UMF Visiting Writers Series

09/23/2018

Please join the BFA students and faculty this week as we kick off the 30th Anniversary of our Writing Series with Kate Christensen. 7:30 pm in the Landing on Thursday, September 27th.

Books will be available, as usual, from DDG Bookseller.

Kate Christensen is the author of seven novels, including The Great Man, which won the 2008 PEN/Faulkner Award for fiction, and, most recently, The Last Cruise. She is also the author of two culinary memoirs, Blue Plate Special and How to Cook a Moose, which won the 2016 Maine Literary Award for Memoir. Her essays, stories, and reviews have appeared in many periodicals, including Tin House, The Baffler, Vogue, Elle, Bon Appetit, the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, and Food and Wine. She lives with her husband and dog in Portland, Maine.

10/04/2016

Connie Voisine, poet and nonfiction author, is the next reader in our Series. Voisine will read from her work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 13, in The Landing in the UMF Olsen Student Center. The reading is free and open to the public and will be followed by a meet and greet with the author.

A native of Fort Kent, Voisine is the author of three books of poetry, including her first book, “Cathedral of the North,” winner of the Associated Writing Program’s Award in Poetry. Her next book, “Rare High Meadow of Which I Might Dream,” was a finalist for the LA Times Book Award. Her most recent book of poetry is “Calle Florista,” where, according to author Laura Kasischke, “She has re-visioned our most looked-at things. She brings us new ways to see, and to be.”

Voisine has had poems published in Poetry Magazine, the New Yorker and elsewhere. In 2012 she was a Fulbright Fellow to Queen's University in Belfast, Northern Ireland.

She currently teaches in the creative writing program at New Mexico State University and also coordinates La Sociedad para las Artes.

Voisine is replacing author Ross Gay who was previously scheduled for the Oct. 13 reading.

02/17/2016

Next in line for the VWS at UMF: William Giraldi

March 10, 2016 at 7:30 pm in The Landing.

William Giraldi is author of the novels Busy Monsters and Hold the Dark, and the forthcoming memoir The Hero's Body. He is a contributing editor at The New Republic and fiction editor for the journal AGNI at Boston University.

01/27/2016

We start back up in February with the wonderful Kathryn Miles. 2-11 at 7:30 pm in the Landing, UMF. Please join us.

Kathryn Miles grew up on the Midwestern prairie, where she cultivated a strong desire to be the next Laura Ingles Wilder. When that role continued to elude her, she turned her attention elsewhere and became a cub reporter covering local oddities like Zamboni drivers, pumpkin chunkers, and barge captains. She took a B.A. in Philosophy from Saint Louis University in 1996 and received her PhD in English from the University of Delaware in 2001.

Miles still dedicates her writerly life to uncovering previously ignored narratives and characters. She is the author of Superstorm: Nine Days Inside Hurricane Sandy (Dutton 2014), All Standing (Simon & Schuster 2011), and Adventures With Ari (Skyhorse 2009). Her work has appeared in dozens of publications including Best American Essays, Between Song and Story, Ecotone, History, How To Write About Anything, Outside, Popular Mechanics and The New York Times.

Miles currently serves as writer-in-residence for Green Mountain College and as a faculty member for Chatham University’s low-residency MFA program. She is also a scholar-in-residence for the Maine Humanities Council and a member of the Terrain.org editorial board.

10/04/2015

Our next Visiting Writer with be screenwriter Jay Craven. He will be speaking in conversation with Teal Minton at 7:30pm on October 15th in Emery Arts Center. Please join us.
Independent New England filmmaker Jay Craven leads the film studies program at Marlboro College—and he directs the Movies from Marlboro program where, every two years, 22 professionals mentor and collaborate with 32 students from multiple colleges to make a full-tilt professional feature film for national release. His latest film, produced through the program, "Peter and John," is set in 1872 on Nantucket and stars Jacqueline Bisset. Craven has written and directed seven feature films including "Where the Rivers Flow North," with Rip Torn, Tantoo Cardinal, and Michael J. Fox; "Disappearances," with Kristofferson; and "Northern Borders," with Bruce Dern and Genevieve Bujold. Craven has also made four documentaries and an Emmy winning regional comedy series for public television. His films have played 73 international festivals, including Sundance, and he has had special screenings at Lincoln Center, The Smithsonian, Harvard Film Archives, Art Institute of Chicago, Cinematheque Francaise, and many others. Craven’s awards include The Producer Guild of America’s 1995 NOVA Award for Most Promising New Motion Picture Producer of the Year.

08/27/2015

The BFA program's first writer for Fall '15 is Benjamin Nugent. (9/17 at 7:30 pm in the Landing)

Benjamin Nugent's short stories have appeared in The Paris Review, Best American Short Stories, Tin House, Vice and elsewhere. His work appears in the forthcoming anthology The Unprofessionals: New American Writing from the Paris Review. He's the author of a novel, Good Kids (Scribner, 2013) and a cultural history, American Nerd (Scribner, 2008). He's Director of the Low-Residency MFA in Fiction and Nonfiction at Southern New Hampshire University.

03/17/2015

Desi's film is about to hit the big screen!

The film was made by Desiree Van Til and Sean Mewshaw.

04/09/2013

For the third reader in the Spring's Visiting Writers Series, the BFA program and the Writers Guild are happy to present Monica Wood, Thursday, April 11th at 7:30 pm in the Landing.

As usual snacks will be available as well as books to purchase from DDG Booksellers.

Monica Wood's novels includes Descriptions, My Only Story, Secret Language, Ernie’s Ark, and Any Bitter Thing. Her most recent book, her memoir about growing up in Mexico, Maine: When We Were the Kennedys, was a runner-up for the 2012 New England Book Festival Award in autobiography. It was on Oprah’s Magazine summer-reading list, the IndieNext pick, and Radio Boston summer pick.

Please join us.

01/31/2013

Sarah Braunstein, whose work “The Sweet Relief of Missing Children” was praised by O Magazine as “Enthralling…,” is the next reader in University of Maine at Farmington’s popular Visiting Writers Series. Presented by UMF’s distinguished Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing Program, Braunstein will read from her work at 7:30 p.m., Thursday, Feb. 7, in The Landing in the UMF Olsen Student Center. The reading is free-and-open-to-the-public and will be followed by a signing by the author.

Braunstein’s “The Sweet Relief of Missing Children” is a suspenseful novel that explores the power of running and the desire for reinvention. It was the winner of the 2012 Maine Literary Award and finalist for the 2011 Flaherty-Dunnan First Novel Prize from the Center for Fiction. She was named one of “5 Under 35” fiction writers by the National Book Foundation in 2010 and received the Rona Jaffe Writer’s Award in 2007.

10/25/2012

Don't forget! Shana Youngdahl and Pat O'Donnell's reading is TONIGHT at 7:30! It's not often we have readings done by our own wonderful teachers, so you won't want to miss this!