MWPA’s two talented Lit Event Fellows—poet/community leader Samaa Abdurraqib and Penobscot fiction writer/Native American studies instructor Morgan Talty—will discuss what it means to write within and outside of our own experiences with renowned authors, Kelli Jo Ford and Lisa Bunker. What can be lost when writers are pushed to reformulate their poetry and prose for an imagined straight, white audience? How can all writers benefit from asking and re-asking themselves tough questions about how they portray and encounter “the unfamiliar” in their work?
To RSVP for this free event and receive a link to the event on Zoom, please go here.
This event will have ASL interpreters.
This event is supported by a grant from Maine Humanities Council.
Samaa Abdurraqib was raised in the Land of Buckeyes (Ohio), spent 8 years in the Land of Dairy (Wisconsin), and moved to the Land of Lobsters in August 2010. She spent three years teaching Gender & Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College, transitioned into the non-profit world in 2013, and currently works at the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence. She enjoys birding, hiking and being outdoors, facilitating reading groups for the Maine Humanities Council, and coaching leaders of color. Samaa loves Black and Brown and Queer and Trans people. Samaa’s academic writing can be found in the collections including Arab Voices in Diaspora (2009), and Bad Girls and Transgressive Women in Popular Television, Fiction, and Film (2017). Her creative writing has appeared in I Speak For Myself: American Women on Being Muslim (2011) and The Body Is Not An Apology. Her poems can be found most recently in Enough! Poems of Resistance and Protest (Littoral Press, 2020) and her newly published chapbook Each Day Is Like an Anchor (2020).
Morgan Talty is a citizen of the Penobscot Indian Nation in Maine. He received his BA in Native American Studies from Dartmouth College and his MFA in fiction from Stonecoast’s low-residency program. Named one of Narrative’s “30 Below 30,” his work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, TriQuarterly, Narrative Magazine, LitHub, and elsewhere. He is a writing consultant and a college instructor who teaches courses in both English and Native American Studies. He lives in Levant.
Kelli Jo Ford is a citizen of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma and author of the novel, Crooked Hallelujah (Grove Press, 2020). She is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including the Paris Review’s Plimpton Prize, the Everett Southwest Literary Award, the Katherine Bakeless Nason Award at Bread Loaf, a National Artist Fellowship by the Native Arts & Cultures Foundation, and a Dobie Paisano Fellowship. Her fiction has appeared in the Paris Review, Virginia Quarterly Review, Missouri Review, and the anthology Forty Stories: New Writing from Harper Perennial, among other places.
Lisa Bunker is a writer, elected official, and activist. Her two published novels for young readers, Felix Yz and Zenobia July, both feature multiple LGBTQ+ characters without that being the preachy point. In 2018, she was one of the first few out trans people ever to be elected to a state legislature, and is now serving her second term in the New Hampshire House, representing the town of Exeter. Her activist work includes contributing to efforts to pass same-sex marriage in Maine, and to defeat anti-trans legislation in Maine and New Hampshire. She is married to Dawn Huebner, a semi-retired child psychologist and author in her own right. Between them they have three grown children. In her leisure time Lisa plays chess, practices the bass, knits, and constructs crossword puzzles.