In celebration of Community College Month and National Poetry Month, Northern Maine Community College is hosting its annual Creative Writers Reading Series, which begins April 7 and continues throughout the following two Thursday evenings, April 14 and 21.
After a hiatus due to the pandemic, the event is returning virtually this year and will be held via ZOOM, with login details available on the NMCC website and Facebook pages. Each session begins at 7 p.m. and lasts approximately one hour.
The series invites accomplished authors from around the United States to speak with NMCC students and the greater community, giving the authors an opportunity to share from their works and answer questions about writing and the creative process. NMCC English faculty member Jessica Bartlett took responsibility for hosting the series in 2016 and coordinates with the visiting authors. The event dates align with Bartlett’s spring creative writing course, which is open to the community and teaches fiction, non-fiction, and poetry.
“I’m always so overwhelmed by the generosity of these writers, who take time out of their busy writing and teaching schedules to show our students the multiple paths a creative life can take you on,” said Bartlett. “There’s something really special about a community college that appeals to writers of all genres, and I’m looking forward to introducing my students and the community to these three extraordinary women.”
This year’s guests are Anne Britting Oleson from Central Maine, Catherine Doucette from the White Mountains of New Hampshire, and Kate McIntyre from Salinas, Kansas.
McIntyre is scheduled to read on April 7. She is the author of “Mad Prairie” (UGA Press 2021), a story collection that won the Flannery O’Connor Award. The collection was selected for the long list for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize for best debut. Her fiction and essays have appeared in journals including Electric Literature, Brooklyn Rail, Denver Quarterly, the Cincinnati Review, and Copper Nickel, and she is a recipient of residencies at Hambidge, Playa, and the Spring Creek Project. She has a Notable Essay in Best American Essays 2014 and Special Mentions in the 2016 and 2020 Pushcart Prize anthologies. McIntyre is an assistant professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and editor of the flash speculative journal hex.
Doucette reads on April 14. Doucette grew up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where her passion for the outdoors was kindled at home and at The White Mountain School. She is an avid skier, runner, horseback rider, and hiker. Her writing ambitions were sparked at St. Lawrence University, and she went on to earn an MFA from Oregon State University. She currently calls Pennsylvania home, where she writes in the shadow of Hawk Mountain.
Oleson will read on April 21. She lives and writes from the mountains of Central Maine. She has published five novels (“The Book of the Mandolin Player,” “Dovecote,” “Tapiser,” “Cow Palace,” and her most recent, “Aventurine and the Reckoning”) and three poetry chapbooks. A graduate of Bowdoin College and the Stonecoast MFA program of the University of Southern Maine, she has taught literature and creative writing at the high school level for more than 30 years. She has three children, five grandchildren, and two cats.
This is the 13th year that NMCC has hosted the Creative Writers Reading Series, after missing both 2020 and 2021.
To learn more about the Liberal Studies program, or about taking English courses at NMCC, visit nmcc.edu.
