenwich Village, where she lived, loved and wrote. A retired journalist, I’m currently serving on my town's selectboard, I'm board president of Blueberry Cove and Tanglewood camps, and I live by the sea in St.George. I love to run, dance, swim and ”touch a hundred flowers and not pick one.”

  • Meg is currently the co-founder and director of The Poets Corner and co-founder/co-director of the Camden Festival of Poetry. She retired in January 2020 after 8 years as president of Maine Media in Rockport, Maine, and previously held various leadership positions in the field of business, imaging, and education. Her poetry expresses a passion for geological processes that shape the earth and the stories that shape our lives.

    Meg’s photographs and links to her publications can be seen on www.volcanoes.com.  Meg has an MFA in Creative Writing from Lesley University (2008) and admires Edna St. Vincent Millay for living an unconventional and creative life.

  • Ann Morris is a historian, author, and archivist. She retired as the Associate Director of the Archives of the University of Missouri-St. Louis and moved to Rockland in 2000, to be closer to her mother, Nicky Bottger, a watercolor artist in Camden. While working at the Owl & Turtle Bookshop in Camden, she became inspired by the life and poetry of Edna St. Vincent Millay, and her love of local history and architecture led to her involvement in the effort to save and restore the landmark double house where Edna St. Vincent Millay was born. Ann is glad to see the house used to promote the literary arts and cultural heritage of this exciting seacoast area.