John Christie will read from his memoir, “The Prince of Wentworth Street,” about growing up in Dover in the 1950s and 1960s.

“I’ll be reading sections about my days at St. Mary Academy, about my parent’s work at in the mills of Dover and Somersworth, about life with my extended family in our tenement on Wentworth Street (now Boyle Street) and about my gang of rebellious pals on Henry Law Avenue,” Christie said.

The subtitle of the book, published by Plaidswede Publishing of Concord, N.H., is “An American boyhood in the shadow of the genocide.” John grew up next door to his grandmother, Rose Banaian, who was a survivor of the Armenian Genocide of the early 20th century in which 1.5 million Armenians were killed by the Ottoman Empire. He will also touch on that aspect of his book.

The memoir has been widely praised by reviewers and fellow journalists. Stephen Kurkjian, the three-time Pulitzer Prize winner of the Boston Globe’s Spotlight team, wrote, "This beautifully-told story is both ageless and modern - coming to understand that your identity is defined by both Genocide and survival."

John is an award-winning veteran journalist who has worked as a reporter, editor and publisher for newspapers in Massachusetts, Florida and Maine. He attended St. Mary Academy, St. Thomas Aquinas High School and UNH. He is the editor of the best-seller, “Andrew: Savagery from the Sea.” His work has appeared in the Boston Globe, Boston magazine, Yankee magazine, the Boston Phoenix, NPR-affiliate WBUR and elsewhere. With his wife, Naomi Schalit, he founded the investigative news service, the Maine Center for Public Interest Reporting.

In 2014, the New England Academy of Journalists gave him the Yankee Quill award for his lifetime contribution to journalism. In the same year, he was UNH honored him by naming him the Donald M. Murray Visiting Journalist.

Christie and his wife live in Gloucester, Mass. His website is johnchristiewriter.com.

The first 10 people who give a donation of $5 or more to the library will receive a signed book courtesy of the author. The book can also be purchased from the publisher’s website, https://www.nhbooksellers.com/product-page/the-prince-of-wentworth-street

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