About From the Fishouse

The Fishouse, Pittston, Maine

Founded in 2004 by Matt O’Donnell and Camille T. Dungy, From the Fishouse is an IRS-registered non-profit that promotes the oral tradition of poetry. Our free online audio archive showcases emerging poets (defined for this purpose as poets with fewer than two published books of poetry at the time of submission) reading their own poems, as well as answering questions about poetry and the writing process. Our mission is to use online technology and other media to provide the public with greater access to the voices of emerging poets, and to provide an educational resource to students and teachers of contemporary poetry.
From the Fishouse takes its name, and the spelling of “Fishouse,” from the writing cabin of the late Lawrence Sargent Hall. Hall renovated the former codfish-drying shack and wrote in the space for 50 years. Within the Fishouse, he wrote his Faulkner Award-winning novel, Stowaway, and his O’Henry Award-winning short story, The Ledge, named in 1999 as one of The Best American Short Stories of the Century. The cabin was rediscovered in 2003 on Hall’s property, just as he’d left it when he died ten years earlier, down to the thesaurus and decanters, photo of his dog, Jack, and even firewood for the stove. With the generous permission of Lawrence Hall, Jr., Matt O’Donnell moved the Fishouse to the woods behind his home to use as his own.