Good news keeps rolling in! If you haven’t seen or heard it yet, Women Mind the Water’s newest podcast featuring Lisa Blanchard, the Glass Mermaid, is now available. The video version is available on our website and the audio only version is on iTunes. Our next podcast will feature Polly Dawson, an associate photographer for Del Sol Photography in Playa del Carmen, Mexico on the Yucatan Peninsula. Polly’s work combines her talents in fashion design, diving, and photography. Her mermaid wedding proposal photograph received worldwide notice. Much more is planned. This includes an artist who creates life-sized animals using plastic waste and a musician who promotes environmental stewardship and awareness of climate change.

Two of our podcasts have gotten notice. Climate artist Jill Pelto (Episode 3) was featured in the article Not afraid to tackle large subjects in the November 2020 edition of Maine Women Magazine. The article can be read online on their website. And, a story about Kate Hruby (WMW Podcast Episode 5) appeared in the January 2021 edition of Maine Women Magazine. We’ll let you know when it is available for reading online.

We’re pleased to report that our digital stories project is once again receiving contributions. We just received a story about Mother’s Beach in Kennebunk, Maine from Kat McMann. Her digital story will be posted soon. We’d love to receive more stories. Be inspired by Kat and submit your own. Questions? Email womenmindthewater@comcast.net

Further full details about our online book discussion will be posted in the next week or so. The discussion planned for during the month of March will be facilitated by Anne Schlitt, Chiwanki, and supported by the Maine Humanities Council. Chiwanki’s work focuses on teaching appreciation and stewardship of the natural world. The discussion group is free and enrolled participants receive two books that will serve as a framework for the discussion. Rachel Carson’s Sea Around Us, a prize-winning and best-selling book is one title. The second title has not yet announced but will be more contemporary and explore issues of social justice. You don’t want to miss this opportunity. For more information or to sign up, send a message to womenmindthewater@comcast.com.

Wishing you all the best,

Pam

Kat McMann Celebrated for Dedication to the Field of Writing

Kat McMann is the author of a children’s book series, The Liberty Acres Collection, which includes,

I’m Awful Glad I’m Not A Bug and Liberty Acres.

NORTH WATERBORO, ME, January 11, 2021 /24-7PressRelease/ — Kat McMann has been included in Marquis Who’s Who. As in all Marquis Who’s Who biographical volumes, individuals profiled are selected on the basis of current reference value. Factors such as position, noteworthy accomplishments, visibility, and prominence in a field are all taken into account during the selection process.

Born and raised in Kennebunk, Maine, Kat McMann moved to a farm shortly after she started high school. She excelled in music; auditioning and achieving 1st chair clarinet in the Southern Maine Music Festival two years consecutively. A typical farm girl, she helped feed livestock, stack wood and pluck chickens, which later influenced a wide range of children’s books. She graduated from Boston’s Fisher College, in 1986, with an Associate of Science in the Executive Secretarial Program. In college, she worked two jobs and on the college literary publication. Throughout her studies, she discovered that she liked accounting more than she did secretarial work, so she worked in the accounting field, for more than two decades, while building her own bookkeeping business.

Although Kat McMann has made a career with numbers, words have always remained her passion. Once she had her second child at almost 40, she began fostering her creative side by putting a decades-old poem, that she wrote as a teen, into a book that she made with crayons and construction paper to entertain her youngest. Her daughter’s love for the book encouraged her to publish it. Today, Kat excels as an author of children’s books, as a publisher of her blogs, “Ask the Kat” http://askthekat.home.blog  and “Morning Thoughts” https://katmcmannwriter.wordpress.com/, as a web designer and publisher of her website, https://katmcmann.com/ and as the owner/operator of her bookkeeping business, Checks and Balances Accounting Services, which she started in 2000.

Throughout her career, Kat McMann has written and published 12 children’s books, including her latest book, Liberty Acres and the Terrible Scare, which was inspired by the Coronavirus pandemic and dedicated to the frontline workers and first responders for their courage and dedication. Additionally, she has written countless songs, prose pieces and more than 250 poems, which she aims to publish into a book. In honor of her outstanding body of work, Kat has been featured in a number of magazines highlighting her published works. She received the Best of 2019 North Waterboro Recognition Award for her work in printing and publishing and has been included in Marquis Who’s Who in America. She has also appeared in The Reader’s Carnival, Ex Libris Maine, Waterboro Reporter, The LifeWrite Project-The Corona Silver Linings Anthology and Author Voices.

Kat McMann is a member of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, Marquis Who’s Who and Freelancers. Outside of her work, she has periodically dedicated herself to the community as a leader with the Girl Scouts of the United States of America between 2010 and 2013 and as a Notary Public since 2000. She homeschooled her youngest and, in 2017, taught two writing classes for the homeschooling group, L.I.G.H.T.S.

Looking toward the future, Kat McMann continues writing The Liberty Acres Collection, while developing the next series to follow. She loves realizing her dream while fostering the artistic passions of her youngest child, Zoe, the illustrator of her series. Kat also hopes to publish her own story one day.

About Marquis Who’s Who^®:

Since 1899, when A. N. Marquis printed the First Edition of Who’s Who in America^®, Marquis Who’s Who^® has chronicled the lives of the most accomplished individuals and innovators from every significant field of endeavor, including politics, business, medicine, law, education, art, religion and entertainment. Today, Who’s Who in America^® remains an essential biographical source for thousands of researchers, journalists, librarians and executive search firms around the world. Marquis^® publications may be visited at the official Marquis Who’s Who^® website at www.marquiswhoswho.com.