Jean Hay Bright was born on October 23, 1947 in Youngstown, Ohio, where she grew up the daughter of a steelworker and a seamstress. She and her first husband, a Vietnam veteran, moved to Maine in 1972 to go ''back to the land,'' homesteading on 25 acres they bought from Helen and Scott Nearing, authors of Living the Good Life. They had two children, and were divorced in 1979.
In 1975, Jean became a reporter and later Hancock County bureau chief for the Bangor Daily News. She left that position in 1985 to open Hay's Farmstand on her 10-acre organic farmer across from the Blue Hill Fairgrounds .
In the late 1980s she served on the board of MOFGA. An environmental activist, Jean helped in the fight in the early 1990s to keep AES from building a coal-burning power plant in Bucksport.
With political activism a growing focus, Jean closed the farmstand in 1992 and went to work as a Legislative Assistant to Maine's Democratic First District Congressman Tom Andrews.
Jean ran for Congress in Maine's Second Congressional District in 1994 and for U.S. Senate in 1996, both times as the progressive candidate in the Maine Democratic primaries. Her first book, Proud to Be a Card-Carrying, Flag-Waving, Patriotic American Liberal (1996) is a collection of her writings on many political topics, including choice, civil rights and worker rights.
Jean's second book, A Tale of Dirty Tricks So Bizarre -- Susan Collins v Public Record (2002) is an inside look at Maine's 1996 U.S. Senate race.
Her third book, Meanwhile, Next Door to the Good Life (2003) details Jean's homesteading days on Cape Rosier in Maine, and tells how Helen and Scott Nearing impacted her life.
Jean's writings and columns have appeared in the Aroostook Democrat, the Maine Progressive, Feminist Times, Yankee Magazine, Providence Journal, Maine Times, Penobscot Bay Press, The Progressive Populist, and Farmstead Magazine.
Returning to college in 1997, she graduated from the University of Maine with honors in May 1998. Jean served for a time as managing editor of The Enterprise, Bucksport, Maine; became marketing manager for Common Courage Press in Monroe, Maine, followed by a stint (2001-2002) in commercial sales at Johnny's Selected Seeds in Albion and Winslow, Maine.
Jean married David Bright, a former reporter, editor, and agriculture columnist for the Bangor Daily News who is now a computer installation specialist. They lived on BrightBerry Farm, a 30-acre MOFGA-certified organic farm in Dixmont, where they developed a pick-your-own-raspberry operation.