Please join Mechanics’ Hall, MWPA, and PRINT: A Bookstore for a celebration of the launch of Threshold: A Memoir of Crossing Through the Terrain of Loss by poet and writer Deborah Cummins. After Cummins passed away suddenly in 2023, her family found a home for her manuscript with She Writes Press, and it was published earlier this year.

Award-winning poet Andrea Hollander calls the memoir “…unputdownable and unforgettable.” This intimate, poignant, and compelling memoir tells the story of a woman—a “reluctant examiner” of death—navigating grief while caring for her dying brother and aging parents, inviting the reader into a journey of hope, growth, and resilience.

The evening will be held in the historic library at Mechanics’ Hall and include readings from the book and conversations with writers and friends who knew Deborah well, including Chelsea Conaboy, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc and Sandell Morse. All are welcome to this free event, and there will be snacks and drinks. Please RSVP by clicking the orange button below.

PRINT: A Bookstore will be on hand to sell copies of Threshold.

Deborah Cummins authored three poetry collections and a collection of linked essays, one of which was listed as Notable in Best American Essays 2013. She received her MFA in creative writing, and her work has appeared in eight anthologies and more than 60 journals, including Yale Review, Gettysburg Review, Orion, Fourth Genre, and New England Review.

From 2001 to 2005, she was the Board Chair of the Poetry Foundation in Chicago, and more recently, from 2016 to 2023, she served as Board President of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. In 2014, Deborah and her husband, Bob, relocated from Chicago to Maine, dividing their time between Portland and Deer Isle. She passed away in 2023.

Please join Johanna Franzel, MWPA, and PRINT: A Bookstore for a joyful celebration of the launch of Write Yourself Home at Broadturn Farm in Scarborough, Maine.

The evening will include a conversation with award-winning and bestselling author Susan Conley, as well as snacks, and fun surprises. For those who want to stay, a dance party will round out the night!

Write Yourself Home offers “A transformative guide and radical invitation to come home to your body—finding safety, joy, and connection, exactly as you are.” The book contains “gentle movement, breathing exercises, and writing practices for a fully embodied life—simple somatic resources for readers with complex bodies,” and is available for pre-order and will be available at the event as well.

Want to join? Please RSVP below.

Please join us for MWPA’s beloved GATHER event series! On Wednesday, July 15 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 Rachael at: rachael@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 (26 Front Street, Bangor)

BLUE HILL
Hosts: Marie Epply & Sarah Pebworth (mmepply@yahoo.com, sapebworth@gmail.com)
Location: Marlintini's Grill (83 Mines Road, Blue Hill)

BRUNSWICK
Hosts: Peter Owen (peterowen326@gmail.com)
Location: Flight Deck Brewing (11 Atlantic Ave, Brunswick)

DAMARISCOTTA
Hosts: Andrea Vassallo (andrea.granted@gmail.com)
Location: Damariscotta River Grill (155 Main Street, Damariscotta)

EASTPORT
Hosts: Valerie Lawson (Valerie_Lawson1@hotmail.com)
Location: Horn Run Brewing, 75 Water Street, Eastport, ME 04631

LUBEC
Hosts: Stephanie Gough (stephgough@gmail.com)
Location: Lubec Brewing Co. (41 S Water Street, Lubec)

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

PORTLAND
Host: Katie Bonadies (katie@belleflowerbrewing.com)
Location: Belleflower Brewing (66 Cove Street, Portland)

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

Please join the MWPA and Belleflower Brewing as we celebrate the launch of Judson' Merrill’s debut novel PARANOID STORYTELLING.

After Judson Merrill publishes a story that becomes fodder for conspiracy theorists and fuels a violent clash, he’s desperate to write something—anything—that rises above our toxic online hysteria. When he discovers a daring and brilliant researcher studying the poisonous effects of conspiracy theories, Merrill is convinced she holds the key to diagnosing America's demented culture. But shortly after she agrees to an interview, she vanishes, and any possible diagnosis vanishes with her. Merrill’s search for her takes him across Europe and turns up a trail of unsettling research and confounding clues. The story he pieces together offers an explosive explanation for our collective sickness and reveals the many ways in which our media, our communications, and our very beliefs have become fatally diseased. If he can unravel the sprawling conspiracy behind our affliction, he’ll still have to convince a paranoid world in which everyone believes what they want to believe.

Pre-order from Under the BQE press

Inspired by the way the novel began—as a fraud and a thief, stealing and repurposing popular storytelling forms—Judson Merrill seeks to make visible the changing and dangerous ways we tell stories. He has taught writing for the past 15 years, at Brooklyn College, the University of Southern Maine, and privately. His work has appeared in The Iowa Review, The Massachusetts Review, Unstuck, McSweeney’s Internet Tendency, and other publications. He has been an Artist in Residence at Millay Colony, Ox-Bow, Lighthouse Works, Hewnoaks, and Guild Hall. He is currently co-producing a film he wrote about coming of age in an anxious, demented country.

Chelsea Conaboy is a writer and editor focused on health and science. Her work has been published by The New York Times, The Guardian, Mother Jones, Politico, The Boston Globe, WBUR, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and others. Her book, Mother Brain: How Neuroscience Is Rewriting the Story of Parenthood (Holt 2022), has been called "a game-changer" and is set to be published in 20 languages. She is creative director of the media production company Strewn Wonder. She lives in South Portland with her husband, their two children, and her own changing parental brain. 

MWPA, Longfellow Books & Mechanics' Hall host Sarah Braunstein & Nick Fuller Googins in conversation.

"Baby in a Box is a book of masterful stories. As their wise plots unfold in wildly original ways, we watch how cold-hearted or sweetly lucky a character turns out to be, just as we’re stirred by the poignance of human strategies. A terrific book."

— Joan Silber, author of Improvement

"Prescient and idiosyncratic stories about the cost and joys of caretaking from a “sharp-witted, ravishing” (New York Times) writer. These stunning stories, steeped in black humor, startle and dismay. Unexpected encounters confine and define the lives of strangers, while parents and partners navigate blended families and modern love: An older woman tells her waitress that she once left a newborn on church steps. A motel housekeeper makes a radical proposal to a guest. A teenager grapples with atheism, grief and eBay. A mother’s world is disrupted and recharged after a neighborhood man gives her young daughter a telescope.

Throughout this bracing collection, we see parents doing their not-so-great best, breakups going wrong, obsessions getting out of hand—and yet moments of healing too, often where we least expect them. Strange, heartfelt, and wryly funny, Sarah Braunstein’s stories ask us to confront the ways we try to make sense of our lives—and what happens when we escape from these preconceptions.

Tuesday, June 9 at 7:00 PM (doors 6:30 PM). Free to the public. Please register in advance as space is limited.

Sarah Braunstein is the author of Bad Animals and The Sweet Relief of Missing Children..Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker and The Best American Short Stories,,among other publications, and she received a National Book Foundation 5 Under 35 prize. She lives in Maine and teaches at Colby College. For more: www.sarahbraunstein.com

Nick Fuller Googins is the author of the novels, The Frequency of Living Things and The Great Transition. His short fiction and essays have appeared in The Paris Review, Men’s Health, The Sun, The Los Angeles Times, and elsewhere. He lives in Maine, and works as an elementary school teacher. He is a member of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, as well as the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the United States.