About Storyworks
Peg Brown
Peg Brown, principal of Storyworks, is a writer and oral historian. She has written essays for the Portland Press Herald, co-written life stories, and researched and written a biography on Jean Byers Sampson, a civil rights leader who lived in Lewiston, Maine. Peg has conducted oral histories for the Portland Museum of Art and the University of Southern Maine Osher Map Library and Smith Center for Cartographic Education.
Peg utilizes a skilled group of book production professionals to create high-quality memoirs sure to be treasured for generations to come.
Peg has an undergraduate degree in English and history from Kalamazoo College in Michigan and a Master’s degree in Adult Education with a concentration in training and development from the University of Southern Maine. She taught English at New Rochelle High School in New Rochelle, New York, before embarking on a long career in higher education fundraising. Peg is a member of the Association of Personal Historians.
By establishing Storyworks Peg combines her love of reading, writing, history, and teaching. She finds interviewing people about their lives or gaining a complex view of an organization’s evolution through oral history interviews fascinating! Peg believes that no life is ordinary and that to write your life is to honor yourself, your friends and family.
Peg likes to take walks with her dog Jack on Maine beaches and share poetry with friends.
Two stories about Peg’s life taken from her essay Paradox and Other Mysteries published in The Maine Scholar. Portland, Maine: Honors Program of the University of Maine System Press, 1997.
In first grade, we drew pumpkins in preparation for Halloween. I drew a big one and colored it dark orange. It was square and imposing. The next day my teacher told me pumpkins are round, not square, and I was to make another one that looked like all the others in the class. So I drew another pumpkin as best I could, and it came out square again! Humiliated, I took it home, stuffed it under my blouse so my parents could not see it, and then hid it under my bed, where it stayed for a long time as a glaring reminder of my incompetence.
Twenty years later, I was carrying a heavy pumpkin from the orchard store for my two children to carve when, suddenly, I realized it was square. In fact, many of the pumpkins on display were square. Epiphany!
But it was too late to call my teacher and let her know.
After a day’s hike to the top of Mr. Katahdin, back again at a hut at Chimney Pond, I awake from a fitful sleep. Moonlight filters through the birch trees to cast shadows on the hut floor. There is no water left in the water bottle.
I crawl from my sleeping bag and ease my aching legs over the edge of the lean-to. The spring is a quarter of a mile away. A full moon illuminates the rock-strewn path. All the camp is sleep. There is only silence, profound silence. The bears and other beasts must be resting too.
Beyond the outline of the trees, I feel the timeless presence of Katahdin. Warm air embraces me; peace surrounds me. Everywhere I look is beauty.