Paul Marion is the author of several collections of poetry, including Union River: Poems and Sketches (Bootstrap Press, 2017) and editor of the work of young Jack Kerouac (1922-1969), Atop an Underwood: Early Stories and Other Writings (Viking/Penguin, 1999). Poems and essays have appeared in several anthologies and in many publications, among them Alaska Quarterly Review, Carolina Quarterly, Christian Science Monitor, Massachusetts Review, Merrimack Valley Magazine, and Yankee Magazine. His book Mill Power: The Origin and Impact of Lowell National Historical Park (Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) chronicles the renaissance of an iconic American factory city. He is the editor or co-editor of other volumes such as the Merrimack Poetry Anthology (Loom Press, 1992), French Class: French Canadian-American Writings on Identity, Community, and Place (Loom Press, 1999), and Atlantic Currents: Connecting Cork and Lowell (Loom Press, 2020). In the 1980s, he directed cultural affairs program at the Lowell Historic Preservation Commission, U.S. Dept. of the Interior, overseeing projects such as the Jack Kerouac Commemorative (1988), a sculptural tribute, the Brush Gallery & Studios at Market Mills, and the Lowell Public Art Collection. He is a founder of the Lowell Folk Festival and Lowell Heritage Partnership, a coalition whose mission is "Caring for architecture, nature, and culture." In the 1980s and '90s, he served as executive director and a member of the board of directors of the Human Services Corporation, a multi-service nonprofit organization that led early efforts to establish a national park in Lowell. For more than 20 years, he worked at UMass Lowell as a writer and editor in the communications office and later as executive director of community and cultural affairs. In 2008, he organized the Center for Arts and Ideas on campus, which he directed until his retirement in 2016. He also taught in the First Year Seminar in Honors: Text in the City, an intensive immersion in Lowell. He is a graduate of UMass Lowell, with degrees in political science (B.A.) and community social psychology (M.A.) and studied in the Master of Fine Arts Program in Writing at the University of California, Irvine.
