Hull’s Stephen B. Martin will be featured at a local author showcase later this month at Barnes & Noble in Hingham.

Martin, who is familiar to Times readers as a former reporter, published his first novel, “Thumper” in April. He will be among a dozen authors discussing and signing their books on Saturday, January 25 at 1 p.m. at Barnes & Noble at the Derby Street Shoppes.

Martin started out as a folk singer in the mid-60s Worcester folk scene.  He was a member of the Boston Sound centerpiece Orpheus, who recorded 15 of his original compositions. One of them, “Congress Alley,”  has been covered by five other artists. A total of 21 of his songs have been released on major labels, and another thirty on independent labels. 

In 1973, Martin relocated to San Francisco, where he played in several popular groups and worked as a music therapist. When the state halved mental health funds, he began a 25-year career in market research, becoming president of the Northern California Market Research Association.

Returning to New England in 1987, he continued writing, performing, and recording. Upon retiring from market research in 2001, he worked as a newspaper reporter for five years before devoting the rest of his life to non-profit efforts. As special projects coordinator at the New England Wildlife Center, Martin recruited, trained, and oversaw a volunteer force of more than 30, many of whom were variously challenged. He co-founded Native support group Lakota Kidz in 2004, the Wildlife Center’s Catbird Café coffeehouse in 2006, and Musicians for the Greater Good in 2018. During the past 15 years, Martin has produced eight CDs in addition to his new novel.

In the book, Thumper spends a lot of time at the Blue Belle Diner in downtown Worcester, under the watchful eye of Charlie, an ex-boxer turned short-order cook, and befriends such marginalized and colorful characters as Worcester's Last Gypsy, Last Ragman, and Last Sidewalk Preacher.

“Thumper” puts the reader “deep into the self of a precocious troubled kid navigating the travails of growing up in a fractured family in a gritty New England factory town in the ’50s,” Dominican University of California Professor Robert L. Bradford wrote in a review. “It accomplishes the goal of all great literature – utilizing evocative details to provide the experience of being an ‘other.’”

The book will be available for sale at the event and at stephenbmartin.net.

Other local authors to be featured at the Hingham event include Iris Leigh, Amanda Davis, Jessica Levai, Margie Benedict, Kendra Vaughan and Kathleen Jeffrey, Christine Knapp, Laurie Davis, Mark Ciccone, William Fleming, and Derek Mola.

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