Skidompha Library’s Chats with Champions will feature cookbook authors Margaret Hathaway and Karl Schatz at 10 a.m. on Thursday, June 10. “The Maine Bicentennial Community Cookbook” is the authors’ sixth book on food and farming. Collaborator Don Lindgren of Rabelais Books in Biddeford will join in the Zoom presentation.

Their talk will detail the creation of “The Maine Bicentennial Community Cookbook,” which includes 200 recipes celebrating Maine’s 200 years of statehood, the reception the book has received and the future projects that have been generated. Now in its fourth printing with over 11,000 copies, funds generated have been distributed to 25 different organizations fighting hunger in all corners of Maine.

The success of the first edition has inspired the creation of a second volume. Submissions for this volume, a continued celebration of  Maine’s home cooking and cultural diversity, began on May 9. A brand-new podcast, ‘Cooking is Community,’ will explore community cookbooks, the communities that produce them, and the charitable causes they support.

Hathaway and Schatz are the wife and husband team who, among other publications, authored their memoir “The Year of the Goat.” Hathaway is a writer and goat farmer who has worked in cookbook publishing, as manager of New York’s landmark Magnolia Bakery, and as a regular contributor to Taproot Magazine. Upon graduation from Wellesley College, Hathaway spent a year as a Fulbright Scholar in Tunisia.

Schatz is a photographer, journalist, and goat farmer. He has worked as a Digital Producer at ABC Television, a photo editor at Time Magazine, and Director of Aurora Photos. Upon graduation from Tufts University, Schatz spent a year as a photographer in Russia.  He also earned his MA in Communications from Syracuse University

Since 2005, the couple has lived with their three daughters at Ten Apple Farm, their homestead and agritourism business in southern Maine. There they raise dairy goats, tend a large garden and small orchard, lead goat hikes, teach workshops, and operate a guest house.

Don Lindgren is an antiquarian bookseller who specializes in printed and manuscript books about food and drink. His book selling business, Rabelais Inc,  acquires, researches and sells rare books, manuscripts, ephemera, and other materials related to cultural history.  In 2019, Lindgren published the first part of a multi-volume exploration of the American Community Cookbook titled “UnXld: American Cookbooks of Community & Place.”

All those wishing to attend this online Chat through Zoom may visit www.skidompha.org to sign up.  Those attending will be emailed a link prior to the event. 

Chats with Champions is a free community offering from the national award-winning Skidompha Library at 184 Main St., Damariscotta. For more information, please contact the library at 563-5513.

This program is generously sponsored by Sherman’s Maine Coast Book Shops.