Please join the MWPA, Rustica, and Devaney, Doak & Garrett Booksellers for an evening gathering and conversation about local food and rural writing & storytelling. Through readings and conversation, the writers Maria Pinto, Rylan Hynes, and Audrey Gidman will talk about writing rural places and how food and the natural world are woven into our stories. Poet, librarian, and farmer Julia Bouwsma will moderate the conversation.
Free event with RSVP.
Maria Pinto
Maria Pinto’s book Fearless, Sleepless, Deathless: What Fungi Taught Me about Nourishment, Poison, Ecology, Hidden Histories, Zombies, and Black Survival, was published in 2025. Publishers Weekly notes, “With echoes of Jamaica Kincaid and Annie Dillard, this is a treat for nature lovers and mushroom aficionados.”
When she’s not in the woods (and sometimes when she is), Maria Pinto is a writer, editor, and educator. She teaches writing for various literary organizations. She reads fiction for Peripheries Journal and serves on the board of Hale, an outdoor education and land conservancy nonprofit. Her writing has been supported by Assets for Artists at Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Vermont Studio Center, the Mass Cultural Council, the Writers’ Room of Boston, The Mastheads, and The Garrett on the Green.
Her fiction has appeared in Obsidian, Frigg, and Necessary Fiction, among other publications, and her nonfiction can be found in Science, Orion Magazine, LitHub, Longreads, Arnoldia, and Mushroom People. Maria has spoken about foraging, food autonomy, and fungal poetry, among other topics via Bust Magazine, NPR stations WGBH, WBUR, and WAMC, PBS’s Poetry in America, the website Public Lands, and podcasts including unladylike.
Rylan Hynes
Rylan Hynes (they/them) and their work have been a finalist for Proximity Magazine's 2024 Essay Contest, the 2024 Maine Chapbook Series, Tin House’s 2024 Summer Residency for Trans Writers, and longlisted for The Masters Review’s 2023 Novel Excerpt Contest and 2026 Flash Challenge. Hynes has received multiple accolades from the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, such as a Martin Dibner Fellowship, an inaugural Maine Lit Fest Fellowship, and a Maine Literary Award for Excellence in Publishing. Most recently, Hynes was a writer-in-residence at Monson Arts and they are an alum of the Tin House Workshop. Their debut novel, Grafting, was published by Islandport Press in 2026.
Hynes studied creative writing, theatre, and visual art at College of the Atlantic, and has worked at independent bookstores and publishers across the country. Currently Hynes serves on the Community Advisory Board for the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and is the Communications & Editorial Director at The Telling Room, a nationally recognized youth-serving creative writing nonprofit based in Portland, Maine.
Audrey Gidman
Audrey Gidman (they/she) is a poet, crafter, tinkerer, community herbalist, amateur printmaker, snail mail enthusiast, and preschool teacher living in midcoast Maine. She serves as guest editor for Frontier Poetry, chapbook editor for Newfound, and occasional manuscript reader for Alice James Books. Her poems and reviews can be found in a number of places. Gidman is the author of the chapbooks body psalms (Slate Roof Press, 2023), which won the Elyse Wolf Prize, and griefnotes (Porkbelly Press, 2026). She has previously served as assistant editor and editor-in-chief for Sandy River Review and assistant poetry editor for Gigantic Sequins. Her work has been supported by Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance with a Martin Dibner Fellowship and by Out in the Open with a Rural LGBTQ+ Power & Belonging Fellowship. She now serves as the 2026-2028 Poet Laureate of Belfast, Maine.
Julia Bouwsma
Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine where she works as a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, and small-town librarian. She is Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate, currently serving a term from 2021 to 2026, and is the author of three poetry collections: Death Fluorescence (Sundress Publications, June 2025), Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018), and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017). She is also the librettist for the short chamber opera, Ghost Apples, created in collaboration with composer Nathan Davis and to be performed by the Halcyon Quartet in the fall of 2025. Bouwsma’s honors include a 2024 Poet Laureate Fellowship from the Academy of American Poets and two Maine Literary Awards. Her work can be found in various publications including Ecotone, Green Mountains Review, Kenyon Review, Plume, and Poetry Daily. She has taught in the Creative Writing department at the University of Maine at Farmington, serves on the Community Advisory Board for the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, and works as the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, ME.