Visiting authors and Maine-based writers and artists offer a day of free workshops and readings focused on “Responding to the Moment.”
Please reserve free tickets for workshops below.
9:00 - 10:00 AM: Morning Workshop
Moving the Body Poetic: Somatic Improvisation for Writers
Instructor: Katherine Ferrier
Location: Gordon Center, Studio 3
Step away from your desk and explore language with your whole body. This gentle one-hour workshop is designed for writers of all backgrounds. Through gentle, guided improvisation, we will cultivate new kinds of physical logic and syntax—letting words inspire movement and inviting movement to open unexpected pathways into words. No formal dance experience is necessary; open to everyone with a willingness to court the unfamiliar and see how movement makes your words come alive.
10:15 - 11:15 AM: Welcome & Forese Keynote Address
Fullness: June Jordan, Fannie Lou Hamer, Alma Thomas and a Poetics of Nourishment
Presenter: Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Location: Gordon Center, Performance Hall
To set the tone and vision for us writers in these political times, award-winning poet and scholar Alexis Pauline Gumbs opens the day with a portal to help us learn from three people whose contributions to their times have much to teach us about how we can respond to this moment. Sponsored by the Jennifer Jahrling Forese Fund.
11:30 AM - 12:45 PM: Writing Workshops - PART I
Broadsides for the Movement/Moment: Writing As Public Response
Instructor: Emerson Whitney
Location: Gordon Center, Arts Incubator
The term “broadside” in this workshop draws on the history of the term, grounded in the field of poetics, and serves as a placeholder for all writing that is an easily disseminated, creative, public response. Participants will study the tradition of the broadside as a form of rapid, public writing, then draft and design their own. We'll explore how this short form can situate writers at the intersection of public and personal writing.
Shape Change / Power to the Print
Instructor: HINGE Collaborative and artist Elizabeth Jabar
Location: Gordon Center, G180
HINGE Collaborative and artist Elizabeth Jabar present a screen-printing workshop inspired by the writings of Alexis Pauline Gumbs and adrienne maree brown. Using their words as a starting point, participants will create layered prints that combine images and text exploring the power of words, printed multiples, and the Festival’s theme of Responding to the Moment.
What Moves At the Margins: Poetry and Podcasting
Instructor: Zahir Janmohamed
Location: Gordon Center, G60
June Jordan often said in class, “We are the ones we have been waiting for.” It took Zahir decades to understand what she meant: writers’ voices are not a side dish but the entrée itself. Informed by his experience teaching in June Jordan's class and hosting a podcast that decentered whiteness in food culture, Zahir invites workshop participants to explore what their stories look and sound like when they remember they are the ones in power. Through poems and podcasts, learn to craft non-reactive stories that set the agenda.
1:00-2:00 PM: A LUNCHTIME READING
Presenter: Ground Truth: Writings Toward Justice Anthology
Location: McPherson Performance Lawn
Ground Truth: Writings Toward Justice is a new anthology of poetry and prose from Maine/Wabanakiland writers who make beautiful and productive trouble, featuring essays and poems mourning a political landscape that attempts to steal souls. Contributors Claire Millikin, Mihku Paul, Karin Spitfire, and Maya Williams will read and provide the audience with writing prompts inspired by their work in Ground Truth.
2:15-3:45 PM: Writing Workshops - Part II
Free All Necks: Liberation in its Component Parts
Instructor: Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Location: Gordon Center, Arts Incubator
A reflective writing workshop inspired by artist Alma Thomas's history, practice, and philosophy. Using partner activities, an extended writing prompt, and the same questions over and over again, we will look at our resources, connections, approaches, and patterns. Come ready to write.
Designing Narratives: Text & Image
Instructor: Alex Nelson
Location: Gordon Center, G60
Explore the creative potential of combining text and image, while considering the different ways they intersect and harmonize. We will look at historical and contemporary examples of artists who use text and image in their practice. Participants will experiment and create a handmade book that communicates a narrative that is the unique result of mixing these two media. The workshop will be capped at 12 participants. (Participants will need to submit images to Alex before the workshop for printing. An email will be sent regarding this.)
Writing Hope in the Climate Apocalypse
Instructor: Nick Fuller Googins
Location: Gordon Center, G180
As we barrel ahead into the hot supernova of climate apocalypse, it is easy to despair; it is easy to doomscroll the news; it is easy to throw up our hands. A growing trend in contemporary literature, however, is tackling the climate crisis with hope. In this workshop, we will study the underused craft elements of hope and utopia for kick-starting a narrative engine, building momentum, and creating dynamic, believable characters.
4:00-5:15 PM: OPEN MIC
Host: Poet t love smith and Trans Poetics Archive
Location: Gordon Center, Studio 2
All festival participants are welcome to sign up and share their poetry or prose. The event is hosted by t love smith, who founded the Trans Poetics Archive. Featured poets include Rheros Illian, Pseudo, and Jae Casella, who are part of the Trans Poetics Archive 2026 BIPOC Fellowship and the anthology For Someone You Know. Trans Poetics Archive is Maine's only literary cooperative focused on trans and nonbinary voices, offering programs across the state to support and preserve contemporary trans and nonbinary literature.
Katherine Ferrier is a queer poet, dancer, and textile artist based in Rockland, Maine. She is a founding member of the movement improvisation ensemble The Architects, whose collaborative performance history spans over 30 years. Her writing has been featured in several magazines and anthologies, including Uppercase Magazine, Contact Quarterly, A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis published by Littoral Books, and the MidCoast Poetry Journal. Since 2018, she has been the Director of the Medomak Fiberarts Retreat, where she teaches patchwork, slow stitching, and both movement and writing for makers.
Dr. Alexis Pauline Gumbs is a Queer Black Feminist Love Evangelist and an aspirational cousin to all life. Her work in this lifetime is to facilitate infinite, unstoppable ancestral love in practice. Alexis’s books are portable textual ceremonies. Publisher’s Weekly calls her writing “groundbreaking.” She is/they are the author of several books, most recently Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde and the award-winning Undrowned: Black Feminist Lessons from Marine Mammals, which won the 2022 Whiting Award in Non-Fiction. A recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize in Poetry, the National Endowment for the Arts Creative Writing Fellowship, and a National Humanities Center Fellowship, Dr. Gumbs lives and loves in Durham, North Carolina. She is/they are the co-founder of the Mobile Homecoming Trust, an intergenerational experiential living library of Black LGBTQ brilliance.
Emerson Whitney is the author of three critically acclaimed memoirs, O Mother, Daddy Boy, and Heaven. Their work has appeared in The Paris Review, New York Magazine, The Los Angeles Review of Books, and elsewhere. The recipient of the Maine Writers & Publishers Award for Memoir in 2024, Emerson is grateful to live Downeast.
Hinge Collaborative is a contemporary atelier and creative platform for artists and makers in Maine and beyond. Founded by artists Elizabeth Jabar and Sean Alonzo Harris, the modern workshop combines a retail storefront, printmaking studio, and gallery to showcase a diverse range of local, regional, and national artists. Hinge sells handmade prints, zines, artist publications, small-batch apparel, designed objects, photography, and photo books from a range of artists. We also design and lead workshops and collaborative projects with community partners. Our storefront studio is located at 5 Silver Street in downtown Waterville, Maine. hingecollaborative.com
Zahir Janmohamed is an assistant professor of English at Bowdoin College. He received his MFA in fiction from the University of Michigan, where he won awards in fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and playwriting. In 2019, the podcast he co-founded, Racist Sandwich, about food, race, gender, and class, was nominated for a James Beard Award. His articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy, Guernica, The Washington Post, The Guardian, Newsweek, and many other publications. He has received fellowships and scholarships from MacDowell, Kundiman, Tin House, VONA, Bread Loaf, and many other places. Before beginning his writing career, he worked at Amnesty International and in the US Congress.
Alex Nelson is an artist based in Waterville, Maine. She uses photography, moving images, and writing to create elliptical associative narratives. She received her BFA from the Fashion Institute of Technology and her MFA in Photography from the Yale School of Art. Her book of writing and images, Liner Notes, was published by Quickbooks in 2021. She is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Photography at Colby College.
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 and the National Education Association, the largest labor union in the United States.
t love smith (they/themself/we/us) is a queer poet living on unceded Wabanaki land. they are a recent graduate of Stonecoast MFA and founder and development curator of the Trans Poetics Archive which published Maine's first transgender poetry anthology, Monster Beauties, a Finalist for a 2026 Maine Lit Award. t's poem, “from the barrens,” received the 2026 Maine Lit Award for Short Poetry Works.
Colby is grateful to the following sponsors for supporting Colby College’s participation in the 2026 Maine Lit Fest. Thank you to The Arts Office, Creative Writing Program, Cultural Events Committee, English Department, Jennifer Jahrling Forese Fund, Goldfarb Center for Public Service, Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, Kristina Stahl Fund, and Visiting Writers Series.