Join us post-Lit Fest programming for an evening of fun and interactive literary-themed events around the city. There will be games! There will be friendly competition! There will be poetry! There will be hilarity! There will be food and beverages galore! Join us on the crawl!

This event is free with the option to purchase food and drink at some locations.

Marpheen Chann is a thinker, writer, advocate, and speaker on social justice, equity, and inclusion.

As a gay, first-generation Asian American born in California to a Cambodian refugee family and later adopted by an evangelical, white working-class family in Maine, Marpheen uses a mix of humor and storytelling to help people view topics such as racism, xenophobia, and homophobia through an intersectional lens.

Marpheen is the author of a memoir titled “Moon in Full” coming out June 2022 from Islandport Press.

Marpheen Chann has a strong commitment to public service and serves as:

• At-Large Charter Commissioner, City of Portland, Maine (Elected)

• President, Cambodian Community Association of Maine

• Member, Maine Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights

• Member, Planning Board for the City of Portland, Maine

• Board Member, Equality Community Center in Portland, Maine

Marpheen Chann lives in Portland, Maine. He works in the nonprofit and advocacy sector and holds a bachelor’s degree in Political Science from the University of Southern Maine and a law degree from the University of Maine School of Law.

Richard Russo knows small-town America. This masterful novelist has an uncanny sense of the way life works in the gritty industrial towns of the American Northeast. From the gossip and the resentments to the people and the cafes, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Richard Russo chronicles blue-collar America in ways constantly surprising and utterly revealing.

Russo is the author of eight novels, including Everybody’s Fool and That Old Cape Magic; two collections of short stories; and a memoir, Elsewhere. His 2001 novel, Empire Falls, won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was also adapted into an HBO miniseries, starring Paul Newman, Ed Harris, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Helen Hunt. Russo’s latest work is Chances Are…, a humorous and riveting story about the complex power of friendship.

Russo earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s in fine arts, and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. In 2016 he was given the Indie Champion Award by the American Booksellers Association and in 2017 he received France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. He has two daughters and lives with his wife in Portland, Maine.

Maine Lit Fest - Day 9

According to the most recent U.S. Census Poverty Data, more than 10 million children—nearly 1 in 7—live in poverty. An even larger share of children—1 in 6—worry about where and if they’ll get their next meal. For many children whose families are experiencing financial hardships, hunger, housing insecurity, and limited access to health care and childcare provide an uncertain backdrop against which all other interactions and relationships play out.

This panel will feature YA and Middle Grade authors whose work explores economic challenges from the perspectives of adolescents and youth. What can be gleaned about our society, institutions, and families from a young person’s eye? How can stories and novels for young people featuring characters with diverse economic circumstances expand empathy as well as provide, as Rudine Sims Bishop describes, “windows and mirrors and sliding glass doors” for many young readers? 

Featured authors include Rob Costello (anthologized in Rural Voices: 15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small Town America), Gillian French (Sugaring Off and Grit), George Jreije (Shad Hadid and The Alchemists of Alexandria), Jo Knowles (Ear Worm and Where the Heart Is), and Maria Padian (How to Break a Heart and Wrecked). Jennifer Richards Jacobson (Paper Things and The Dollar Kids) will facilitate.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Print: A Bookstore.

Rob Costello (he/him) is a queer man who writes contemporary and dark speculative fiction with a queer bent for and about young people. His work has appeared in The Dark, The No Sleep Podcast, Hunger Mountain, Stone Canoe, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Narrative, and Rural Voices:15 Authors Challenge Assumptions About Small-Town America.

He holds an MFA in Writing for Children and Young Adults from the Vermont College of Fine Arts and is an alumnus of Millay Arts. He is an active member of the Horror Writers Association and has served on the faculty of the Whole Novel Workshop at the Highlights Foundation since 2014. He lives and works in Ithaca, NY with his husband and their dogs. Find out more at www.cloudbusterpress.com or on Twitter @CloudbusterRob.

Gillian French‘s debut novel, Grit (HarperTeen), was an Indie Next List pick, a Junior Library Guild Selection, received starred reviews from Kirkus Reviews and ALA Booklist, was an Edgar Award Finalist, a South Carolina Young Adult Book Award Finalist, and received both a 2018 Lupine Award from the Maine Library Association and a 2018 Maine Literary Award.

Her other novels include The Door to January (Islandport Press; Bram Stoker Award Finalist), The Lies They Tell (HarperTeen; 2018 Junior Library Guild Selection2019 International Thriller Award Finalist, an Amazon Bestselling New Release in both print and audio editions, 2019 Maine Literary Award Winner), The Missing Season (HarperTeen; 2019 Junior Library Guild Selection, starred review from Booklist), and her upcoming novel for teens, Sugaring Off (Algonquin Young Readers, 11/1/22). Her short fiction has placed in Writer’s Digest and Zoetrope: All Story contests, as well as appearing in such publications as Weirdbook.

George Jreije is the Lebanese-American author of Shad Hadid and the Alchemists of Alexandria, a forthcoming children's fantasy novel with HarperCollins. He has also written short stories published in collaboration with UNICEF. When not writing, George enjoys trying tasty Arabic pastries, messing with new yoga poses, and mentoring other writers.

Jo Knowles is the author of six novels, including Living With Jackie Chan, See You At Harry’s, Pearl, Jumping Off Swings, and Lessons from a Dead Girl. Her newest book, Read Between The Lines, was called “masterfully woven” in a starred review by Kirkus. Some of her awards include two SCBWI Crystal Kite Awards, a New York Times Editor’s Choice and Notable Book, the PEN New England Children’s Book Discovery Award, an American Library Association Notable, Bank Street College’s Best Books for Children (Outstanding Merit), and YALSA’s Best Fiction for Young Adults. Jo has a master’s degree in children’s literature and teaches writing for young adults in the MFA program at Southern New Hampshire University. She lives in Vermont with her husband and son.

Young adult novelist Maria Padian lives and writes from her home in midcoast Maine. Before devoting herself full-time to fiction she worked as a news reporter, congressional aide, radio essayist and freelance writer. These days, she takes breaks from the computer to text her grown children, take long walks along the beach, feed logs into the wood stove or work on her (tennis) backhand.

Jennifer Richard Jacobson, a graduate of Harvard Graduate School of Education, is the author of over a dozen award-winning children’s books including Small as an Elephant (IRA Young Adult’s Choice, Parents’ Choice Gold Award), Paper Things (ILA Social Justice Award, NTCE Charlotte Huck Honorable Mention) and The Dollar Kids illustrated by Ryan Andrews (ABA IndieNext List and Bank Street Best Book of the Year). Her newest launches are a chapter book series (Twig and Turtle: Big Move to a Tiny House) and a middle grade romance: Crashing in Love released in October 2021. She lives in Maine and when not writing, offers coaching and critiques.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 9

How do today’s environmental writers create a balance between awe and terror, wonder and concern? Between narrating and describing and spurring readers to reflect, act, advocate, and change? On this panel, we’ll hear from authors whose work addresses environmental justice, the climate crisis, and the precarious relationship between humans and the planet.

Featured authors include Samaa Abdurraqib (Each Day Is Like an Anchor and editor of From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Writers Write the Northeast), Jason Anthony (Hoosh and the newsletter A Field Guide to the Anthropocene), Gregory Brown (The Lowering Days), and Jennifer Lunden (American Breakdown: Notes from an Industrialized Body, forthcoming from Harper Wave). Kathryn Miles (Trailed) will facilitate.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Print: A Bookstore.

Jason Anthony was born in Maine in 1967, attended school and Clark University in Massachusetts, and earned his MA in poetry from the University of New Hampshire. Soon thereafter, he fled the warm world for Antarctica, where he worked in the United States Antarctic Program for eight austral summers as a Waste Management Specialist, Fuels Operator, Cargo Handler, Skiway Groomer, and Camp Supervisor. Anthony filled his Antarctic notebooks with the raw material for lyric essays, essays, and articles, some twenty three of which have been published since he last left the ice in 2004. His work has been featured in several publications, including Orion, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Missouri Review, and The Smart Set. One Antarctic essay was selected for The Best American Travel Writing 2007, and another was a Notable Essay in The Best American Essays 2006.

Anthony's essay "Hoosh," published in the literary food journal Alimentum, inspired his first book, Hoosh: Roast Penguin, Scurvy Day, and Other Stories of Antarctic Cuisine (University of Nebraska Press). Hoosh, a narrative and culinary history of Antarctica, won a 2012 Andre Simon Food and Drink Book Award, a 2012 ForeWord Book of the Year Award (Travel), a Silver Medal in the 2013 Independent Publisher Book Awards (Creative Nonfiction), and was a finalist for a 2013 Maine Literary Award (Nonfiction). The New York Times Book Review called Anthony “a fine, visceral writer and a witty observer," and The Independent (UK) described Hoosh as "one of the most enthralling studies of gastronomy ever published."

Anthony is the 2014 Literary Fellow for Maine, thanks to a fellowship from the Maine Arts Commission. He lives in midcoast Maine with his wife, the singer-songwriter Heather Hardy.

Gregory Brown grew up along Penobscot Bay and still lives in Maine with his family. His work often explores the interaction of land and human influence, with a particular interest on social, cultural, and environmental issues in rural communities.

His short fiction has appeared in Tin House, The Alaska Quarterly Review, Shenandoah, Epoch, and Narrative Magazine, where he was a winner of the 30Below Prize. His non- fiction writing has appeared in the New York Times, American Short Fiction, The Chicago Tribune, Lit Hub, and The Millions. A graduate of Columbia University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, he is the recipient of scholarships and fellowships from MacDowell, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, the Sewanee Writers’ Conference, and the Napa Valley Writers’ Conference.

His debut novel, The Lowering Days, was a Publishers Marketplace 2021 Buzz Book, a Goodreads best debut novel, a Library Journal best debut novel, longlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award, and won an AudioFile Magazine Earphones award.

Jennifer Lunden is the author of American Breakdown: Notes from an Industrialized Body, forthcoming from Harper Wave in 2023. A chapter from the book—which blends memoir, history, science and social criticism to explore the health hazards of industrial capitalism—was a Maine Literary Awards finalist, and her essay, “Evidence,” also a finalist, received a notable mention in Best American Essays. In 2020 her essay “Fugitive Justice” was the winner of the Maine Literary Awards short works competition in nonfiction.

Lunden’s creative nonfiction has been published in Longreads, Orion, River Teeth, Creative Nonfiction, and DIAGRAM; her fiction in Eclectica, and Wigleaf; and poems in Sweet Lit, Peacock Journal, The Café Review, and other journals. In May 2015, accompanied by a circle of six dancers, she performed an original poem with Esduardo Mariscal Dance Theater, and in February 2020 Maine poet laureate Stuart Kestenbaum read her poem “In February” on Maine Public Radio’s Poems from Here.

Her work has been anthologized in True Stories, Well Told: From The First 20 Years Of Creative Nonfiction Magazine, Environmental and Nature Writing: A Writer’s Guide And Anthology, and The Pushcart Prize XXXVII: Best of the Small Presses. Her paper about the intersection of industrial capitalism and health as viewed through the lens of Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wall-Paper” was selected for the scholarly collection Charlotte Perkins Gilman: New Texts, New Contexts.

The winner of the 2019 Maine Arts Fellowship for literary arts, Lunden is the recipient of two Canada Council for the Arts grants, a Money for Women/Barbara Deming Memorial Fund grant, a Bread Loaf-Rona Jaffe Foundation Scholarship in Nonfiction, and fellowships from Monson Arts, Hewnoaks Artist Colony, Hedgebrook, Yaddo, the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, and the Dora Maar House in France.

She and her husband, the artist Frank Turek, live in a little house on the Portland peninsula, where they keep four chickens, two cats, and one Great Dane.

Kathryn Miles is an award-winning journalist and science writer. She received a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from Saint Louis University and took both her Master of Arts and Doctorate in English from the University of Delaware. The long-time editor of Hawk & Handsaw, Miles served as professor of environmental studies and writing at Unity College from 2001-2015 and has since taught in several graduate schools and low residency-MFA programs including, most recently, at Green Mountain College, where she was also writer-in-residence. Miles is the author of five books: Adventures with Ari, All Standing, Superstorm, Quakeland, and Trailed: One Woman’s Quest to Solve the Shenandoah Murders. Her essays and articles have appeared in publications including Audubon, Best American Essays, The Boston Globe, Down East, Ecotone, History, The New York Times, Outside, Pacific Standard, Politico, Popular Mechanics, and Time. She currently serves as a scholar-in-residence for the Maine Humanities Council, a faculty member for several MFA programs, and as a private consultant available for emerging and established writers. She lives in Portland, Maine.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 9

Joshua Bennett, author of The Study of Human Life, Owed, Being Property Once Myself, and The Sobbing School, will perform his award-winning poetry.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Print: A Bookstore.

Joshua Bennett is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He is the author of three books of poetry and literary criticism: The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016)—which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award—Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020) and Owed (Penguin, 2020). Bennett holds a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University, and an M.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Warwick, where he was a Marshall Scholar. In 2021, he received the Whiting Award for Poetry and Nonfiction.

Bennett has recited his original works at venues such as the Sundance Film Festival, the NAACP Image Awards, and President Obama’s Evening of Poetry and Music at the White House. He has also performed and taught creative writing workshops at hundreds of middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities across the United States, as well as in the U.K. and South Africa.

Bennett’s writing has been published in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Paris Review and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, MIT, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. His first work of narrative nonfiction, Spoken Word: A Cultural History, is forthcoming from Knopf.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 9

No matter who we are, parenthood has the power to transform every aspect of our lives. Parenting exacerbates our vulnerabilities while also reawakening our senses of wonder and joy. This panel will feature authors whose work lays bare the complicated realities of present-day parenthood. What does it mean to raise a child within a queer household? What does it mean to become a father to a Black son? How do mothers grapple with desires outside the household?

Featured authors Kristen Arnett (With Teeth and Mostly Dead Things), Joshua Bennett (The Study of Human Life and Owed), and Lynn Steger Strong (Flight and Want) will share their insights and discuss their work. Chelsea Conaboy (journalist and author of Mother Brain: How Neuroscience is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood) will facilitate.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Print: A Bookstore.

Kristen Arnett is the author of With Teeth: A Novel (Riverhead Books, 2021) which was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and the New York Times bestselling debut novel Mostly Dead Things (Tin House, 2019) which was also a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in fiction and was shortlisted for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award. She is a queer fiction and essay writer. She was awarded a Shearing Fellowship at Black Mountain Institute and was longlisted for the Joyce Carol Oates Prize recognizing mid-career writers of fiction. Her work has appeared at The New York Times, TIME, The Cut, Oprah Magazine, Guernica, Buzzfeed, McSweeneys, PBS Newshour, The Guardian, Salon, and elsewhere. Her next book (an untitled collection of short stories) will be published by Riverhead Books (Penguin Random House). She has a Masters in Library and Information Science from Florida State University and currently lives in Miami, Florida. You can find her on Twitter here: @Kristen_Arnett 

Joshua Bennett is a Professor of English and Creative Writing at Dartmouth College. He is the author of three books of poetry and literary criticism: The Sobbing School (Penguin, 2016)—which was a National Poetry Series selection and a finalist for an NAACP Image Award—Being Property Once Myself (Harvard University Press, 2020) and Owed (Penguin, 2020). Bennett holds a Ph.D. in English from Princeton University, and an M.A. in Theatre and Performance Studies from the University of Warwick, where he was a Marshall Scholar. In 2021, he received the Whiting Award for Poetry and Nonfiction.

Bennett has recited his original works at venues such as the Sundance Film Festival, the NAACP Image Awards, and President Obama’s Evening of Poetry and Music at the White House. He has also performed and taught creative writing workshops at hundreds of middle schools, high schools, colleges, and universities across the United States, as well as in the U.K. and South Africa.

Bennett’s writing has been published in The Best American Poetry, The New York Times, The Paris Review and elsewhere. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, MIT, and the Society of Fellows at Harvard University. His first work of narrative nonfiction, Spoken Word: A Cultural History, is forthcoming from Knopf.

Lynn Steger Strong is the author of Hold Still and, most recently, of the novel Want. She had a recurring column in The Guardian's “Two in Five” on the disappearing American middle class and her work has appeared in The New York Times, Time, Harper’s Bazaar, Los Angeles Times, The Paris Review, The Cut, New York Magazine, and elsewhere. She teaches fiction writing at Columbia University and Catapult.

Chelsea Conaboy is a journalist who writes about personal and public health. She was part of the Boston Globe’s Pulitzer Prize–winning coverage of the Boston Marathon bombing, and her magazine writing has been published by Mother Jones, Politico, the Week, the Boston Globe Magazine, and others. Her first book, Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood, will be published by Henry Holt & Co. in September 2022. She lives in Maine with her husband and their two children.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 9

On this panel, we’ll hear from transnational writers whose work explores displacement, relocation, identity, and home. Sudanese-American writer Safia Elhillo (Girls That Never Die and Home is Not a Country), Somali-American author Abdi Nor Iftin (Call Me American), and Croatian writer Robert Perišić (A Cat at the End of the World) will discuss what it means to search for belonging across borders and write about home countries altered beyond recognition. Zahir Janmohamed (multi-genre author, educator, and co-founder of the podcast Racist Sandwich) will moderate. 

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Longfellow Books.

Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), which received the the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and an Arab American Book Award, Girls That Never Die (One World/Random House, 2022), and the novel in verse Home Is Not A Country (Make Me A World/Random House, 2021), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and received a Coretta Scott King Book Award Author Honor.

Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, Safia received the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and was listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 “30 Under 30.” Her work appears in Poetry Magazine, Callaloo, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others, and in anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and The Penguin Book of Migration Literature. Her work has been translated into several languages, and commissioned by Under Armour, Cuyana, and the Bavarian State Ballet. With Fatimah Asghar, she is co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019).

Her fellowships include a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.

Born in Mogadishu to nomadic parents, Abdi Nor Iftin survived famine, war, and child soldiering. Thanks to the movies available to him, he taught himself English by watching American action films. By repeating and imitating the carefree actors, he earned himself the nickname “Abdi American”. Through guerrilla journalism, Abdi dispatched stories about his life to a series titled Messages From Mogadishu on American Public Media. His stories were short listed for Peabody Awards in 2016. These stories were picked by NPR, the BBC and later This American Life.

After surviving a bombing at his house one evening in 2009, Abdi finally said goodbye to his home country and moved to Kenya where he and his brother lived as refugees. In an amazing stroke of luck, he won entrance to the U.S. in August 2014, in the annual visa lottery, though his route to America—ending in a harrowing sequence of events that nearly stranded him in Nairobi—did not come easily.

Now Abdi is a bestselling and award-winning author based in the state of Maine. He’s been featured by CNN, NPR, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the Boston Globe. Abdi is an advocate for refugee and immigrant rights. He is dedicated to bringing people together through his stories of survival and resilience. He is currently working on a documentary based on his memoir Call Me American.

Robert Perišić is an Croatian author, born in Split in 1969. Translations of his works were published in numerous European countries and the US. He is best known for his prose, and also writes poetry, plays and film scripts.

His novel “Naš čovjek na terenu” (“Our Man in Iraq”) won the prestigious "Jutarnji list award" in Croatia. The American edition of the novel was included in US top translation lists in 2013, along with praise from critics (The New Yorker, Publisher’s Weekly, National Public Radio, etc.) and writers, such as Jonathan Franzen. The German edition of the novel (‘Unser Mann vor Ort’) received ‘Literaturpreis der Steiermärkischen Sparkasse 2011’ in Graz, Austria.

The novel “Područje bez signala” (“Area With No Coverage”) published in 2015 was in finalist for the “Meša Selimović” award (Tuzla, Bosnia and Herzegovina) and the T-portal award for best Croatian novel, and the American and French edition are currently being prepared.

Published works: poetry collection “Dvorac Amerika” (“Castle America”) of 1995, short story collections “Možeš pljunuti onoga tko bude pitao za nas” (“You may spit on the person who asks about us”) of 1999 and “Užas i veliki troškovi” (“Terror And High Costs”) of 2002, novel “Naš čovjek na terenu” of 2007, essay “Uvod u smiješni ples” (“Introduction To a Funny Dance”) of 2011, poetry collection “Jednom kasnije” (“Once, Later”) of 2012, play “Kultura u predgrađu” (“Culture In the Suburbs”) staged in Gavella, Zagreb, in 2000, film script for the feature film “100 minuta Slave” (“100 Minutes of Glory”) of 2004, and the novel “Područje bez signala” of 2015.

Robert Perisic (Robert Perišić) lives in Zagreb and works as a freelance writer. 

Zahir Janmohamed is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Bowdoin College. He received his MFA in fiction at the University of Michigan where he received awards in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and playwriting. In 2019, the podcast he co-founded, Racist Sandwich, was nominated for a James Beard Award.

He has received fellowships from MacDowell, where he was the inaugural recipient of the Anne Cox Chambers fellowship for long-form journalism, as well as from Tin House, the Arab American National Museum, The Mesa Refuge, the Djerassi Resident Arts Program, the Norman Mailer Center, and the San Francisco Writers’ Grotto. He is a three-time alumnus of the VONA workshop for writers of color, a 2017 fiction fellow at Kundiman, a 2017 New Voices Scholar, and the recipient of the inaugural Katherine Bakeless Fiction Scholarship at Bread Loaf.

His articles have appeared in The New York Times, Foreign Policy, Guernica, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, Newsweek, CNN, NPR, The Boston Review, The Guardian, McSweeney's, Scroll India, The Economic Times and many other publications.

His media appearances include NPR, CNN, BBC, CBC, Al Jazeera, Politically Incorrect with Bill Maher, Live Wire, The Dear Sugar Podcast, and others.

Aside from his writing career, he has spent over a decade working in politics.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 9

Award-winning poet Safia Elhillo, author of The January Children, Home is Not a Country, and Girls That Never Die, will perform her work.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Longfellow Books.

Safia Elhillo is the author of The January Children (University of Nebraska Press, 2017), which received the the Sillerman First Book Prize for African Poets and an Arab American Book Award, Girls That Never Die (One World/Random House, 2022), and the novel in verse Home Is Not A Country (Make Me A World/Random House, 2021), which was longlisted for the National Book Award and received a Coretta Scott King Book Award Author Honor.

Sudanese by way of Washington, DC, Safia received the 2015 Brunel International African Poetry Prize, and was listed in Forbes Africa’s 2018 “30 Under 30.” Her work appears in Poetry Magazine, Callaloo, and The Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-day series, among others, and in anthologies including The BreakBeat Poets: New American Poetry in the Age of Hip-Hop and The Penguin Book of Migration Literature. Her work has been translated into several languages, and commissioned by Under Armour, Cuyana, and the Bavarian State Ballet. With Fatimah Asghar, she is co-editor of the anthology Halal If You Hear Me (Haymarket Books, 2019).

Her fellowships include a Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, and a Wallace Stegner Fellowship from Stanford University.

Maine Lit Fest - Day 9

Famed Maine illustrators, including Chris Van Dusen (Big Truck, Little Island and If I Built a House) and Scott Nash (I’m Afraid Your Teddy is in Trouble Today and Sunken Treasures), will test their drawing skills, answer questions about their process of creating, and take drawing challenges from the audience. More information is forthcoming.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Longfellow Books.

Chris Van Dusen worked for more than ten years as a freelance illustrator specializing in art for kids, doing mostly editorial work with illustrations appearing in magazines like Nickelodeon, Family Fun and Disney Adventures. One day, he started thinking about drawing a picture of a boat stuck high up in a tree, thinking that it would be a really funny and intriguing illustration. At the same time, a refrain kept running through his head- “Mr. Magee and his little dog, Dee/ Hopped in the car and drove down to the sea”. The combination of these two things eventually became his first book, Down to the Sea with Mr. Magee, which was published in 2000. He’s been busy writing and illustrating children’s books ever since.

Scott Nash is an author, illustrator, and instigator. He illustrated the Flat Stanley books written by Jeff Brown, and designed the logos for Nickelodeon, Nick at Nite, Nick Jr., and Comedy Central. He wrote and illustrated The High Skies Adventures of Blue Jay the Pirate as well as Tuff Fluff: The Case of Duckie’s Missing Brain. Ten years ago he founded the illustration program at Maine College of Art. The program is now the largest department in the school. Nash attends many workshops and schools to teach students how to realize the value of creativity in their lives. “All too often children abandon drawing and painting because they believe they are ‘no good’ at art, as if creating only exists in the realm of those we define as artists,” says Nash. “I teach kids that creativity is open to everyone and hope to inspire them to write and draw throughout their lives.” Nash also runs NASHBOX, a graphic design and illustration company, with his wife, Nancy. Nash moved from Boston to Maine years ago to focus on making things daily, specifically to focus on his art, design, and children’s books.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 9

Children of all ages and their families are invited to kick-off the day in Monument Square with a dynamic story hour! Local actors, artists, and community leaders will read aloud stories featuring diverse characters written by diverse authors.

Each child in attendance will receive a free book to take home.

Guest readers include Pious Ali, Shay Stewart-Bouley, and Glaisma Perez Silva.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Longfellow Books.

Pious Ali is a dedicated public servant and an assertive and pragmatic leader with a compassionate diversified skill set in community organizing, activism and civic engagement. Pious is a Youth and Community Engagement Specialist at the University of Southern Maine’s Muskie School of Public Service’s Portland Empowered, and he has spent the better part of his career focused on community engagement. He has created a meaningful and ongoing dialogue across cultural, ethnic, socioeconomic, and faith-based barriers.

Chicago native Shay Stewart-Bouley, also known as Black Girl in Maine (or BGIM), had to learn a bit of Yankee ingenuity when she relocated to Maine in 2002. After a brief foray into education, she brought her socially-minded work from Chicago, where she worked with the homeless, to Maine by working with low-income and at-risk youth in southern Maine. She is currently the executive director of Community Change Inc., a nearly 50-year-old anti-racism organization based in Boston that organizes and educates for racial equity with a specific focus on working with white people. Shay has been blogging since 2008, frequently on matters of social justice and systemic racism, through her Black Girl In Maine website and, in 2011, she won a New England Press Association Award for her writing on race and diversity for the Portland Phoenix. Her writing also has been featured in a variety of Maine and national publications as well as several anthologies. In November 2016, she gave a TEDx talk called “Inequity, Injustice… Infection.” She is graduate of both DePaul University and Antioch University New England, and even though she works in Boston now, she is indeed still BGIM, continuing to reside in Maine.

Please join us for a bookfair of Maine Publishers and author collectives featuring recently published books for sale and select authors available to sign copies. A schedule of author signings is below.

Participating presses and author collectives include Alice James Books, Androscoggin Press, Backroad Press, Beloit Poetry Journal, Deerbrook Editions, Islandport Press, Locally Grown Books, Downeast Maine Writers, Littoral Books, the Maine Authors Collective at She Writes Press, Maine Authors Publishing, Sandorf Passage, Strange Wilds Press, The Telling Room, and Toad Hall Editions.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 8

For close to two decades, National Magazine Award winner Rebecca Traister (author of Good and Mad and a writer-at-large for New York Magazine) has covered women in politics, media, and entertainment. Recently, her work has centered female anger and the overturning of Roe vs. Wade. Rebecca will be joined in conversation by Kerri Arsenault, whose investigative memoir Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains won the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists and the Maine Literary Award for nonfiction. Rebecca and Kerri will have a wide-ranging conversation about what it means to write nonfiction as a woman in this political, cultural, and environmental moment in which it feels like so many things are on fire (and some things literally are). Susan Conley, author of five critically-acclaimed works of fiction and nonfiction (including Landslide and Elsey Come Home), will moderate.

This event is co-sponsored by the Portland Public Library, the Maine Women Writers Collection, and Mechanics Hall.

This event is free, and RSVP is required. Please click the button above to reserve your seat.

Books will be sold by Longfellow Books.

Kerri Arsenault is co-founder of The Environmental Storytelling Studio at Brown University (TESS), contributing editor at Orion magazine, book critic, and author of Mill Town: Reckoning with What Remains. Mill Town won the Rachel Carson Environment Book Award from the Society of Environmental Journalists, the Maine Literary Award for nonfiction, and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Leonard Prize for best first book in any genre. Mill Town was also a New York Times Editors’ Choice, and top book pick for the Chicago Tribune, Literary Hub, Kirkus Reviews, Oprah magazine, People, Newsweek, and Publisher’s Weekly, among others. Her writing has been published in the Boston Globe, The Paris Review, the New York Review of Books, Freeman’s, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

For 2022–2023, Arsenault will be a fellow at the Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History at Harvard University, at the Science History Institute in Philadelphia, and at the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society in Munich, where she will be working on two biography projects that orbit around her primary interest: the lives of ordinary people and their intersection with waste, pollutants, and toxicities.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 9

The Portland Museum of Art is hosting a Concrete Poetry workshop, where you can arrange letters, words, and symbols into a shape that emphasizes the meaning of the poem.

This event is free.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 7

Writer, editor, and essayist Brandon Taylor is well known for the emotional acuity of his writing about intimacy, race, and violence and for his ability to convey the drama underlying ordinary events. His first novel, Real Life, was a finalist for the 2020 Booker Prize and the 2021 Young Lions Fiction Award. His story collection, Filthy Animals, recently won the 2022 Story Prize.

Beloved Maine novelist Lily King (Five Tuesdays in Winter; Writers & Lovers) will talk with Brandon about his work, influences, and creative evolution from an aspiring scientist to award-winning writer and social commentator. Both authors will discuss their processes for creating unforgettable characters and bringing stories to life on the page.

Tickets for this event are $15 each, and Brandon and Lily will be available to sign books after the event. (Note: This is the only ticketed event at the Maine Lit Fest.)

Masks are required for this event.

Books will be sold by Print: A Bookstore.

Lily King is the award-winning author of five novels. Her most recent novel, Writers & Lovers, was published on March 3rd, 2020, and her first collection of short stories, Five Tuesdays in Winter, will be released on November 9, 2021. Her 2014 novel Euphoria won the Kirkus Award, The New England Book Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Award. Euphoria was named one of the 10 Best Books of 2014 by The New York Times Book Review. It was included in TIME's Top 10 Fiction Books of 2014, as well as on Amazon, NPR, Entertainment Weekly, Publishers Weekly, and Salon’s Best Books of 2014.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 7

Before the event featuring Brandon Taylor and Lily King in conversation, MWPA and a wonderful collection of writers and supporters will host a reception to benefit the Maine Lit Fest. During a week of free events and conversations in Waterville, Portland, and online, this is our one moment to pass the hat.

Guest Authors will include Samaa Abdurraqib, Kristen Arnett, Kerri Arsenault, Megan Frazer Blakemore, Adrian Blevins, Sarah Braunstein, Jaed Coffin, Susan Conley, Myronn Hardy, Robert Perišić, Mira Ptacin, Betsy Sholl, Debra Spark, Lynn Steger Strong, Melissa Sweet, Phuc Tran, Catherynne Valente, Arisa White, and Monica Wood.

And our hosts (many of whom are also guest authors) will include: Maile Buker, Brock & Lane Clark, Kitty & Bob Davis, Joan Dempsey, Patricia Dodd, Tess Gerritsen, Rick & Elsie Hobbs, Jennifer Jacobsen & Don O’Grady, Candace Karu, Senator Angus King & Mary Herman, Lily King & Tyler Clements, Annie Leahy & Mike Carey, Wil Morton, Richard & Barbara Russo, Lincoln & Allison Paine, Kristina Powell, Gayle Lynds & John Sheldon, Chuck Radis, Barbara Ross & Bill Carito, Bill & Anne Stauffer, Rebecca Traister, and W.S. Winslow.

We will also be joined by most of our Lit Fest Founders (many of whom are also guest authors) and are grateful for their early support. Those founders including Stephanie Cotsirilos, Deborah & Robert Cummins, Robert & Margot Kelley, James Krosschell, Kathryn Olmstead, Marilyn Moss Rockefeller, and Bill Roorbach.

Tickets for this special event are $100 for one or $150 for two, and all proceeds go to supporting the Maine Lit Fest. Please click on the button below to purchase a ticket. Space is limited, and we expect tickets to move quickly.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 6

Trans narratives are blossoming in the literary landscape; at the same time, a barrage of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ+ legislation is sweeping the country. This online panel will explore the power of trans authors’ writing and reading for queer audiences and the importance of finding power, hope, and joy in their words. 

Featured authors include Charlie Jane Anders (sci-fi author of Victories Greater Than Death and All the Birds in the Sky and winner of Hugo, Nebula, and Lambda awards), Isaac Fitzsimons (YA author of The Passing Playbook), and Leigh Ellis (Telling Room alum, Maine Literary Award winner, and author of Bach in the Barn). Maine Lit Fest fellow Rylan Hynes will facilitate, and Maya Williams of MaineTransNet will be on hand to field questions and share Maine-based resources.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by A Room of One’s Own.

Charlie Jane Anders is the author of Victories Greater Than Death, the first book in a new young-adult trilogy, with the sequel, Dreams Bigger Than Heartbreak, coming April 2022. She's also the author of the short story collection Even Greater Mistakes, and Never Say You Can't Survive (August 2021), a book about how to use creative writing to get through hard times. Her other books include The City in the Middle of the Night and All the Birds in the Sky. She's won the Hugo, Nebula, Sturgeon, Lambda Literary, Crawford and Locus Awards. Her fiction and journalism have appeared in the New York Times, the Washington Post, Slate, McSweeney's, Mother Jones, the Boston Review, Tor.com, Tin House, Teen Vogue, Conjunctions, Wired Magazine, and other places. Her TED Talk, "Go Ahead, Dream About the Future" got 700,000 views in its first week. With Annalee Newitz, she co-hosts the podcast Our Opinions Are Correct.

Isaac Fitzsimons (Fits-EYE-mons) writes so that every reader can see themselves reflected in literature. His debut novel, The Passing Playbook, received numerous accolades including being named a Junior Library Guild Gold Standard selection, a Summer/Fall 2021 Indies Introduce title, a Kirkus Best Young Adult Book of 2021, and a 2022 Lambda Literary Award Finalist.

Isaac has previously dabbled in performing sketch comedy and learning how to play three songs on the banjo. His dream vacation would be to travel around Europe via sleeper train and see every top-tier soccer team play a home game. He currently lives outside Washington, DC.

Leigh Ellis is an eighteen year-old from Raymond, Maine and author of the young adult magical realism novel, Bach in the Barn. Leigh grew up writing at the Telling Room, and their work has been featured in Telling Room anthologies See Beyond and Shadowboxing. Though no longer a student, they hope to stay involved with the Telling Room and similar organizations in the future. Leigh is attending Columbia University with a major in creative writing and is passionate about queer representation and advocacy. Their goal is to continue sharing the stories they needed to hear growing up, as well as helping others to do the same. Leigh is also in the process of compiling a zine of queer writing called Frisson, based on the scientific term for “getting the chills.” When not writing, Leigh can often be found collaging, taking pictures of street art, and making Spotify playlists.

Rylan Hynes grew up in South Portland and studied creative writing, visual art, and theatre at College of the Atlantic as an undergraduate. Rylan is currently the Communications Manager at The Telling Room in Portland, Maine, and has worked with independent bookstores and literary nonprofits across the country, including Maine's own Nonesuch Books and award-winning poetry press Alice James Books. In 2020, the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and Maine Community Foundation awarded Rylan with a Martin Dibner Fellowship to attend the Harvest Writers Retreat. When they aren't busy writing short stories, novels, and essays, Rylan enjoys spending time with their spouse and their hedgehog.

Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a Black Mixed Race queer nonbinary person, suicide survivor, and poet residing in Portland, Maine. They currently serve as MaineTransNet’s Sexual Assault Program Coordinator, where they develop peer support groups for trans survivors and educational material on trauma informed trans competency for advocates. They also serve as co-host of the video series Dying/Laughing, which analyzes the representation of suicide and mental health in TV and film. Maya has published poetry in glitterMOB, Occulum, The Portland Press Herald, Littoral Books, FreezeRay, and more. Ey has received residencies from organizations such as Sundress Academy for the Arts (SAFTA), Voices of Our Nation Arts (VONA) Foundation, The For Us by Us Fund’s Words of Fire Retreat, and Hewnoaks Artist Colony. She is a Maine Writers and Publishers Association (MWPA) Chapbook finalist, a Best of the Net Nominee, and a winner of PortFringe’s Patron’s Choice Award for her spoken word performance “When Speaking to an Extraterrestrial.” You can see Maya as one of the three selected artists of color to represent Maine in The Kennedy Center’s Arts Across America series, hosting open mics Tuesdays for Port Veritas, and facilitating writing workshops for Quill Books & Beverage Sundays. Follow them at their website, mayawilliamspoet.com.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 6

Hear author Phuc Tran read from his award-winning memoir Sigh, Gone while listening to the music that inspired his writing. Watch and listen to the dynamic Tanuja Desai Hidier, award-winning songwriter and author, perform a reading and share audio/visual pieces. And relish in the power that is Signature Soul, the spoken word, eclectic hip-hop duo, also known as Marco Soulo and Signature MiMi.

This event is co-hosted by Tender Table, a group that celebrates Black and Brown community through storytelling and food. Alcoholic and non-alcoholic beverages will be available for sale thanks to co-sponsors The Public Works and Kit NA. Food will also be available for purchase.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Kelly’s Books to Go.

Phuc Tran was born in Sài Gòn Việt Nam, his family fled to America in 1975, and he grew up in Carlisle, PA. Reared on a steady diet of Saturday morning cartoons, John Hughes, Star Wars, Bones Brigade videos, and bootlegged cassettes of Minor Threat and TSOL, Phuc graduated high school in 1991. He majored in Classical Languages and Literature at Bard College—how did no one talk him out of that?—got his Master’s Degree at University of Massachusetts Amherst, and then moved to New York City in 1997. There he apprenticed to be a tattooer while teaching Latin during the day, and he has been teaching and tattooing ever since. He’s never been good at staying in one lane—just ask his wife about his driving.

Following in the footsteps of E.B. White (who was neither a tattooer nor Latin teacher), Phuc and his wife left the city and moved to Maine in 2003 (she’s an honest-to-goodness Mainer) where they opened their shop, Tsunami Tattoo.

In 2012, he delivered a TEDx talk which was highlighted by NPR’s TED Radio Hour. The TEDx talk and its reception planted a seed in Phuc for sharing more of his story as a refugee (of which he’d shared very little). He embarked on writing his memoir in 2016, and in April 2020 Sigh, Gone was published by Flatiron Books.

After a Bombay babyhood and Wilbraham, Mass childhood (home of Friendly’s ice cream!), Boston-born author/singer-songwriter Tanuja Desai Hidier moved to NYC where she interned at The Paris Review, hostessed at a Tex-Mex restaurant, secretaried for the Whitney Museum’s Film & Video Department, walked a moody saluki (who once escaped and sent her on a 100mph Central Park chase), co-hosted streaming music program DesiVibe (til the Internet bubble popped), anchored an Indian news show (mispronouncing key headline words), party-promoted, copyedited/wrote for teen mags (“Quiz: Is He Really That Into You?”), sobbed into her pillow, laughed until she fell over, danced like no one was watching (and likely no one was), wrote/directed/festival-ated short film “The Test”, and front-woman’d punk-pop band io, regularly gigging at CBGBs, Mercury Lounge, the Elbow Room, and Bitter End—i.e, she assiduously avoided writing a novel (trans-Atlantically, too, for a year in Paris).

It was only when she moved to London for a couple years (which turned into 17, during which time she birthed daughters with British accents) that the tale of protagonist Dimple Lala grew clear. Born Confused, Tanuja’s pioneering debut, considered to be the first South Asian American YA novel, was written largely from a Portobello Road flat overlooking the fruit/veg stalls, Intoxica Records, and a betting joint.

Tanuja has also made two albums of original songs based on Born Confused and the award-winning sequel Bombay Blues. She recently wrote the foreword to Untold: Defining Moments of the Uprooted, a nonfiction anthology featuring 31 new Brown womxn writers. Her piece, Sooji, Sakar, Badam, Ghee, was this August included in Pen America’s India At 75 anthology, a historic collection by authors from India/the Indian diaspora reflecting on India’s 75th year of Independence. Motherland, her prose poem in honor of her mother, can be found in Moonglade, in the current issue of Amjambo Africa.

She is now based in Maine, where she serves on the Board of Directors of The Telling Room.

SIGNATURE SOUL IS A FUSION OF RHYTHM + RHYME + REASON + RESONANCE MADE UP OF AN ECLECTIC HIP HOP + SPOKEN WORD DUO

Michelle “Signature MiMi” Tarshus is a poetic being, creative expressionista and nomadic sorcerer. One half of the eclectic duo Signature Soul, MiMi and partner Marco Soulo are dedicated to raising the collective consciousness one soul at a time through the power of creative expression and the art of collaboration. Together they facilitate expression labs, concentrated writing workshops and monthly Share & Speak gatherings. They offer consulting services and facilitate dialogues and community conversations. They share original poetry and music to uplift and inspire communities and to provoke action towards a life-sustaining world full of creativity and synergy. Mimi pursued a Masters in Library Information Science with a focus on School Media and Collaboration. She is a proud Alum of the poetry program Verbal Blend and a Co-Founder of Nu Rho Poetic Society (est. 2011). These are two groups she credits with empowering her to find her voice and share it with others. In 2014, MiMi released her first project: “Only Poetry Could Have Brought Me Here” – an EP of spoken word pieces that reflect on MiMi’s early journey. MiMi has been featured on countless stages and has opened up for incredible poets including: members of The Strivers Row, Shihan, and Saul Williams. Currently cultivating creative juices and justice in the northeast, MiMi uses her voice and gifts to empower others, especially youth. To connect – please visit www.signaturesoul.love.

Marco Soulo
AFRO-CARIBBEAN | ATLANTA RAISED
a blend of bounce, beats, & #bars
i experiment, learn, and share
my creative expressions
to uplift, inspire, and provoke action
within fellow beings

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 5

Join us for a night of conversation and readings by three critically acclaimed Native writers working in different genres and coming from different nations. Morgan Talty (Night of the Living Rez), Terese Marie Mailhot (Heart Berries), and Joan Naviyuk Kane (Dark Traffic) will share their work and discuss how their experiences have shaped and inspired their stories, essays, and poems. This event is co-sponsored and co-hosted by USM’s Convocation.

Donna Loring, elder and former council member of the Penobscot Indian Nation, will introduce the event, and Libby Bischof, co-chair of USM’s Convocation Committee, will moderate the conversation.

This event is free, and no RSVP is required.

The livestream of this event can be accessed on MWPA’s YouTube Channel or by clicking here.

Books will be sold by Longfellow Books.

Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation where he grew up. He received his BA in Native American Studies from Dartmouth College and his MFA in fiction from Stonecoast’s low-residency program. His story collection Night of the Living Rez is forthcoming from Tin House Books (2022), and his work has appeared in Granta, The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, LitHub, and elsewhere. A winner of the 2021 Narrative Prize, Talty’s work has been supported by the Elizabeth George Foundation and National Endowment for the Arts (2022). Talty teaches courses in both English and Native American Studies, and he is on the faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in creative writing. Talty is also a Prose Editor at The Massachusetts Review. He lives in Levant, Maine.

Terese Marie Mailhot is from Seabird Island Band. Her work has appeared in Guernica, The Guardian, Mother Jones, Medium, Al Jazeera, the Los Angeles Times, and "Best American Essays." She is the New York Times bestselling author of "Heart Berries: A Memoir." Her book was a finalist for the Governor General's Literary Award for English-Language Nonfiction, and was selected by Emma Watson as the Our Shared Shelf Book Club Pick for March/April 2018. Her book was also the January 2020 pick for Now Read This, a book club from PBS Newshour and The New York Times. Heart Berries was also listed as an NPR Best Book of the Year, a Library Journal Best Book of the Year, a New York Public Library Best Book of the Year, a Chicago Public Library Best Book of the Year, and was one of Harper's Bazaar's Best Books of 2018. She is the recipient of a 2019 Whiting Award, and she is also the recipient of the Spalding Prize for the Promotion of Peace and Justice in Literature. She teaches Creative Writing at Purdue University.

Joan Naviyuk Kane is Inupiaq with family from Ugiuvak (King Island) and Qawiaraq (Mary's Igloo), Alaska. Dark Traffic (2021) follows The Cormorant Hunter’s Wife (2009), Hyperboreal (2013), The Straits (2015), Milk Black Carbon (2017), Sublingual (2018), A Few Lines in the Manifest (2018) and Another Bright Departure (2019). Kane has been the recipient of the Whiting Writer’s Award, the Donald Hall Prize in Poetry, the National Artist Fellowship from the Native Arts and Cultures Foundation, the American Book Award, the Alaska Literary Award, the United States Artists Foundation Creative Vision Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship in Poetry, the Mellon Practitioner Fellowship in Race and Ethnicity at the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University, multiple Individual Artist awards & Artist Fellowships from the Rasmuson Foundation, and residencies with the School for Advanced Research, the Hermitage Artist Retreat, Millay Arts and Harvard's Radcliffe Institute. She raises her children in Cambridge, and currently teaches creative nonfiction in the department of English at Harvard University, poetry in the department of English at Tufts University, and creative nonfiction and poetry in the graduate creative writing program at the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She is a lecturer in the Department of Studies in Race, Colonialism and Diaspora at Tufts University, where she teaches courses in Native American and Indigenous Studies. At Scripps College, she was the 2021 Mary Routt Endowed Chair of Creative Writing and Journalism.

Donna M. Loring is an elder and former council member of the Penobscot Indian Nation. She recently served as Senior Advisor of Tribal Affairs to Maine Governor Janet Mills. She hosts a monthly radio show “Wabanaki Windows” on WERU Community Radio. The University of New England houses her papers and sponsors an annual lecture series in her name. She is the author of In The Shadow of The Eagle: A Tribal Representative in Maine (Tilbury House, 2008), a memoir based on her time in the Maine State Legislature. She also serves on MWPA’s Board of Directors.

Libby Bischof serves as the Executive Director of the Osher Map Library and the Smith Center for Cartographic Education at USM and is the co-author of the 2015 book Maine Photography: A History, 1840-2015. In 2011, she co-curated the exhibition Maine Moderns: Art in Sequinland, 1900-1940 at the Portland Museum of Art with Senior Curator Susan Danly. The show won the critic’s choice award for best Historic Show in the 2011 New England Art Awards. Her other research interests include Maine history, modernism, how friendship informs cultural production, and nineteenth-century New England women writers. She is also a postcard nerd--follow her postcard adventures on Instagram: @themainepostcardproject. She resides in Gorham with her husband Steve and her son Gus and daughter Katie.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 2

Three amazing literary writers with deep ties to Waterville, who also happen to have shared many meals together and written pieces for Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Life, will close out our final day of events in Waterville. Come hear Pulitzer Prize winner Richard Russo (Everybody’s Fool and That Old Cape Magic), artist and writer Kate Russo (Super Host), and bestselling author and transgender activist Jennifer Finney Boylan (Good Boy: My Live in 7 Dogs and Mad Honey) share words, laughs, and insights about food, friends, family, and what it takes to build a writing life.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Devaney, Doak & Garrett.

Richard Russo knows small-town America. This masterful novelist has an uncanny sense of the way life works in the gritty industrial towns of the American Northeast. From the gossip and the resentments to the people and the cafes, Pulitzer Prize–winning writer Richard Russo chronicles blue-collar America in ways constantly surprising and utterly revealing.

Russo is the author of eight novels, including Everybody’s Fool and That Old Cape Magic; two collections of short stories; and a memoir, Elsewhere. His 2001 novel, Empire Falls, won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction. It was also adapted into an HBO miniseries, starring Paul Newman, Ed Harris, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and Helen Hunt. Russo’s latest work is Chances Are…, a humorous and riveting story about the complex power of friendship.

Russo earned a bachelor’s degree, a master’s in fine arts, and a Ph.D. from the University of Arizona. In 2016 he was given the Indie Champion Award by the American Booksellers Association and in 2017 he received France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. He has two daughters and lives with his wife in Portland, Maine.

Kate Russo grew up in Maine but now divides her time between there and the United Kingdom. She has an MFA in painting from the Slade School of Fine Art, and exhibits in both the UK and the US. Tom Perrotta calls Russo’s debut novel Super Host, "A charming, compulsively readable, romantically suspenseful novel about...the courage it takes to start over."

Professor Jennifer Finney-Boylan, author of eighteen books, is the inaugural Anna Quindlen Writer in Residence at Barnard College of Columbia University. She serves on the Board of Trustees of PEN America, the nonprofit advocating for authors, readers, and freedom of expression.  From 2011 to 2018 she served on the Board of Directors of GLAAD; she was co-chair of GLAAD’s board of directors from 2013-17.

Her most recent book is the memoir Good Boy: My Life in 7 Dogs, published by Celadon/Macmillan in April of 2020. Her next book project is the novel Mad Honey, co-authored with Jodi Picoult, slate for publication in autumn of 2022 by Ballantine/Random House.

Her 2003 memoir, She’s Not There: a Life in Two Genders (Broadway/Doubleday/Random House) was the first bestselling work by a transgender American. A novelist, memoirist, and short story writer, she is also a nationally known advocate for human rights. Jenny has appeared on the Oprah Winfrey Show on four occasions; Live with Larry King twice; the Today Show, the Barbara Walters Special, NPR’s Marketplace and Talk of the Nation; she has also been the subject of documentaries on CBS News’ 48 Hours and The History Channel. She served as an advisor to the television series Transparent. 

She lives in New York City, and in Belgrade Lakes, Maine, with her wife, Deedie. They have a son, Sean and a daughter, Zai.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 2

A collection of local cookbook writers, food journalists, and bloggers will share what it means to be a food writer and how they came to their respective professions. Panelists include Margaret Hathaway (Maine Community Cookbook and The Year of the Goat), Kate Shaffer (owner of Ragged Coast Chocolates), Peggy Grodinsky (Food Editor and Books Editor at the Portland Press Herald), and Karen Watterson (a former food editor and freelance writer). All are contributors to Breaking Bread: Essays from New England On Food, Hunger, and Family, an anthology co-edited by Deborah Joy Corey and Debra Spark.

Debra Spark (author of Unknown Caller, co-editor of the Breaking Bread Anthology, and Colby College creative writing professor) will facilitate.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Devaney, Doak & Garrett.

Peggy Grodinsky is Food Editor and Books Editor at the Portland Press Herald. Previously, she was for five years executive editor of Cook’s Country, a Boston-based national magazine published by America’s Test Kitchen. She spent several years in Texas as food editor at the Houston Chronicle. Grodinsky has taught food writing to graduate students at New York University and Harvard Extension School. She worked for seven years at the James Beard Foundation in New York, and her stories have appeared in Best of Food Writing (2017) and Cornbread Nation 4: The Best of Southern Food Writing (2008). Her story “Is the Well at Jordan Farm the most pandemic proof restaurant in Maine?” took second place in Maine Press Association 2021 awards, features category.

Kate Shaffer is a cook book author and owns Ragged Coast Chocolates, an award-winning confectionery now located in Westbrook.

Karen Watterson once wrote an article with the opening sentence, “Bakery is my favorite word,” and she stands by it to this day, unabashedly. She’s here to wholeheartedly embrace her love of all things sugar, and to share the sweet part of life with you. While Maine’s reputation rests on lobsters and blueberries, and she does love both those foods, it’s Maine’s sweet stuff that calls to her. But why start a blog about sweets now, with so many people facing serious issues in the midst of a global pandemic? These are difficult, challenging times. Dessert, always her favorite part of the meal, brings small joys into our lives, and who doesn’t need a little extra joy right now? And when we get to whatever the new “normal” is, that will still be true.

Debra Spark is the author of four novels, two collections of short stories, and two books of essays on fiction writing. Her most recent books are the novel Unknown Caller and the essay collection And Then Something Happened. With Deborah Joy Corey, she co-edited Breaking Bread, a book of food essays by Maine writers to raise funds for a hunger nonprofit. It is due out in May 2022. Four Way Books will publish her fifth novel in 2024.

Her short work has appeared in Agni, AWP Writers’ Chronicle, the Boston Globe, the Cincinnati Review, the Chicago Tribune, Epoch, Esquire, Five Points, Food and Wine, Harvard Review, Huffington Post, Maine Magazine, Narrative, New England Travel and Life, the New England Review, the New York Times, Ploughshares, salon.com, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Washington Post, Yankee, and Yale Alumni Quarterly, among other places. In addition to writing book reviews, fiction, articles, and essays, she spent a decade writing about home, art, and design for Maine Home+Design, Decor Maine, Down East, Dwell, Elysian, Interiors Boston, New England Home, and Yankee. She has been the recipient of several awards including Maine’s 2017 READ ME series, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, a Bunting Institute fellowship from Radcliffe College, Wisconsin Institute Fellowship, Pushcart Prize, Michigan Literary Fiction Award, and John Zacharis/Ploughshares award for best first book. A graduate of Yale University and the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is a professor at Colby College and teaches in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 2

When I began to listen to poetry, it's when I began to listen to the stones, and I began to listen to what the clouds had to say, and I began to listen to others. And I think, most importantly for all of us, then you begin to learn to listen to the soul, the soul of yourself in here, which is also the soul of everyone else. —Joy Harjo

This generative workshop led by Maine Poet Laureate Julia Bouwsma (Midden and Work by Bloodlight) will focus on the potential for poetry to serve as an antidote for isolation and division. Drawing on the inspiration of Joy Harjo’s words, attendees will partake in a variety of unique and collaborative prompts designed to encourage listing to the world around us, seeing and acknowledging both its horror and its beauty, and engaging the words of one another to nurture our collective creative energy. Together, we will write poems that connect us to the physical world, anchor us in our bodies, lift our voices toward each other, and give us the courage to navigate uncertain times.

Interested participants should pre-register above.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Devaney, Doak & Garrett.

Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, farmer, freelance editor, critic, and small-town librarian. She is the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017). She is the recipient of the 2018 Maine Literary Award; the 2016-17 Poets Out Loud Prize, selected by Afaa Michael Weaver; and the 2015 Cider Press Review Book Award, selected by Linda Pastan. Her poems and book reviews can be found in Grist, Poetry Northwest, RHINO, River Styx, and other journals. A former Managing Editor for Alice James Books, Bouwsma currently serves as Book Review Editor for Connotation Press: An Online Artifact and as Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, Maine.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 2

Modeled after the Berkeley noontime Lunch Poems series, poets Stuart Kestenbaum (former Maine Poet Laureate and author of House of Thanksgiving) and Annaliese Jakimides (anthologized in Enough! Poems of Resistance and Protest and A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis) will give a midday reading of their work. Light fare will be sold.

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Devaney, Doak & Garrett.

Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Things Seemed to Be Breaking (Deerbrook Editions 2021), and a collection of essays The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press). He was the host of the Maine Public Radio program Poems from Here and the host/curator of the podcasts Make/Time and Voices of the Future. He was the director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts from 1988 until 2015. More recently, working with the Libra Foundation, he has designed and implemented a residency program for artists and writers called Monson Arts. Stuart Kestenbaum has written and spoken widely on craft making and creativity, and his poems and writing have appeared in numerous small press publications and magazines including Tikkun, the Sun, the Beloit Poetry Journal, the New York Times Magazine, and on the Writer’s Almanac and American Life in Poetry. He served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021.

Annaliese Jakimides is a writer and mixed media artist who grew up in inner-city Boston and raised a family on 40+ acres on a dirt road in northern Maine, growing almost all the family’s food and pumping water by hand. She now lives beside a library in a small city. In addition to working with inner-city environmental justice organizations and international arts groups, she cofounded the Belfast Poetry Festival and has created/implemented arts and humanities programs in rural schools, prisons, recovery programs, and libraries, among others. Cited in national competitions, her poetry and prose have been published in many journals, anthologies, and magazines, and broadcast on Maine Public and NPR. Recent work appears in Maintenant 16: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing and Art, The Ekphrastic Review, and Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Family. annaliesejakimides.com.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 2

What do English majors do for work after college? How have Colby alumni built careers in the publishing world? This panel will consist of former Colby College students who have become agents or editors for New York City’s top publishing houses and literary agencies. Bring your questions and listen to these distinguished alumni sharing their insights, experiences, and professional journeys.

This panel will feature Kat Brzozowski (senior editor at Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan Childrens Publishing Group), Eleanor Jackson (literary agent at Dunow, Carlson, & Lerner), Jenny Stephens (literary agent at Sterling Lord Literistic), and Julianna Wilson (director at Penguin Random House audio). 

This event is free.

Kat Brzozowski is a senior editor at Feiwel & Friends/Macmillan Childrens Publishing Group. She has edited a wide range of young adult fiction, including Anna-Marie McLemore’s When the Moon was Ours, which received a Stonewall Honor and was longlisted for a National Book Award, and new Fear Street books in R.L. Stine’s best-selling series, which has sold over eighty million copies worldwide. She’s also the editor for Tony Award-winning Leslie Odom Jr’s Failing Up. Kat is looking to acquire young adult fiction across a wide range of genres, especially contemporary, realistic YA with a strong hook; dark, contemporary fiction, mysteries, suspense and thrillers; and sci-fi and fantasy that’s mostly rooted in this world. She is especially interested in YA with crossover appeal, characters from marginalized backgrounds, and strong voices.

Eleanor Jackson has been agenting since 2002 and is currently with Dunow, Carlson & Lerner. Previously, she was an agent at Markson Thoma and at InkWell Management. She is a graduate of Colby College and the Columbia Publishing course. Her list includes authors of fiction and non-fiction in a wide range of categories, including literary, commercial, memoir, art, food, science and history. She looks for books with deeply imagined worlds, and for writers who take risks with their work. She lives in Brooklyn, NY.

Jenny Stephens represents nonfiction in a variety of categories including cookbooks, practical lifestyle projects, narrative writing on environmental, social, and economic justice, natural sciences, history, food, and cultural criticism. Her clients and their recent or forthcoming books include Andrea Bemis’ Local Dirt (HarperCollins); Paco de Leon's Finance for the People (Penguin Books); astronaut Nicole Stott’s Back to Earth (Seal Press); Lucy Bernholz’ How We Give Now (MIT Press); Ariel Aberg-Riger's America Redux (Balzer + Bray); Professor Desmond Patton's Facing Gakirah (University of California Press); Alicia Kennedy's Meatless (Beacon Press); and Chelsey Luger and Thosh Collins’ The Seven Circles: Indigenous Teachings for Living Well (HarperOne). In addition, Jenny represents select literary estates on behalf of the agency, including the estate of National Book Award winning author Gloria Naylor. Jenny grew up on an island in Maine and studied English and film at Colby College. She joined Sterling Lord Literistic, Inc. in 2012.

Julianna Wilson is an industry leader in audio storytelling and an award-winning Executive Producer with 15 years of experience. Collaborative team manager with track record working with worldwide celebrities and bestselling authors on 1000+ audiobooks across genres. She created and developed a global casting platform for voiceover, Ahab Talent, which increases diversity and creative casting options for voiceover content creators. Passionate about recruiting talent and empowering teams to help creatives actualize their visions. As the Director of Digital Production Platforms & Strategic Partnerships at Penguin Random House Audio, she produces 100 audiobooks per year while spearheading new creative and strategic partnerships. Recent production credits include working with Lin-Manuel Miranda, Alicia Keys, Brandi Carlile, Priyanka Chopra, Seth Rogen, Willie Nelson, and The Tiny Chef. She is a native New Yorker, writer, urban gardener, and rock climber and graduated from Colby College with a Bachelor of Arts in English and Creative Writing.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 2

Lincoln Peirce is a cartoonist/writer and New York Times bestselling author of the hilarious Big Nate book series, now published in twenty-five countries worldwide. He is also the creator of the comic strip Big Nate. Lincoln's boyhood idol was Charles Schulz of Peanuts fame, but his main inspiration for Big Nate has always been his own experience as a sixth grader. Just like Nate, Lincoln loves comics, ice hockey, and Cheez Doodles (and dislikes cats, figure skating, and egg salad).

Fans of all ages are invited to see Lincoln Peirce draw his beloved cartoons and talk about his characters and work as a creator!

This event is free.

Books will be sold by Devaney, Doak & Garrett.

Lincoln Peirce (pronounced “purse”) is an American cartoonist, best known as the creator of the successful Big Nate comic strip, which has also been collected and published Big Nate comic strip collections. The strip debuted in 1991 in 135 newspapers, and currently has a client list of over 400 newspapers worldwide. Lincoln Peirce is also the author/illustrator of a series of Big Nate novels for young readers. He has also written a number of animated shorts that have appeared on Cartoon Network and Nickelodeon, and is the creator of the Big Nate animated series, as well as a series of Big Nate activity books.

Peirce was born on October 23, 1963 in the city of Ames, Iowa. His family moved East in 1964, and Peirce grew up in Durham, New Hampshire. He developed a fascination with comic strips at a young age and often cites Charles Schulz’s Peanuts as his greatest inspiration. At Colby College in Waterville, Maine, he studied art & art history.

After completing the Big Nate novel series in 2016, Peirce began work on Max & the Midknights, a comedic adventure story set in the Middle Ages. It is the first in a projected three-book series published by Crown Books for Young Readers. Max & the Midknights was published on January 8, 2019, and went on to spend sixteen weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list, peaking at #2. The second book in the series, Max & the Midknights: Battle of the Bodkins was released on December 1, 2020.

MAINE LIT FEST EVENT - DAY 1

Please join us in person or via livestream for the Maine Lit Fest Kickoff Event, a FREE conversation between author Carmen Maria Machado and Colby Assistant Professor of Creative Writing and novelist, Sarah Braunstein (author of The Sweet Relief of Missing Children).

One of today's most ground-breaking young writers, Carmen Maria Machado creates haunting and genre-defying work that blends sci-fi, horror, fantasy, and literary criticism and grips readers from beginning to end. For this Kickoff Event, Machado, best known for her memoir In the Dream House and her award-winning short story collection Her Body and Other Parties, will discuss breaking literary molds, writing queer relationships, embracing the weird, and her writing process and projects.

To register to attend this FREE event, please click the button above. For this event, there is also a Custom Coach bus from Portland to Waterville on which you can reserve a seat for $10.

Doors open at 6:30 PM, and the conversation starts at 7 PM. We suggest coming early to get a seat in the auditorium. Registering for the event will secure you a spot, but you may be directed to the overflow room once the auditorium reaches capacity.

Masks are required.

You can livestream this event HERE.

Books will be sold by The Colby Bookstore.

Carmen Maria Machado’s writing defies and blends genres such as surrealism, fantasy, and horror to create writing that is so palpable it seems alive. Her work has been compared to that of Shirley Jackson, Kelly Link and Angela Carter, but with a voice that is uniquely her own.

Growing up in a household where storytelling was always present, Carmen has been writing her whole life. She learned about stories through reading, as well as oral tradition in her family. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and is the Writer in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania. Her spellbinding debut short story collection, Her Body and Other Parties, was longlisted for the National Book Award before it was even published. It was a finalist for both the National Book Award and the Kirkus Prize, and it was the winner of the Bard Fiction Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the Brooklyn Public Library Literature Prize, the Shirley Jackson Award, and the National Book Critics Circle’s John Leonard Prize. In 2018, the New York Times listed Her Body and Other Parties as a member of “The New Vanguard,” one of “15 remarkable books by women that are shaping the way we read and write fiction in the 21st century.”

Her memoir, In the Dream House, was Longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Nonfiction, was the #1 Indie Next Pick for November 2019, and received starred reviews from Kirkus, Booklist, and Publishers Weekly. Of Carmen and her memoir, the New York Times writes, “Welcome to the House of Machado. Proceed directly into the forbidden room; enjoy the view as the floor gives way.”

Carmen is an immense fan of the horror genre and has a special place in her heart for Ray Bradbury’s Something Wicked This Way Comes. Set in Shudder-To-Think, PA, Carmen’s newest project is a limited-run comics series called The Low, Low Woods, out from DC Comics, which takes body horror down paths heretofore unexplored in comics.

Sarah Braunstein is the author of The Sweet Relief of Missing Children (W. W. Norton), winner of the 2012 Maine Literary Award for Fiction. The novel was a finalist for the Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction and was an Oprah Magazine Top Ten Pick of the Month. Bitch magazine said it's a novel "akin to the film Magnolia (if Saul Bellow had written the novelization)."

Sarah’s short stories and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, Playboy, The Harvard Review, The Cincinnati Review, AGNI, Ploughshares, The Sun, Nylon Magazine, The Nervous Breakdown, and in other publications. She co-wrote a play, String Theory: Three Greek Myths Woven Together, with Michael Barakiva and Amy Boyce Holtcamp.

Sarah has been the recipient of a “5 Under 35” award from the National Book Foundation and a Rona Jaffe Foundation Writers’ Award. For several years she served on the National Selection Panel of the National YoungArts Foundation.

Sarah holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and an MSW from Smith College School for Social Work. She is an assistant professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College.

Maine Lit Fest Event - Day 1

To celebrate the start of the Maine Lit Fest, Colby College is inviting students, staff, and faculty as well as community members from Waterville and beyond to gather at the Colby College Museum of Art before the Kickoff Event with Carmen Maria Machado for food, drink, a celebratory toast, and student music.

This event is free.