ANNOUNCEMENTS

STONECOAST SUMMER 2025 RESIDENCY

As we prepare for Stonecoast’s Summer 2025 residency (June 12–21, 2025), we’re excited to share a few highlights we think will make our time on USM’s Portland Campus especially memorable. We’re delighted to welcome our newest faculty member, candice iloh, along with distinguished guests Debra Spark, Lewis Robinson, Julia Bouwsma, and Matthew J.C. Clark, each bringing a great deal of experience and fresh insight to our Stonecoast community.

If you can only make it to one event this June, we’d direct you to the residency’s cornerstone event, The Task Before Us: Standing Up for Freedom. Stonecoast faculty members John Florio and Alex Jennings, and guests, will explore how literature, comedy, and law serve as bulwarks to our liberties. Every freedom we enjoy is the product of acts of disobedience and disruption, in the streets and on the page. And when new forces attempt to undermine what people can do, say, or write, literature, comedy, and law will rise together in opposition. After the talk, Rick Bass, Debra Marquart, and Mihku Paul (Fiction, S’10) will lead a community writing salon.

Robin, Justin, and Nikki would like to extend their gratitude for your ongoing support and are looking forward to welcoming all who can join us during the residency. As always, alumni and friends are welcome to attend our evening events. We hope to see you in Portland!

Stonecoast Summer 2025 Residency Schedule

CALLING ALL STONECOAST ALUMNI: TEACH IN THE NEW ENRICHMENT SERIES

Stonecoast alums Leah Scott-Kirby and Nina Barufaldi (Fiction, S’24) are launching a new initiative, and they’re inviting fellow alumni to be part of it.

The Stonecoast Enrichment Alumni Series is a monthly lineup of free, alumni-led craft seminars created to support current Stonecoast students and strengthen connections across the community between residencies and beyond. Each session will focus on a specific area of craft, and Leah and Nina are reaching out to alumni to lead them.

Would you like to teach?

This is an opportunity to share what you’ve learned since graduating, build your teaching resume, and give back to the program that helped shape your voice. It’s also a way to stay connected across graduating classes, genres, experiences, and perspectives.

The first sessions begin in July 2025 and will run once a month for one year. Leah and Nina will work with each instructor to schedule sessions that fit their availability. Early feedback from students and mentors has been overwhelmingly positive, and the sessions will be open to both current students and alumni, making for dynamic and diverse conversations.

Whether you’re an experienced educator or simply passionate about a topic, your voice is welcome. You can browse a list of high-interest topics suggested by students at recent residencies, but all craft-focused proposals are encouraged. Offbeat ideas are welcome too. (Looking at you, Scrivener fans.)

Ready to get involved?
Please fill out the Alumni Instructor Interest Form to share your ideas and availability.

This initiative is hosted by The Practice of Writing (TPOW), a platform co-founded by Leah and Nina to keep the creative spirit of Stonecoast alive by offering accessible resources and opportunities for writers to stay connected and inspired.

Join us in building a bridge between past, present, and future Stonecoast voices.

Warmly,

Leah Scott-Kirby & Nina Barufaldi
Stonecoast Class of Summer 2024
Founders, The Practice of Writing

The Stonecoast Review Issue 23 on Power comes out June 16th, 2025! With this issue, we want to bring forth conversations on what it means to have power or have it taken away, what it means to embrace it or reject it. The narratives we have chosen bring new perspectives to the conversation and shine a light on the complexities of our relationships with power. We hope you find a piece of yourself within these stories, but most importantly, that you are empowered by them.

June 16th will also be the day we launch our rebrand! The SCR team has been working diligently to reimagine what our literary magazine looks like and what kind of message it evokes. The rebrand reflects our mission toward diversity, equity, and inclusion not just in our readership, but in the submissions we receive and ultimately publish.

Please consider supporting us through our donation link, or purchasing your copy on or after the release date. Thank you!

Sincerely,

The Stonecoast Review

CURRENT STUDENTS

The Curious Nothing selected Nona Lea’s (Poetry) “Magnolias” as the first place winner of their spring poetry contest. To read Lea’s poems and the runner ups, visit The Curious Nothing’s website. A special edition print zine of select poems from the contest is to be announced. 

The Trans Poetics Archive, curated by current Stonecoast MFA Candidate t love smith (Poetry; they/them), successfully launched Maine’s first transgender poetry anthology, Monster Beauties, on Tuesday, May 20th, to a standing room only audience at SPACE Gallery in Portland, Maine. Over one-hundred and fifty copies of Monster Beauties were distributed to those in attendance through funding from a Maine Humanities Council Major Grant. The launch was hosted by Portland Poet Laureate Emeritus Maya Williams. The Keynote Speaker was Associate Professor of Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bates, Ian-Khara Ellasante, PhD, and our feature, the winner of the 2025 Trans Poetry Anthology Contest, Finalist for a 2025 Maine Lit Award, and Hewanoaks Artist-in-Residence, Jude Marx. The book launch was the beginning of a monthly Monster Beauties book tour around Maine, a continuation of a traveling Trans Poetics Showcase, monthly since October 2024. Trans Poetics Archive will be at two events in June: first, at The Millay House in Rockland, June 5th, for Conversations of the Century. Hear poems in conversation with Millay’s “I, Being Born a Woman and Distressed” from Maya Williams, Lonny Saleeby, Violet Ferlito, and current Stonecoast candidate Calla Eris Orion. Then, on Friday, June 27th, 6:30 p.m. at Bookspace, an intergenerational LGBTQIA+ welcoming space from The Briar Patch. This event is happening in collaboration with Bangor Pride! 

ALUMS 

For Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Sarah C. Baldwin (Creative Nonfiction, S’15) wrote the contents of the entire feature well of the 65th anniversary issue of Heller Magazine—and it’s finally on line!

Nina B. Lichtenstein (Creative Nonfiction, S’20) welcomes all to Maine Writers Studio’s June 18th Literary Salon & Open Mic. Learn more about it here. Registration is now open for MWS’s “Embodied Writing” fall weekend retreat for women, on Bailey Island in Maine. (PS: only 5 spots left.) More info here. Nina is also excited to share that her memoir-in-essays, Body: My Life in Parts, just came out from Vine Leaves Press. You can check it out here. 

Marisca Pichette (Popular Fiction, S’21) is over the moon to announce that she signed with a new agent! She is now represented by Lauren Bajek at Liza Dawson Associates, working on a cozy, witchy novel. She is also happy to share that her poem “Make me a Sandwich” is a Rhysling Award nominee!

Linda K Sienkiewicz (Fiction, S’09) has a blackout poem in Flow Magazine, Issue 1, June 2025.

Booksellers in Casper, WY, will host a gathering of readers and writers at Frontier Brewing, with an author panel including sid sibo (sidney woods; Fiction, W’19) discussing debut novel The Scent of Distant Family and how current anti-arts/humanities fervor in DC is impacting small and university presses, along with the public’s ability to hear diverse voices.

Ruth Towne (Poetry, S ’18) is excited to announce the publication of her debut collection, Resurrection of the Mannequins (Kelsay Books, 2025), available now at Kelsay Books and Amazon.com. Cate Marvin (Stonecoast faculty, Poetry), author of Event Horizon, says, “Ruth Towne’s thrilling debut collection, Resurrection of the Mannequins, records a body’s journey, one undertaken with breathtaking ache, imagination, and intelligence. With the authority of Plath and the remove of Moore, Towne’s speakers talk back to the very notion of the Surreal.”

Robin Clifford Wood (Creative Nonfiction, S’15) will give a presentation about Maine writer Rachel Field and Wood’s award-winning biography-memoir hybrid about Field on June 25 from 5:00-6:00 p.m. at the Brooksville Public Library. If you missed all the hoopla about The Field House 4 years ago, now’s your chance to check it out!

FACULTY  

News from Faith Adiele (Creative Nonfiction):

• Essay as Form At the 11th Annual Bay Area Book Festival, writer Faith moderates a conversation with Steve Wasserman, José Vadi, Keenan Norris, and Steinbeck Fellow Chino Lee Chung on the intersections of memoir, criticism, and cultural reflection in essay writing.
• Embrace Furiously This Burning World: Writers Reckon with Now CCA faculty members Faith, Zeina Hashem Beck, Jasmin Darznik, Yalitza Ferreras, and Aimee Phan will read new work exploring crises like climate change, political instability, and social justice.
• Life Partners in Writing: How Two Women of Color Found their Writing Spouses In About Place Journal’s “Careful/Care-Full Collaboration” issue, Faith and Elmaz Abinader co-author “Life Partners in Writing: How Two Women of Color Found their Writing Spouses,” an essay reflecting on their 17-year creative partnership.
• Rethinking Travel Writing In this five-week generative course, award-winning writer Faith guides participants in reimagining travel narratives through craft discussions, readings, and guest talks with Bani Amor, Noo Saro-Wiwa, Carey Baraka, and Pier Nirandara. Topics include voice, place, ethical representation, and decolonizing language and structure. Live on Zoom, Saturdays September 6–October 4, 1:00–3:00 p.m. EST.
• Panorama is Looking for Travel Tales about Paris! Panorama Journal has just released its powerful SURVIVAL issue and is now welcoming submissions for the upcoming theme: PARIS. Faith returns as editor of the Decolonising Travel section, working alongside a dynamic international team. Submissions of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, reviews, and visual art are open until June 14.

Aaron Hamburger‘s (Fiction, Creative Nonfiction) review of Tash Aw’s novel The South was published in The Rumpus. He was delighted to work with Stonecoasters J Brooke (Poetry, S’19) and Acree Macam (Fiction, W’25) on it! Also, his piece “Dwell in Gratitude” has been slated to appear in the forthcoming The Poets & Writers Guide to Publicity and Promotion.

Stonecoast nonfiction and poetry faculty member Debra Marquart received First Place honors (in a three-way tie) for Narrative Magazine‘s Winter 2025 Story Prize for her essay “How Fish Learned to Sing.”

Elizabeth Searle (Fiction, Scriptwriting) has a new book forthcoming: The Drama Room, a collection of short stories to be published in hardback & paperback by Pierian Springs Press in October. The twelve tales in this “Collection in Three Acts” have all been published in magazines such as New England Review, Massachusetts Review, and Solstice. The Press writes: “Enter The Drama Room, Elizabeth Searle’s compelling collection, where everyday lives collide with extraordinary drama, secrets simmer beneath ordinary moments, and memories echo with unexpected resonance…Each story offers an intimate glimpse into lives shaped by love, loss, ambition, and the relentless pursuit of truth.  Haunting, insightful, and sharply observed, The Drama Room is a heart-rending portrait of contemporary life—brimming with heartache, humor, and humanity.” For updates, see:  www.elizabethsearle.net. Elizabeth also has flash fiction, “Joni in the Birth Room,” in the May 2025 issue of Portland Magazine.