Please join the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance and Longfellow Books as we celebrate the launch of Jude Marx’sThe 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.
credit: Molly Haley
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.