C HA R LOTT E BACON
Charlotte Bacon, wife of Brad Choyt, has a busy life. She is a writer, currently working on novels and essays. She can also be seen on campus teaching an English class or helping to spearhead a program such as the Writers in Process lecture series, or warming up the Middle School Nordic team with yoga. Her new home on Main Street is a frequent venue for school functions like Admission receptions, the Headmaster’s Circle Dinner, a Middle School Halloween party, and Friday evening faculty and staff gatherings. She also has three children: Toby, a sixth grader at NYA, Thea, a kindergartner at Yarmouth’s Rowe School, and Izzy, who is 14 months old. Bacon tries to write almost every day, mostly in the mornings. Her most recent novel, The Twisted Thread, is a thriller released from Hyperion last June and represents a departure from her more literary work. She said she always liked to write but did not consider fiction writing until she was in her mid-twenties. She graduated from Milton Academy and Harvard University and received a Master of Fine Arts degree from Columbia University. Her debut collection of stories, A Private State, won the PEN/Hemingway Award for First Fiction in 1998. Her next three novels came out in 2000, 2004 and 2008 (Lost Geography, There is Room for You, and Split Estate), all from Farrar, Straus and Giroux. She was a tenured professor of English at the University of New Hampshire from 1998-2005. Although Bacon is originally from New York City and moved to Maine from Brooklyn, she said the transition to Yarmouth was very smooth. “Everyone in the community has been extremely welcoming,” she said. She sees herself as an ambassador for NYA. “As a teacher, I am happy to support whatever is going on in the classroom. Because Toby is a current student, I also see what NYA is about and what it offers, and I can speak about that with passion and first-hand experience,” she said.
NYA PRESENTS Writers in Process: bringing the literary world to NYA and Yarmouth This fall, NYA launched a visiting writers’ series entitled Writers in Process: bringing the literary world to NYA and Yarmouth. The series began in October with novelist and Yarmouth resident Lily King, author of Father of the Rain, The English Teacher and The Pleasing Hour. In December, Portland writer Susan Conley, author of the critically acclaimed The Foremost Good Fortune, a memoir that explores her experiences in China with her family as she battles breast cancer, came to campus. Both writers spent most of the day on campus conducting a lecture to Upper School students followed by several workshops with Upper School classes and an evening reading and book signing that was open to the public. Charlotte Bacon was integral in starting the series. “I’m a fiction writer and former professor, and this is a wonderful way to bring my love of literature to a new venue,” explained Bacon. She spoke with several Upper School teachers who were also interested in bringing Maine writers to campus, and a planning committee was formed. “We hope to have five to six writers this year,” she said. Bacon hopes to expand the series to include other artists like dancers, historians, philosophers, and other big thinkers and creators. Each visit will include an evening lecture and book signing that will be open to the public. “We felt it was important to make this series available to the town of Yarmouth and neighboring communities,” said Bacon.
Top photo: Susan Conley teaching a workshop in an English class Bottom left photo: Susan Conley at her evening reading and book signing Bottom right photo, left to right: Charlotte Bacon, Lynn Sullivan and Susan Conley.
N O R T H YA R M O U T H A C A D E M Y
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