June Vail

June Vail founded the dance program at Bowdoin College and chaired the department of Theater and Dance. While professor, June published book chapters in leading anthologies on dance and wrote journalistic reviews for the Maine Times and the Portland Phoenix. Her book on dance cultures in Sweden, Cultural Choreographies (Carlssons Bokförlag), was published in 1998. In 2010 Bowdoin honored her with its biennial Distinguished Service Award for Faculty and Staff.

June’s recent books reflect an interest in writing about women’s lives, enmeshed in their time and place. Her memoir, Folly Cove Sketches: Remembering Virginia Lee Burton, appears this year (Custom Museum Publishing, 2022). Virginia Lee Burton wrote and illustrated the iconic mid-century children’s books Mike Mulligan and his Steam Shovel, Caldecott Medal-winning Little House, and other stories treasured by generations of children, parents, and librarians. Burton also founded and led the commercially and artistically successful Folly Cove Designers cooperative.

Folly Cove Sketches looks at the woman behind the books and designs to reveal Burton’s creative process and active daily life in the 1960s. As a teenager then, Vail lived with her great-aunt Virginia at Folly Cove on Cape Ann, Massachusetts, and learned what it is to live an artist life. Previously, June published The Passion of Perfection/Gertrude Hitz Burton’s Modern Victorian Life (Maine Authors Publishing, 2017), which was 2018 Maine Literary Awards Finalist for Nonfiction. (Read the review in the Portland Sunday Telegram.)

June Vail earned her BA in English and French from Connecticut College and MALS in Dance and Culture from Wesleyan University.