Colin Sargent

Colin Wendell Sargent is an American novelist, poet, playwright, and magazine publisher. A former U.S. Navy helicopter pilot and editor of the Navy's aviation safety magazine, he founded and has edited and published Portland Magazine (also known as Portland Monthly Magazine) since 1985.

Early life and education Sargent was born in Portland, Maine, and grew up in the area, spending summers in Kennebunk. He began writing as a high school newspaper contributor and attended the United States Naval Academy, graduating in 1977 with a B.S. in English. While a midshipman, he won the Academy of American Poets University and College Poetry Prize in 1976.

Sargent further earned an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Southern Maine's Stonecoast MFA program, as well as a PhD from the University of Lancaster in the same.

Military career After graduation, Sargent served as a U.S. Navy helicopter pilot (1977–1983) with deployments in the Mediterranean, Indian Ocean, and Atlantic. He became the youngest Navy officer to edit Approach, the Navy and Marine Corps Aviation Safety Magazine, while at the Naval Safety Center in Virginia. Red Hands (2020 UK / 2023 US, Barbican Press) – a nonfiction novel based on 800+ hours of interviews with Iordana Borila Ceausescu (daughter-in-law of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu), whom Sargent met in the 1990s in Old Orchard Beach, Maine. The Portland Press Herald (2023 review by historian William David Barry) called it a "taut, vivid" insider view of the regime; the 2024 profile highlighted its importance amid rising nationalism. Flying Dark (2023, Hellbound Press) draws on his Navy experience and the horror of the final flight into the night that we all will take one day.

Other works Sargent's play 100 Percent American Girl (about Axis Sally) won the Maine Playwrights Festival and a Maine International Film Festival screenplay prize (as Montebello Ice; under option). His short stories and poems appear in anthologies including Our Best War Stories (2020) and journals such as Line of Advance (where he won prizes in 2017–2018).

Academics In addition to his teaching in the Department of English at the College of William & Mary, Sargent pursued research in cognitive literary theory, including the deployment of repeatable moments such as 'querencia places'.