The second Maine Lit Fest is on the books

The Maine Lit Fest is getting a sequel.

The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance launched a literary festival in 2022 in collaboration with the Colby College creative writing program. Some 50 authors, illustrators, poets and writers joined talks, discussion panels and other events in Waterville and Portland. This fall, Maine Lit Fest is back – and even bigger.

The program includes more than 20 (mostly free) events from Oct. 3-13 in Farmington, Portland, Brunswick, Waterville, Bangor and Presque Isle, as well as online.

Venues include bookstores, libraries and universities, of course – but also Cocktail Mary in Portland, the Gilsland Farm Audubon Center in Falmouth and the Penobscot Theatre Company in Bangor. The first weekend has a theme derived from the Oscar-winning movie of the same name: “Everything Everywhere All At Once.” The festival encouraged people across the state to plan their own events over the weekend of Oct. 4-6. The jam-packed weekend will include the second biannual “Terrible Writing by Great Writers” at Mechanics’ Hall in Portland, where writers can share laughs and encouragement, and “Bards on Bikes,” a mobile reading event in Belfast.

Executive director Gibson Fay-LeBlanc said the alliance relied on community partnerships in order to expand the geographic reach of the festival this year.

“We know from our work throughout the year that there are pockets of really amazing things happening all over the state all the time,” he said. “Great writers, certainly, doing all sorts of things in their corners of Maine, but also people getting together, bringing their community together to talk about books and the ideas and questions and feelings that books raise in all of us. So for this second time, we leaned heavily into those relationships and partnerships, because that’s the only way we could pull off something like this.”

Organizers want to reach bookworms, sure, but they also are trying to appeal to people who don’t think a book festival is for them. So the full schedule ranges across topics such as graphic novels, audiobooks, short stories, magazine writing, poetry, thrillers and more. Some featured writers live in the state, including Penobscot author Morgan Talty. Others, such as playwright John Cariani, who grew up in Presque Isle and will speak on this work there, have Maine ties. And some are coming from other places, such as Melissa Febos, whose essay collection “Girlhood” won National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism.

New this year is a book fair for kids at the Portland Public Library that will feature 20-plus children’s authors and illustrators from across New England, plus drag queen story time, puppets, crafts, music and illustrator “draw-offs.”

And a marquee event this year is an evening with celebrated Viet Thanh Nguyen, whose Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Sympathizer” was adapted into an HBO mini series.

“There’s a wide variation of the people who are represented,” Fay-LeBlanc said. “There are a wide variation of the kinds of books and the kinds of stories that are being told. There’s a wide variation of the things that are happening. Those are all efforts to say, ‘This counts. All of this is related to books, and all these stories matter.’ We were especially interested in this Lit Fest in books, people, activities that push beyond the norm of what somebody thinks of when they think of a lit fest or a book festival.”

For the second time, the Maine Lit Fest also offered fellowships for writers who helped organize events on the program. Here’s what each one planned – and where else they’ll be in the audience.

Name: Michael Colbert, prose writer and editor

Lives in: Portland

What event did you plan, and what makes you excited about it? “I planned the ‘Proud Mary’ reading at Cocktail Mary. Some amazing queer writers from Maine and beyond will be reading their work. In designing this event, I wanted to engage the community outside of the literary world. We’re partnering with Queers and Beers as well as GQB (Guerrilla Queer Bar), two local event series, to get the word out. Cocktail Mary has also been great to work with. A lot of readings can center around the publication of a book. The idea behind this event was to get writers and readers out of bookstores and to invite the queer community into the Lit Fest in a more informal, community setting. Cocktail Mary – an East End queer bar, which puts on wonderful events all year – felt like a natural partner. We have a stacked lineup of poets, essayists and fiction writers, and I think this will be a fun night out.”

What other event are you excited to attend, and why? “I’m really looking forward to Melissa Febos’ event at Bowdoin. She is such a brilliant writer; I learn so much and find myself thinking more deeply when I read her work. It will be a treat to hear her read and discuss her writing.”

Name: Mo Drammeh, 2022 Maine Magazine Mainer of the Year and 2022 Crime Flash Competition winner

Lives in: Bangor

What event did you plan, and what makes you excited about it? “I planned the thriller night! I and a few other authors (Steph Cha, Paul Tremblay and Rebecca Turkewitz) will be sharing the different ways we approach the art of suspense and the ways in which our work is influenced by Stephen King. I’m very excited to share the stage with all of these great writers, and to exchange ideas about the medium and our own relationships with it.”

What other event are you excited to attend, and why? “I’m excited to attend ‘The Magic of the Spoken Word’ with Paul Doiron, Morgan Talty, Henry Leyva and Darell Dennis. Audiobook narration is not really something you see explored or thought about a lot in terms of how it affects interpretation of a text, despite the fact that it can ultimately shift the reader’s interpretation depending on how even a single word is acted. It’s great to see people having more of these discussions!”

Name: Liz Iverson, Tin House Scholar and Ashley Bryan Fellow

Lives in: South Portland

What event did you plan, and what makes you excited about it? ” ‘Storytelling in Magazines’ (with Mira Ptacin, Keziah Weir, Jaed Coffin and Michael Paterniti). These incredible authors will spill all on some of the wildest things they’ve done for a story. I’m so excited to bring people together for a fun night of storytelling and community. I was interested in the interplay between an author’s books and the writing they do for magazines. How do these two types of writing shape and inform each other? And does writing for magazines help pave a path toward book publication?”

What other event are you excited to attend, and why? “I’m excited to attend ‘A Conversation with Lynda Barry, Cartoonist & Graphic Novelist.’ I discovered Lynda Barry while working at an art school in San Francisco. Her writing exercises can unlock new ways of seeing and writing that promote artistic growth in interesting ways. She is truly an inspiration, and it’s an honor to have her in Maine!”

Name: Maya Williams, seventh Portland poet laureate and winner of Maine Humanities Council Constance Carlson Public Humanities Prize

Lives in: Portland

What event did you plan, and what makes you excited about it? “I planned ‘A Showcase of Black Poets Laureate,’ taking place in person at Space gallery and online Wednesday, Oct. 9. Doors open at 6 p.m. and the event starts at 7 p.m. I’m so excited for folks to see the range of Black poets laureate that are around the U.S. who are currently serving and who have served. I’m also excited for folks in Maine to learn more about their incredible work on and off the page.”

What other event are you excited to attend, and why? “I’m also excited to attend Leila Nadir’s ‘Intimate Geopolitics: Reverberations of Empire Across Centuries and Continents,’ online Monday, Oct. 7, at 7 p.m. I’m really looking forward to Leila and the writers she gathered to talk frankly about how violence affects folks beyond America’s understanding and imagination of violence. It’ll be a necessary event.”

Name: Leila Christine Nadir, Afghan American artist and writer

Lives in: Farmington

What event did you plan, and what makes you excited about it? “Intimate Geopolitics: Reverberations of Empire Across Centuries and Continents.” “I’m so grateful to MWPA for supporting me in bringing together this group of brilliant writers for such an important conversation about how literature can help us understand – and feel – the long-lasting and deep impacts of U.S. interventions in Afghanistan, Palestine and the Philippines. The U.S.’s wars and battles across the planet often feel almost invisible in the American popular imagination. Most Americans don’t know that the U.S. has at least 750 military bases across the planet (at least that’s how many the U.S. admits to having), which the U.S. and its allies have used to drop almost 50 bombs a day on nations around the world in just the last 20 years, including the nation my family comes from, Afghanistan. The writers on this panel will explore the ways we can bring these invisibilized histories into felt consciousness and demonstrate how faraway wars and occupations are not so far away after all. We feel the violences of foreign policy in our bodies, memories, families and language, and we are working to elevate the voices of the people we come from.”

What other event are you excited to attend, and why? “I’m psyched to hear Viet Thanh Nguyen’s talk. … His work is an inspiration for my own writing and for the panel I organized – specifically his writing about the way in which wars are fought not only on the ground but also in memory through narrative, as well as the way that Hollywood entertainment acts as a propaganda machine for U.S. imperialism. As Nguyen has taught, whoever controls the narrative controls the perceived outcome of the war and the stories told about it for generations, even centuries, into the future. This is why a literature of resistance is so crucial to national memory and to the writing of history. Writers bring into consciousness, into felt experience, the stories that governments simplify and hide.”

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