LEWISTON — Maine author and journalist Douglas Rooks will speak on “The Making of Biography” at 4 p.m. Tuesday, Nov. 13, at Lewiston-Auburn College’s Franco-American Collection.
Rooks, author of “Statesman: George Mitchell and the Art of the Possible” and “Rise, Decline and Renewal: The Democratic Party in Maine,” is currently at work on a biography of Albert Beliveau, a pioneering Franco-American who was the first Congressional candidate, Superior Court and Supreme Court justice among Maine’s largest ethnic demographic.
Born to a poor family in Lewiston, Beliveau grew up in Rumford, overcame a meager formal education to place first in his class at the University of Maine College of Law. He was the youngest county attorney when elected in 1914, was commissioned a second lieutenant while serving in France as part of the American effort that turned the tide in World War I, and also ran a law practice before embarking on his political and judicial career.
Rooks’s talk will focus on the Franco Collection’s archives, which contain the entire contents of Beliveau’s early 20th century law office, as well as his correspondence, diaries, photographs and memorabilia — and how the raw materials of an archive can be shaped into a narrative.
Rooks has been editor and publisher of Maine Times, editorial editor of the Kennebec Journal, and editor of the Granite State News in Wolfeboro, New Hampshire. His writing has appeared in the Boston Globe, Down East magazine, and other publications.
Light refreshments will be served.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
