ANNOUNCEMENTS

CALL FOR PROPOSALS: TEACHING OPPORTUNITY (JANUARY 2026) 

We are excited to invite Stonecoast alumni to submit proposals for a 60-minute presentation (delivered in person or via Zoom) during the week of January 10–17, 2026. Presentations are generally scheduled from 8:00 a.m. – 9:00 a.m. EST. Please see the details below. If there are any questions, please email Robin at robin.talbot@maine.edu

• Eligibility: Open to program alumni and invited guests
• Proposal Deadline: September 1, 2025
• Honorarium: $200.00 

 Topics May Include (but are not limited to):

• Craft-focused discussions (fiction, poetry, nonfiction, hybrid forms)
• Publishing and literary careers
• Performance Poetry 
• Teaching creative writing
• Writing, race, and identity
• Genre explorations (memoir, speculative fiction, translation, hybrid)
• Community-based writing groups
• Creative revision strategies
• Script or Playwriting
• Intersection of writing and social justice
• Publishing and Editing Poetry

Proposal Requirements:

• Presentation description (150–200 words) with suggested reading or supporting viewing.
• Preferred delivery method (in person or via ZOOM)
• Available Dates 
• CV (optional)

POP-UP PROPOSALS (OPTIONAL)
Each residency, we offer a couple of informal, 45-minute talks. These talks often focus on professional development (submission strategies, how to get an agent, writing hacks, etc.) If you have an idea for a POP-UP, please share that as well. POP-UPs can also build upon topics introduced during a morning presentation.

• Send a brief summary of your POP-UP idea.
• Available Dates 

Please send your proposal(s) to Robin Talbot (robin.talbot@maine.edu). Justin and Robin look forward to reading your ideas!

STONECOAST ALUMNI-LED ENRICHMENT SERIES
Begins August 2025! Brought to you by The Practice of Writing

What is it? A free, monthly craft seminar series for Stonecoast students (past and present) and led by Stonecoast alumni.
Starting August 2025, join us every second Tuesday of the month at 7:00 p.m. Eastern for a 90-minute online session designed to support and inspire the Stonecoast MFA community.

2025–2026 Topics Include:

✧ Body Writing
✧ Satire & Humor
✧ Habits of Writers
✧ World Building
✧ Screenwriting
✧ Visual Storytelling

…and more!

Who is it for? All current students and alumni. Totally optional, always enriching.

Where do I sign up? www.practiceofwriting.com/stonecoast-enrichment

Created and designed by Leah Scott-Kirby & Nina Barufaldi (Stonecoast ’24 Fiction grads) to help the Stonecoast MFA community stay connected and keep growing!

ALUMS 

Anthony D’Aries (Creative Nonfiction, W‘09) was invited to present at The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music’s conference on the 50th anniversary of “Born to Run.”  Anthony also joined the board of the Arthur Miller Writing Studio (AMWS), an arts nonprofit whose mission is to restore Miller’s studio and relocate it to its permanent home at the Roxbury, CT, Minor Memorial Library and to share it as an inspirational, experiential, and learning space. The AMWS annual conference will be held on October 18th. 

J.R. Dawson‘s (Popular Fiction, S’16) second book, The Lighthouse at the Edge of the World, a sapphic Orpheus retelling, releases from Tor on July 29th. There is a preorder campaign running through Moon Palace Books, and confirmed tour stops in Minneapolis (Moon Palace), St. Louis (Left Bank Books), and Chicago (Anderson’s). To preorder, click here. 

Julie C. Day (Popular Fiction, S’12) is thrilled to announce Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology releases July 1st from her own Essential Dreams Press. With sixteen new stories from some of today’s most renowned authors, Storyteller is a celebration of Tanith Lee’s legacy—and an object lesson in the breadth of authors she influenced.

• Drowning cities and unicorns. Burning deserts and forgotten gods. Golems, elf warriors, and inner-Earthers. Alien lifeforms and museum workers. Ancient plagues and the future of humanity. Much like Tanith Lee’s catalog, each story in this anthology is both unique and compelling: from fairy-tale retellings to romance-tinged high fantasy, from nihilistic horror to gripping science fiction. This anthology is immersive, wide-ranging, and sublime.
• Authors include Mike Allen ◆︎ C.S.E. Cooney ◆︎ Maya Deane ◆︎ Andy Duncan ◆︎ Rocío Rincón Fernández ◆︎Theodora Goss ◆︎ CL Hellisen ◆︎ Getty Hesse ◆︎ Alaya Dawn Johnson ◆︎ Starlene Justice ◆︎ Amelia Mangan ◆︎ Michael Yuya Montroy ◆︎ Marisca Pichette ◆︎ Nisi Shawl ◆︎ KT Wagner ◆︎ Martha Wells.
• Afterword by Ann VanderMeer. Foreword by Tanith’s widower, John Kaiine.
• Editor in chief Julie C Day with coeditors Carina Bissett (Popular Fiction, S’18) and Craig Laurance Gidney and assistant editor Julia DeRidder.

Gro Flatebo (Creative Nonfiction, W’10) has an essay forthcoming in an upcoming anthology published by Twelve Willows Press entitled Echoes in the Fog: Reflections on the Liminal Spaces of the Maine Coast. The book will be published in December. Her essay is titled “Skim Ice.”

David A. Hewitt’s (Popular Fiction, S’09) story “The Watcher Awakens”—examining the important question of what happens if a forgotten evil of the ancient world decides to get into Hollywood filmmaking—is currently available (free to read!) on Mysterion. 

Nina B. Lichtenstein (Creative Nonfiction, S’20) welcomes all to Maine Writers Studio’s July 23rd “Celebration of Summer, Potluck & Open Mic” in Nina’s garden. To RSVP and learn more go here. Nina is teaching a one-day generative HYBRID workshop on “Writing Our Siblings: Our Best Friends, Our Worst Enemies” on Sunday, July 27th. Find out more here. Registration is also open for Maine Writers Studio’s “Embodied Writing” fall weekend retreat for women, on Bailey Island in Maine. (PS: only four spots left) More info here.

Stephanie Loleng’s(Fiction, W’20) short story “Snow Day” was published in the latest edition of The Stonecoast Review. Here’s a link to it. She workshopped a very early draft of the story during her first semester at Stonecoast, so it feels like a full-circle moment! 

Will Ludwigsen’s (Popular Fiction, W’11) novella A Scout Is Brave (workshopped at Stonecoast) is a finalist for the 2024 Shirley Jackson Award, recognizing achievement in horror and the dark fantastic. The winners will be announced at Readercon in Boston on July 19th.

Jeanette Lynes’s (Poetry/Fiction, S’05) fourth novel The Paper Birds was released last week by HarperCollins Canada. It tells the story of women codebreakers during World War Two.

Death Valley Blooms by Sarah Mack (Popular Fiction, S’19; publishing as S.M. Mack) will release on August 5, 2025, from Neon Hemlock press and is available now for preorder at this link. The novella began life as Sarah’s Stonecoast thesis.

Anne Britting Oleson’s (Poetry, W’05) ninth novel, and fourth in the Aventurine Morrow series, Aventurine at Sea, will drop from Encircle Publications on July 23rd. In this installment, Aventurine follows a single clue to Lisbon in search of information about the disappearance of her brother-in-law, and discovers more about her family’s secrets than she bargains for.

Jonathan Pessant (Poetry, W’21) is grateful that he found a home for his poem “America, Full of Openings.” The poem, about the Lewiston mass shooting, is in Moonstone Arts Center’s 29th Annual Poetry Ink anthology. 

Marisca Pichette (Popular Fiction, S’21)is happy to share that her poem “binary system” is a Dwarf Stars Award nominee! She is also looking forward to attending Readercon in mid-July, where she’ll be joining editor and fellow Stonecoast alum Julie C. Day (Popular Fiction, S’12) in a group reading from Storyteller: A Tanith Lee Tribute Anthology. This anthology includes Marisca’s story “Where Walls Once Rose,” as well as work from former Stonecoast faculty Theodora Goss, Martha Wells, Nisi Shawl, CSE Cooney, and many more. If you’re in the Burlington, MA, area on July 19, come by! 

Bruce Pratt‘s (Fiction, S’04) poem “Windy Smith Would Not Walk,” appears in the new 30th anniversary Issue of Sport Literate. His poem, “It’s The Guns” appears in the recently released anthology Defiance! Maine Poets Protest the Attack on Democracy. “Lucky Sticks,”an article by Bruce on the enduring legacy of Vic Firth and his legendary percussion gear—mainly drumsticks—made in Newport, Maine, and used by hundreds of the world’s finest percussionists, is in the just-released Portland Monthly Magazine Summer Issue available now.

Alongside fellow Stonecoaster Eugenio Volpe (Fiction, W’05)—and fellow central Rockies author Kase Johnstun—sid sibo (Fiction, W’19) will participate in a Mesa Verde Book Festival panel discussing Voice, Style and Substance in Literary Fiction. The Festival, on July 12 in Mancos, CO, is free to the public, and sid will also present on De-centering the Human earlier that morning. The Scent of Distant Family, which recently made top four in the National Indies Excellence awards for contemporary novel, will join titles from 50 authors at the sales pavilion.

Multidisciplinary artist Darlene R. Taylor (Fiction, W’17) will present new works of mixed-media collage from her Heirlooms series. Darlene ‘s For the Beauty She Gave Us will be exhibited at the International Arts & Artists gallery at 9 Hillyer Court in Washington, DC, July 5th-27th, 2025. In this series, Darlene merges heirloom fabrics and paper in portraits that meditate on the memories of Black mothers. For more about the summer exhibition, click here.

The Kickstarter for the anthology Shakespeare Adjacent, in which Genevieve Williams‘s (Popular Fiction, S’14) “Bitter Waters; or, the Villain’s Appointment” appears, has launched from 2 Jokers Publishing. This collection of short stories reimagines Shakespeare’s plays through the lenses of contemporary popular genres, especially science fiction. The Kickstarter closes on July 23, 2025.

Robin Clifford Wood (Creative Nonfiction, S’15) will be presenting a slide show and book talk at Swan’s Island Library, Swan’s Island, ME, at 7:00 p.m. on July 15th. Slides feature archival and scenic photos of Sutton Island and Rachel Field, the subjects of a memoir-biography hybrid called The Field House: A Writer’s Life Lost and Found on an Island in Maine.

FACULTY  

News from Faith Adiele (Creative Nonfiction):

• Rethinking Travel Writing In this five-week generative course, award-winning writer Faith Adiele 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, 1–3 p.m. EST
• Applying to Writing Residencies Writer and longtime judge Faith Adiele draws on her experience with 30+ residencies to walk you through real winning applications during “Applying to Writing Residencies,” a live Zoom workshop on Saturday, July 12, 2025 (10 a.m.–12 p.m. PDT).
• Tender Headed In “Tender Headed,” Faith shares how her braids sparked unexpected connections across Morocco. Read the award-winning essay in Panorama, Issue #10: Intimacy.

Debra Marquart‘s (Creative Nonfiction, Poetry) essay “How Fish Learned to Sing,” was recently published by Narrative Magazine, and her poem “All the Rage this Winter,” (with accompanying audio poem) was published in Terrain.org’s “Letter to America” series.