Maine Lit Fest Event - Days 2-4
On the first weekend of the Maine Lit Fest (Friday, October 4th to Sunday, October 6th), the Maine Lit Fest will host "Everything Everywhere All At Once," a celebration of literary events organized by community members across the state.
Featuring over 10 activities, the event will showcase the diverse and thriving reading and writing communities in Maine. Highlights will include the second bi-annual "Terrible Writing by Great Writers" and "Bards on Bikes," a mobile reading event.
Events will take place in various locations, embracing the spirit of community and creativity through a wide range of writers and literary activities.
SCHEDULE
FRIDAY OCTOBER 4TH
Reel Voices: Telling Room Stories on Screen
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
The Portland Museum of Art's Bernard Osher Auditorium (7 Congress Square, Portland, ME)
A showcase of stories, poems, songs, and essays by Maine writers—both youth and adults—adapted for the big screen by local filmmakers and artists. Shown in partnership with The Telling Room and the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance’s 2024 Maine Lit Fest, followed by a talkback with Maine-based director and filmmaker Sean Mewshaw.
Featuring Mo Awale, Toby Choyt, Leigh Ellis, Emily Hollyday, Siri Pierce, Lulu Rasor, Genevieve Stokes, Morgan Talty, Phuc Tran, Grace Whited, and Benedita Zalabantu.
Some pieces explore challenging topics such as mental health, loss, violence, and racism. We encourage attendees to take care and consideration.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 5TH
Polar Paradoxes: Exploring the Sublime and Fragile Beauty of the Polar Regions in Writing and Art
3:00 PM - 5:00 PM
Falmouth Public Library (5 Lunt Road, Falmouth, ME)
Our team consists of a writer and two visual artists whose work is fixated on and transfixed by the polar regions. We’ve thought deeply about how best to capture the dialectic presented by the polar regions—the tension between witnessing the sublime in the natural world and the damage wrought by human encroachment on once-pristine landscapes, and the way those concepts are mediated to audiences. Our goal is to open up new worlds to “armchair polar travelers,” generate discussion about the opportunities and difficulties we face in preserving these sublime landscapes, and encourage the audience to respond either in writing or by sketching to a prompt we provide.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 5TH
Scarborough High School Open Mic Poetry Night
5:00 PM - 6:00 PM
Gazebo at Memorial Park in Scarborough (5 Durant Drive, Scarborough, Maine)
Student poets from Scarborough High School will read their original poetry. The first ever Youth Portland Poet Laureate, Scarborough Senior Yashu Derisala, will headline the event, which will also feature Alex Wu. SHS Poetry Chapbooks will be available for sale. These chapbooks are the result of a collaboration with the 7th Portland Poet Laureate, Maya Williams. Please bring your own lawn chairs. Limited Parking available.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 5TH
Writers on Not Writing
6:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Mockingbird Books (74 Front St. Bath, ME)
Writers pour so much energy into their craft that sometimes we forget that creative pursuits other than writing can fill us up in other important ways. Music, visual arts, yoga, spending time outdoors, baking--how can these (and other) endeavors create space for words on the page? Here's a chance to hear about what writers do when they aren’t writing, and how those pursuits impact their writing when they return to the page. Featured writers: Dave Patterson, Clif Travers, Emma Bouthillette, and Jennifer Dupree.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 5TH
A Meet-and-Greet Involving Cover Designers/Book Illustrators from Around Portland (and Maine)
6:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Novel Book Bar & Cafe (643 Congress Street. Portland, ME)
SATURDAY OCTOBER 5TH
Terrible Writing by Great Writers (& Writer to Writer: Notes of Encouragement)
6:30 PM - 7:30 PM - (Doors at 6:00 PM)
Mechanics’ Hall (519 Congress Street. Portland, ME)
It’s back! Mechanics’ Hall is once again partnering with the MWPA Lit Fest during their Everything, Everywhere All At Once event, for Terrible Writing By Great Writers, an evening where great writers share their worst prose. A handful of authors you know and love will be dusting off those old journals, college love poems, or some of those first drafts they never thought would see the light of day (maybe for good reason). Feeling brave? We’ll save some time at the end for a few courageous souls to step up to the mic to share their cringeworthy croonings! You’ll laugh, some might cry, but we’ll all feel a little better knowing that to get to the good stuff, we have to get out some of the bad.
PLUS: Be that voice for another writer! Stop by the Writer to Writer: Notes of Encouragement table to pen an anonymous note, and make out an envelope to receive anonymously written notes yourself.
There will be plenty of stationery, pens, and envelopes, and we’ll provide the postage. Whether you pen a page or a paragraph, your words may be the encouragement someone else needs to keep going. And who knows how the note you receive in return will push your writing forward? Everyone who stops by will also get a bonus letter of inspiration on the spot to take away with them.
Terrible Writing By Great Writers is co-sponsored by Austin Street Brewing and Kit NA Beer, available to enjoy that evening.
Free with RSVP: Click here to Register
SATURDAY OCTOBER 5TH
Pens for Peace: An Evening of Prose, Poetry, and Community
6:00 PM - 7:30 PM
The Peace Gallery (112 Main St, Damariscotta, ME)
“Pens for Peace” brings together writers from diverse backgrounds, genres, and subjects who all share a sensibility around peacemaking and reconciliation. At a time of discord in our country and world, please join us for community through literature. Before the reading, there will be a social time with food & drink and afterwards a Q&A/conversation among audience members and readers.
Featuring Gary Lawless (Poems for the Wild Earth, Caribou Planet, and How the Stones Came to Venice), Abdi Nor Iftin (Call Me American), CB Anderson (Blue Lion Days, Home Now, and River Talk), Ron Capps (Seriously Not All Right: Five Wars in Ten Years, and Writing War: A Guide to Telling Your Own Story), Jeff Stewart (writer, poet, and playwright) and Bea Gates (The Burning Key, Dos, and In the Open)
SATURDAY OCTOBER 5TH
Minds of All Kinds: Neurodivergence in Picture Books
7:00 PM - 8:30 PM
via Zoom
Join neurodivergent picture book authors Samara Cole Doyon, Meghan Wilson Duff, and Steve Asbell, who is also an illustrator, for a conversation about the importance of neurodivergent and autistic-affirming books for children. Thanks to the work of generations of disability rights advocates, the neurodiversity movement, and the publishing industry now seeking more diverse books it is much easier to find stories that center autistic and neurodivergent children’s perspectives and experiences.
The panelists are neurodivergent creators, and parents of neurodivergent and autistic children, and all write neurodivergent and autistic-affirming stories. They will talk about what makes for positive autistic and neurodivergent representation and what inspires their work, as well as the audiences they hope to reach, the impact they hope to create, and the surprises they’ve encountered along the way.
The session will include time for questions, and attendees will receive a list of books and online resources for further exploration. This event will include closed captions and will be moderated by Alexa Gallant, Autism Information Specialist with Autism Society of Maine.
SATURDAY OCTOBER 5TH
The Thursday Night Poets Read on Saturday Night
7:00 PM - 9:00 PM
Belfast Free Library, Abbott Room (106 High St. Belfast, ME)
In a collective rare public appearance, The Thursday Night Poets, Jackie Ascrizzi, Meredith Bruskin, Carolyn Locke, Barbaria Maria, Mary Nevin, Kathryn Robyn, Elizabeth Schaab, and Karin Spitfire will share their work. These eight women writers, in conjunction with Barbaria Maria’s fine-tuned ear, have been honing their distinct voices in collaboration for years. Poetry books & collections will be available for purchase.
SUNDAY OCTOBER 6TH
Bards on Bikes, a mobile reading event
10:00 AM - 12:00 PM
Start at Downshift Coffee in Belfast (39 Maine Street, Belfast, ME 04915)
Join Belfast Poet Laureate Maya Stein and others on this dynamic mobile poetry reading! Participants will bike together on a pre-determined route, and there will be stops along the way to share site-specific poems. All are welcome to join in the ride - you don't have to be a poet to participate! Bring along some poems that you enjoy or simply come and listen. If you would like to be one of the readers for Bards on Bikes, please email hello@mayastein.com.