Discipline: Literature

Martin Dibner

Discipline: Literature
Region: Casco Village, ME
MacDowell Fellowships: 1970

A native of Brooklyn, writer Martin Dibner (1912-1992) attended the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, earning a bachelor’s degree in banking and finance. He briefly worked as a commercial artist in New York City and Miami before serving in the Navy during World War II. After the war, he did graduate work in painting and sculpture at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.

For his best-known novel, The Deep Six (1953), set on a ship patrolling the Aleutian Islands during World War II, Dibner drew on his wartime experience. His eight other novels included Showcase (1958) and Ransom Run (1977). He also wrote the text for Seacoast Maine (1973), a book of photographs by George Tice, and Portrait of Paris Hill (1990), about a village in Maine. Dibner was the first director of the Joan Whitney Payson Gallery at Westbrook College in Portland, Maine, from 1975 to 1978, and the first director of the California Arts Commission. He passed away in Casco, Maine.

Studios

Sprague-Smith

Martin Dibner worked in the Sprague-Smith studio.

In January of 1976, the original Sprague-Smith Studio — built in 1915–1916 and funded by music students of Mrs. Charles Sprague-Smith of the Veltin School — was destroyed by fire. Redesigned by William Gnade, Sr., a Peterborough builder, the fieldstone structure was rebuilt the same year from the foundation up, reusing the original fieldstone. A few…

Learn more