Join Print: A Bookstore and the MWPA (Maine Writers' and Publishers' Alliance) for a very special event celebrating bestselling author Erik Larson's newest book, The Demon of Unrest: A Saga of Hubris, Heartbreak, and Heroism at the Dawn of the Civil War in conversation with Richard Russo at Stevens Square Community Center on Monday, May 20th, at 7 PM.

Larson, the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Splendid and the Vile brings to life the pivotal five months between the election of Abraham Lincoln and the start of the Civil War—a simmering crisis that finally tore a deeply divided nation in two. The Demon of Unrest has been named a Most Anticipated Book of the Year by Time, Men’s Health, and Lit Hub.

Tickets are required. Each ticket is $40 and will include 1 general admission seat at the event, and 1 copy of The Demon of Unrest. Every attendee needs their own ticket. There will be no admittance without a ticket.

Erik Larson is the author of six national bestsellers: The Splendid and the Vile, Dead Wake, In the Garden of Beasts, Thunderstruck, The Devil in the White City, and Isaac's Storm, which have collectively sold more than ten million copies. His books have been published in nearly twenty countries.

Richard Russo is the author of ten novels, most recently Somebody’s Fool, Everybody’s Fool and Chances Are…; two collections of stories; and the memoir Elsewhere. In 2002 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Empire Falls, which, like Nobody’s Fool, was adapted into a multiple-award-winning miniseries; in 2017, he received France’s Grand Prix de Littérature Américaine. He lives in Port­land.

Please join MWPA & Mechanics' Hall in showcasing exciting voices in Maine's rich literary legacy with six of MWPA’s Ashley Bryan Fellows. This night’s featured readers include Linda Ashe-Ford, Johan Alexander F, Liz Iverson, Coco McCracken, Leila Christine Nadir, and Minquansis Sapiel.

In honor of award-winning writer and artist Ashley Bryan’s life, the MWPA offers the Ashley Bryan Fellowships, which support emerging Maine writers who are Black, people of color, and/or members of one of the Wabanaki Nations or other Native peoples.

“I love to celebrate the artistry of people around the world in whatever material or form they work” —Ashley Bryan

For more information about the Ashley Bryan Fellowship, visit here.

Please RSVP for this free event by clicking on the button below.

Linda Ashe-Ford is a veteran in the early education field and was a classroom teacher for over 45 years. She is a past president of the Maine Association for the Education of Young Children as well as a past treasurer of the New England Association for the Education Of Young Children. Linda holds a Master’s in Education from Antioch New England Graduate School and a BA in Theater and Communications from the University of Hartford. Using her background in theater, she has written, produced and performed both original and scripted materials on various topics. Linda is a storyteller who brings the history and folktales of people of color to life. She believes that through story we can begin to deepen our understanding of each other.

Johan Alexander F has been an Ashley Bryan Fellow in 2021, and was a Maine Lit Fest Fellow in 2022. His writing has also received support from the Periplus Collective and Anaphora Arts Writing Residencies, both national organizations supporting BIPOC writers. His short stories have been published in various places, with his last three works appearing in LatineLit Journal Winter '24 (forthcoming), Eunoia Review, and the Periplus Anthology '23. Born in Medellin, Colombia, he lives in Portland, where he mentors Young Writers and Leaders at the Telling Room.

Liz Iversen was born in the Philippines and grew up in South Dakota. Her writing has appeared or is forthcoming in Creative Nonfiction, Passages North, Room, and J Journal: New Writing on Justice. She has received support from Tin House and the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Currently based in Portland, she is a copywriter for a radio and podcast advertising agency. You can find her online at liziversen.com.

Coco McCracken is a Chinese-Canadian author living in Portland. Her chapbook, The Rabbit, was selected by bestselling author Melissa Febos as the winner of the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance’s 2021 Maine Chapbook Series. She is a 2022 Ashley Bryan Fellow and was named a Lit Fest Fellow by the MWPA, in which capacity she helped organize the state’s first inaugural Maine Lit Fest. She also serves on the Community Advisory Board for the MWPA. She was accepted for a residency for the 2022 summer season at Hewnoaks, where she was additionally awarded a grant from the Maine Arts Commission to complete her first manuscript. In 2023, she was chosen to be on the jury for the Maine Literary Awards.

Leila Christine Nadir is an Afghan-American artist and writer whose work appears in literary and scholarly journals, in museums and galleries, and in forests, classrooms, and kitchens. Her writing has appeared in Michigan Quarterly Review, Khôra, Black Warrior Review, North American Review, ASAP, and Aster(ix), and has been supported by awards and fellowships from MacDowell, Hedgebrook, Bread Loaf, Tin House, the de Groot Foundation, and Aspen Words. More info: https://leilanadir.xyz/. Instagram: @afghan_vegan.

Minquansis Sapiel is a Passamaquoddy TribaI member, mother of three daughters and has a Masters in Social Work. Her daughter also illustrated the children’s book she wrote Little People of the Dawn. She grew up on the Sipayik Reservation and moved off to go to college at the University of Maine. She also has her Captain’s license and offers whale watching tours.

Join MWPA, SPACE, Sandorf Passage, and Back Cove Books for a three-author conversation celebrating the September publication of the first U.S. edition of the internationally acclaimed book, The Last Window-Giraffe by Hungarian writer Péter Zilahy, with a new introduction by Serbian conceptual artist Marina Abramović.

The American experience with war is removed—it is something that happens “over there.” But in Europe, armed conflicts have flared up across the continent for centuries, and continue on to this day. How do contemporary European authors confront this reality? How do their fictions serve as both history lessons and warnings about what the future can hold?

Translated into 22 languages, and often credited as a major text inspiring the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, The Last Window-Giraffe will finally be available to American readers. The book is a playful and political quasi-memoir about growing up in Hungary and being in Serbia during the collapse of Yugoslavia, all in the form of an illustrated children’s alphabet encyclopedia. “Window” and “Giraffe” are the words that mark the common A-to-Z in these books.

Péter Zilahy will be in conversation with Ivan Vidak, Ivan Sršen, and Buzz Poole.

Writing for The Paris Review, Marina Abramović notes, “While it’s labeled a novel, The Last Window-Giraffe is essentially uncategorizable, a hippogriff of a creation fashioned from fragments of history, autobiography, and wild invention. How such a wealth of elements—from childhood memories to political atrocities to the poignant evocation of the correspondence between sexual awakening and the deaths of dictators—could be gathered and spun into such a coherent narrative is a kind of aesthetic miracle.”

Please RSVP at the link below to save your (free) seat.

Péter Zilahy’s award-winning books have been adapted into theater shows, radio plays, and a wealth of other media, and inspired songs and flash mobs during the Orange Revolution in Ukraine, where The Last Window-Giraffe was Book of the Year. Zilahy is a versatile artist, whose work has been shown at The Kitchen in New York City, Ludwig Museum, Berliner Ensemble, Volksbühne, and The New Tretyakov Gallery, among others. He has performed on Broadway, lectured all over the world, was a Kluge Fellow at The Library of Congress, and a fellow of Akademie Solitude, handpicked by Nobel laureate Herta Müller. Zilahy joined Anthony Bourdain in Budapest for an episode of CNN’s Parts Unknown.

Ivan Vidak is the author of the novel Radio Siga and the short story collection Ugljik na suncu (Carbon in the Sun). Radio Siga was praised by Publishers Weekly and Words Without Borders, and was the June 2022 Official Du Mois Selection. Vidak lives and works in Zagreb, Croatia.

Ivan Sršen is an editor, translator, and writer. In 2007, he started the Zagreb-based independent publisher Sandorf. He is the author of the novel Harmattan and edited the anthology Zagreb Noir. He has translated a wide range of authors from English to Croatian, including Frank Zappa, Henry Rollins, and Robert Graves. He lives in Zagreb, Croatia.

Sandorf Passage is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit publisher cofounded by Buzz Poole in South Portland that publishes work that creates a prismatic perspective on what it means to live in a globalized world. It is a home to writing inspired by both conflict zones and the dangers of complacency.