LORE is a space for the BIPOC community to connect, create, and collaborate.

LORE is hosting its first in-person meetup for BIPOC writers! We'll be gathering Tuesday, November 17th at 5:30pm at Novare Res in Portland (188 Middle Street in the Old Port). This timing is meant to coincide with the book launch of Universe, Vast Universe: An Anthology of Immigrant Voices in Maine, which will be held at 7pm that evening at SPACE Gallery. It's going to be a fantastic event, and we are so excited! 

 BIPOC writers, come join Ashley Bryan Fellow Liz Iversen at Novare Res for writing community and camaraderie, and show your support for Maine's immigrant writers at SPACE Gallery if your schedule allows. Friends and family are welcome!

Time: 5:30 PM

Date: Tuesday, November 17

Location: 188 Middle Street in the Old Port

Questions about this event and other LORE happenings can be addressed to Liz at: bryanfellowships@mainewriters.org

For more about the Ashley Bryan Fellowship Program, please find our history and values statement.

Please join Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, SPACE, and friends as we celebrate the launch of Universe, Vast Universe: An Anthology of Immigrant Voices in Maine edited by Nicole Pomeroy. The night will feature readings, food, community, and copies of the anthology for sale.

Readings by:

Kendric Chua, Aiden Dumitru, Kerem Durdag, Leela Marie Hidier, Tanuja Desai Hidier, Annaliese Jakimides, Shir Kehila, Gianna Milstein-Jones, Leila Nadir, Ning Sullivan, Jenna Dela Cruz Vendil, & Omar Yusuf.

General admission tickets are $5.

Limited free tickets available.

Early praise for the anthology:

"This is an arrestingly powerful anthology that reminds us that the best antidote to authoritarianism is complexity. These essays, poems, stories achieve what all great literature does: it refuses to be put neatly in any single box."

-       Zahir Janmohamed, author of The Permitted Hours (forthcoming from Haymarket Books) 

“Polyphonic, multivocal, beautifully harmonious. This collection is full of overlapping echoes of stories and memories, dreams and promises. Universe, Vast Universe speaks so powerfully to these heartbreaking and soul crushing times we’re in.”

-       Samaa Abdurraqib, author of Towards a Retreat and Executive Director of the Maine Humanities Council.

“This book is the part of the iceberg the world never sees. We talk about immigration like it's the surface: the arrival, the achievement, the smile in the photo. But underneath is where the real story lives. The sacrifices nobody watched us make, the doubts we never said out loud, the hope we kept anyway. These pages hold that hidden depth. Written with an intergenerational lens, they're the stories we usually only tell around the dinner table, in our prayer houses, among the people who already know. Struggle and resilience. Longing and belonging. Faith that held when nothing else did. This is what it actually costs, and what it actually means, to build a life far from where you began. Welcome into our iceberg. This is the story behind the story.”

-       Pious Ali, Portland City Counselor and Community Leader

Please join us for MWPA’s beloved GATHER event series! On Wednesday, November 18 at 6:00 PM, MWPA members & friends can attend an in-person Gather at one of many locations around the state. To join an in-person event, find the most convenient location below, and gather with us!

Please note: A couple of our regular Gather locations will not be meeting this month, and some new Gathers have begun or recently rejoined the mix. Please check the details below very closely. You can reach out to your local Gather host for questions and concerns surrounding illness protocols and precautions. For more information, contact Samara at: samara@mainewriters.org.

About GATHER: GATHER encourages members (and their friends!) to meet and mingle with fellow members in locations around Maine for camaraderie and conversation. There is no agenda to GATHER besides getting together with your community of fellow writers and literary professionals to talk writing, reading, and life.

While GATHER events are not open readings, manuscript exchanges, or organized writing-prompt sessions, they are opportunities for literary-minded folks to meet and plan any of those things and more. Food and drink is most always available for purchase.

In-Person Events:

BANGOR
Host: Annaliese Jakimides (a.jakimides@gmail.com)
Location: Sea Dog Brewing Co (26 Front Street, Bangor)

BRUNSWICK
Host: Kim Ruehl (anymedia@gmail.com)
Location: Flight Deck Brewing (11 Atlantic Avenue, Brunswick)

EASTPORT
Host: Valerie Lawson (valerie_lawson1@hotmail.com)
Location: Horn Run Brewing (75 Water Street, Eastport)

LEWISTON / AUBURN
Host: Darren Deth (darren.deth@vcfa.edu)
Location: 84 Court Pizza & Restaurant (84 Court Street, Auburn)

MIDCOAST
Host: Chris Friden & Lee Reilly (chrisfriden@me.com, reillytide@yahoo.com)
Location: 40 Paper (40 Washington Street, Camden)

PORTLAND
Host: Josh Bernoff (josh@bernoff.com)
Location: Belleflower Brewing (66 Cove Street, Portland)

PRESQUE ISLE
Host: Kim Wright (bkwrights75@gmail.com)
Location: Governor’s Restaurant (350 Main Street, Presque Isle)

SOUTH PORTLAND
Host: Dodie Hamblen (dodiehamblen@yahoo.com)
Location: The Send Brewing Company (15 Ocean Street, South Portland)

Please join the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and Longfellow Books as we celebrate the launch of Jude Marx’s The River the Night Remembers, winner of the Maine Chapbook Series in Poetry. The night will feature readings by Jude Marx, Maya Williams, and previous chapbook winners, conversation between Jude and Maya, and copies of the chapbook for sale, as well as previous winning chapbooks.

Poet Tina Carlson notes, “Entering The River the Night Remembers by Jude Marx is like slipping into an inky body of water—alchemical, unstable, metamorphic…Inside the skin of these poems are sweet monsters and defects, shimmering stars and harms…Inside this gem of a debut collection are landscapes of place and self, rife with risk, magic and aliveness, the ink of night lake sweet on my palms.”

Jude’s chapbook was chosen by award-winning poet Annie Wenstrup, and the image on the cover was created by Katherine Silva. The book was designed and edited in collaboration with Pink Eraser Press.

Jude Marx (they/them) is a poet and educator born and raised in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Jude is the winner of the 2024 Maine Trans Poetry Anthology Contest and a 2025 Maine Literary Award for poetry. Their poems appear in New Words {Press}, Monster Beauties: A Maine Transgender Poetry Anthology, The Stonecoast Review, Neon & Smoke, and beyond. 

Maya Williams (ey/em, they/them, and she/her) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who is currently an Ashley Bryan Fellow and was selected as the seventh Poet Laureate of Portland, Maine  for a July 2021 to July 2024 term. Maya's debut poetry collection, Judas & Suicide, is available through Game Over Books. Eir second poetry collection, Refused a Second Date, is available through Harbor Editions.  Maya's third poetry collection, a chapbook: What's So Wrong with a Pity Party Anyway? , is available via Garden Party Collective.  Maya's fourth poetry collection, a chapbook: Feminine Morbidity is available through The Headlight Review.  Maya's fifth poetry collection, a full length version of Feminine Morbidity, will be released through Fifth Wheel Press in 2028.  Maya's collections are a finalist of a New England Book Award, a finalist of a Maine Literary Award, a winner of Garden Party Collective's chapbook contest, and a winner of The Headlight Review's chapbook contest respectively.