WINTHROP –Veteran Maine journalist and columnist Douglas Rooks will read from his biography, “Statesman: George Mitchell and the Art of the Possible,” at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, May 23, at the Bailey Public Library. The event is part of the ongoing Winthrop Lakes Region Forum put on by the Bailey Library and sponsored by the Winthrop Public Library Foundation.

The first full-length account of the life and career of one of Maine’s most notable citizens, and a public figure of national and international standing, “Statesman” traces Mitchell’s path from his humble beginnings in Waterville, one of five children of an Irish-American laborer orphaned at birth and his wife, an immigrant to Waterville’s close-knit Lebanese community.

Douglas Rooks is a career journalist, who has worked at weekly and daily newspapers for 25 years. He was the editor of the Granite State News in Wolfeboro, N.H., editorial page editor for the Kennebec Journal in Augusta and editor and publisher of the Maine Times. Now a freelance editor, writer and author, he covers Maine state government, specializing in environmental issues, public education, municipal affairs, business and tax policy. He currently writes an op-ed column for several daily newspapers. His writing has earned awards from the National Newspaper Association and New England Press Association, and he has been named best opinion columnist three times by the Maine Press Association. Rooks is a graduate magna cum laude of Colby College, and a former board president of the Unitarian Universalist Community Church in Augusta. He lives, with his wife, in a 210-year-old farmhouse in West Gardiner. This is his first book.

The event is free and open to the public, and will take place in the lower level King Event Room of the library at 39 Bowdoin St.

FMI: call 207-377-8673.

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