Our Faculty
Kristen Case is the author of five books, most recently Daphne (Tupelo Press) and Henry David Thoreau’s Kalendar (Milkweed Editions), both forthcoming in 2025. She is co-editor of The Oxford Handbook of Henry David Thoreau (in development, Oxford UP), William James and Literary Studies (forthcoming, Cambridge UP), Thoreau in an Age of Crisis: Uses and Abuses of An American Icon (Fink, 2021), 21|19: Contemporary Poets in the 19th Century Archive (Milkweed Editions, 2019), and Thoreau at 200: Essays and Reassessments (Cambridge UP, 2016). She is the winner of the Gatewood Proze for poetry, a two-time recipient of the Maine Literary Award in Poetry (2016 and 2020), a MacDowell Fellowship, and the UMF Trustee Professorship. Kristen has been an educator for over 20 years, with experience in elementary school, middle school, and college settlings. Currently, she is Scholarship Research and Grants Manager at The Mitchell Institute, Maine’s premier scholarship organization, and Executive Director and Lead Faculty at The Monson Seminar.
Aaron Wyanski is a composer, pianist, and educator who might be the one person on the planet that has had work premiered at Carnegie Hall and destroyed an instrument onstage at legendary punk venue CBGB and backed a Sinatra impersonator at a Florida aquarium. Wyanski combines all of this wide-ranging and stylistically diverse experience into a deeply personal creative practice exploring memory, perspective, and vulnerability. His music has been featured at New Music Miami, the Hartford New Music Festival, and Five Points Center for the Visual Arts, and he has been awarded residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts and the Vermont College of Fine Arts. Performers who have commissioned and/or premiered Wyanski’s works include: Duo Refracta, the Amaranth Quartet, Juventas New Music Ensemble, Robert Frankenberry, Krista Kopper, Roger Zahab, Yoon Sun Choi, and Jacob Sacks. Wyanski is Academic Director of the Monson Arts Seminar.
Noelle Dubay is Student Services Coordinator for Upward Bound at the University of Maine Farmington. They completed their BFA at UMF in 2012 and their PhD in English at Johns Hopkins University in 2020. Their research project, “Works like a Charm: The Occult Resistance of Nineteenth-Century American Literature,” argues that occult practices and their representations in literature have been key to the consolidation of and resistance to racialized power throughout Atlantic history.
Noelle has designed and taught various courses in literature and writing for diverse educational settings. They previously served as Postdoctoral Teaching Fellow with JHU’s University Writing Program, as Visiting Assistant Professor of American Literature and Editing/Professional Writing at UMF, as Bridge Instructor for UMF’s Upward Bound summer program, and they’ve coordinated community classes and film series in Baltimore, MD, and Farmington, ME. They are Residential Director of the Monson Seminar.
Our Board
Daniel Gunn – President
Daniel Gunn is Professor Emeritus at the University of Maine at Farmington, where he taught English literature for forty-two years, offering courses in the English novel, the theory of the novel, the eighteenth century, Shakespeare, James Joyce, and other areas. During his time at UMF, he also served as Faculty Senate Chair, Chair of the Humanities Division, Acting Dean of Arts and Sciences, and Interim Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs. He has published critical essays on Jane Austen, George Eliot, James Joyce, Samuel Richardson, Henry James, and other novelists in distinguished academic journals, including Narrative, Nineteenth-Century Literature, Studies in the Novel, James Joyce Quarterly, and Eighteenth-Century Fiction. He has also published occasional essays in the Georgia Review, the Iowa Review, the Ohio Review and other magazines. He won a fellowship to the National Humanities Center in 1988, a Trustee Professorship in 2003, the Theo Kalikow Award in 2014, and the Award for Outstanding Teaching in Honors in 2016, and he has been a Visiting Scholar at Oxford University and the Université du Maine in Le Mans. He served on the board of the Maine Humanities Council for nine years (2011-2020), including two years as Board Chair (2017-2019). He lives in New Sharon, Maine.
Anna Fricke – Board Member
Anna Fricke is a television writer and executive producer who runs the production company, Pursued By A Bear, with her producing partner Laura Terry. She's currently developing several projects with the company under her overall deal at CBS Television Studios including LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO by Leila Cohan for NBC and PREMONITION by Noah Schechter for CBS. Anna recently sold the pitch for an untitled Texas medical pilot starring Jared Padalecki to CBS network. Previously, she created and showran WALKER, the re-imagining of WALKER, TEXAS RANGER for the CW. Anna also co-showran VALOR, worked on DYNASTY, and was an Executive Producer on the LA CONFIDENTIAL and REPUBLIC OF SARAH pilots for CBS. Anna joined the Director's Guild last year after directing her first episode of television for WALKER, episode 411 "Let's Go, Lets Go." She's married to writer and executive producer Jeremy Carver with whom she collaborated on Syfy's BEING HUMAN (and also their three children). A graduate of Swarthmore College, she grew up in Hancock, Maine and now lives in Los Angeles and Searsport, Maine
W. Gar Richlin – Board Member
Over a 45 year career, W. Gar Richlin has worked with numerous start-ups and emerging growth companies in various capacities, including director, President, ChiefOperating Officer, Chief Financial Officer and legal counsel. He has also worked with several non-profit corporations including the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra and the Maryland subsidiary of the Alvin Alley American Dance Theater. Principal engagements include: President and Chief Executive Officer of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, President and Chief Operating Officer of Advertising.com (sold to AOL), Chief Operating and Financial Officer of SITEL Corporation (formerly a NYSE company), Head of Investment Banking for Alex. Brown & Sons Incorporation (a leading emerging growth investment bank sold to Bankers Trust), Partner of DLA Piper (formerly Piper & Marbury, a leading international law firm). Gar received his BA (with honors) from Wesleyan University and his JD from the Georgetown Law Center, where he was a member of the Law Review.
Kristen Case – Secretary
Noelle Dubay – Treasurer
Aaron Wyanski – Board Member