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The author Beth Davis Powning was born August 15, 1949, in Putnam Connecticut at The Day Kimball Hospital. Her father, Wendell Davis, was a professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Connecticut and her mother, Alison Brown Davis, was a homemaker and active community volunteer. https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/beth-davis-powning

Under she was twelve years old, she had an idyllic childhood in a small New England town where her family had lived since 1790, with an old family home still in the village, filled with the possessions of many generations. She has one older brother, guitarist Mark Davis. She grew up with ponies, horses, chickens, cats and dogs, as her parents chose to live in an 18th century saltbox, surrounded by dairy farms, and her father commuted to the University where he taught.

Beth attended elementary school at The Hampton Consolidated School, and Rectory School. When her father took the family to West Lafayette, Indiana, while he obtained a PhD in Fluid Dynamics, she attend West Lafayette Junior High School. She graduated from E.O. Smith High School in Storrs, Connecticut in 1967. She graduated with a Bachelor of Creative Writing from Sarah Lawrence College, Bronxville, NY, in 1972, where she studied with E.L.Doctorow, her don, and with whom she completed a novel as her undergraduate thesis.

She married Peter Wilson Powning in 1969. In 1970, she and her husband purchased a farm in Markhamville, New Brunswick. Her family on her mother’s side—grandfather, Sharon Osborn Brown, professor of literature at Brown University, and great-aunt, Bernice Cronkhite, dean of Radcliffe College—were originally from New Brunswick. Beth and her husband Peter moved to the farm in N.B. in 1972. They still live on the same 300 acres.

Their first child, Tate Powning, was stillborn in 1975. Their son Jacob Morgan Powning, was born in 1977. During the 1970’s, Beth contributed short stories to many small magazines such as The Fiddlehead, The Antigonish Review, Quarry, and The Tamarack Review. She completed a novel, “And the Mystery Sang Alive,” which remains unpublished. She worked full-time in the family business, a pottery selling her husband’s work, which eventually employed 6 workers and supplied galleries across Canada and into the U.S. In the late 1980’s, discouraged with many rejections of her short stories, she stopping writing and began photographing. Photography led her back to writing, as she created her first published book, “Seeds of Another Summer: Finding the Spirit of Home in Nature,” published in the U.S. as “Home: Chronicle of a North Country Life.” It was a book of essays and photographs, went through many editions, and is still in print today under the Goose Lane Editions imprint. Of the book, E.L.Doctorow wrote, “Beth Powning’s beautiful celebration of natural life is meet and proper for these unnatural times. I think it will be read for years to come.” She went on to publish two more memoirs, “Shadow Child” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/133376/shadow-child-by-beth-powning/9780676977028 “Edge Seasons” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/133374/edge-seasons-by-beth-powning/9780676976427, as well as four novels: “The Hatbox Letters”https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/133377/the-hatbox-letters-by-beth-powning/9780676976403, “The Sea Captain’s Wife” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/133378/the-sea-captains-wife-by-beth-powning/9780307402561, “A Measure of Light” https://www.penguinrandomhouse.ca/books/236454/a-measure-of-light-by-beth-powning/9780345808493 , and the soon to be released “The Sister’s Tale.”

Interview: https://www.allysonlatta.ca/simply-plunge-ahead-writing-is-an-adventure-interview-with-beth-powning-part-2/

She has been active in her community. In the 1980’s, she was president of a branch of Project Ploughshares, a Peace and Development group. She has been politically active with environmental issues, serving on the Solid Waste Committee in the contentious issue of siting both a landfill and recycling centre. She has sung in The Sussex Choral Society for 25 years, and served on the Sussex Library Board for 20 years.

She has travelled widely promoting her books, including The Blenheim Castle Literary Festival in Oxfordshire, UK; the Cork Literary Festival in West Cork, Ireland, as well as literary festivals in British Columbia, Alberta, Ontario, and the Atlantic Provinces.

She has received honorary PhDs from the University of NB (2014) and Mount Allison University (2020) as well as the Lieutenant-Governor’s Award for High Achievement in English Literary Arts (2010). In 2013, she served on the three-person jury for the Governor General’s Literary Awards in Fiction. She is presently the co-chair of the Literary Committee of the Arts and Culture Centre of Sussex. https://www1.gnb.ca/0003/Pages/en/nb_aut-e.asp?CODE=DM

She has maintained a large organic garden since 1971.

https://gooselane.com/products/home?_pos=1&_sid=f3cc6345f&_ss=r

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/isbn/9780452296954

https://editionsperceneige.ca/index.php/catalogue/item/109

https://www.fireflybooks.com/catalogue/product/13942-hardy-roses-the-essential-guide-for-high-latitudes-and-altitudes?search=Hardy%20Roses

“Canadian Review of American Studies” Volume 48 Supplement 1 (January 2018) “A Trio of Voices: Interiews about American Literary Portraits of Canada with Authors Ben Farmer, Beth Powning, and P.S. Duffy” Jennifer Andrews