Ken Houston is a Maine man, born and bred. Born in Waterville in 1935, he lived there until his Mom moved to Attleboro, Massachusetts, during the Second World War to help her older daughter whose husband was serving in the war. After the war he returned to Waterville and was educated in Waterville Schools, where he met his wife.

Together they attended Colby College, where he majored in Geology, but even then, leaned more towards writing. He has lived and worked Downeast all his life, except for his military service in Europe. After they married in 1958, Ken was sent to Germany in the United States Air Force, and together they lived there and had two sons before they returned to Waterville in 1962.

A hard worker since teenage years, he has sold shirts and wrist watches; been a log driver, airman, spy and translator; geologist; researcher, gunsmith, newsman, radio announcer and advertising executive; and always, a writer.

 He works on a Macintosh now, but says his first word processor was an early Cray: a Crayola, in ‘turkey red’. He likes to write about the wry humor and gritty courage at the heart of the Maine character. He has written many short stories based on these gritty Maine characters in a setting in a fictitious local Newport diner. The stories are filled with their interactions with the people and events in the lives of Down Home Folks in a Maine town such as Newport. In his words he describes his writing as, “I write stories and essays celebrating Maine’s simplicity and common sense, which, it seems to me, is indistinguishable from the wisdom of the ages. “

His output is low, because as the years go by, he finds that he is more and more compulsive about rewriting. “Some days, like Robert Frost, I’m convinced that there’s only one good word for an idea; but am unable to think which one it is,” he says. “I call the condition in myself ‘being Frosted’. ”

His forays into the world of publishing have been scanty. He has had a story published in “Potato Eyes”, and won a writing contest at the Newport Public Library, and helped Tom and Colleen Reynolds of Farmington edit their recent books.

Below are a few of his poems. Click on thumbnail images to see readable view of some of his poems.......