Discipline: Literature

Helen Nearing

Discipline: Literature
Region: Harborside, ME
MacDowell Fellowships: 1988, 1989
Helen Nearing (1904-1995) was an American author and advocate of simple living. She and her husband, Scott Nearing, lived an ascetic and self-reliant life, earning money by producing maple syrup and sugar from the trees on their land and from Scott's occasional paid lectures. In 1952, they moved to a homestead in Brooksville, Maine, on Cape Rosier, where they continued growing much of their own food. They cultivated blueberries as a cash crop. Helen Nearing died in 1995 as the result of a single-car accident in Harborside, Maine.

Studios

Heyward

Helen Nearing worked in the Heyward studio.

The Lodge Annex, a wing on the west side of the men’s dormitory (The Lodge), was completed in 1926. Initially intended as an apartment for a caretaker, the space was soon repurposed as a live-in studio for writers. In recognition of a major endowment gift from the DuBose and Dorothy Heyward Foundation, Lodge Annex was…

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