Community News & Updates December 2025

On By Robert E. StuttsIn News & Updates

ANNOUNCEMENTS

STONECOAST ALUMNI ENRICHMENT SERIES

The Stonecoast Enrichment Series has the schedule up for the next four sessions. Sign up for these monthly seminars here. 

  • The Habits of Writers — December 9th at 7:00 p.m. EST — A conversation with Elisabeth Tova Bailey (Creative Nonfiction, S’15) on the real lives of writers: rituals, resistance, joy, and the habits that help us face the page.
  • World Building — February 10 at 7:00 p.m. EST — Explore bottom-up, top-down, and goal-oriented worldbuilding with Lucas Carroll-Garrett (Popular Fiction, W’22), and learn how each approach shapes depth, tone, and narrative focus.
  • Your Body, Your Story — March 10 at 7:00 p.m. EST — Nina B. Lichtenstein (Creative Nonfiction, S’20) dives into the body as memory archive through sensory prompts. Learn how physical experience transforms forgotten moments into vivid scenes.
  • Writing Words into Life! Elements & Techniques of Basic Scriptwriting — April 14 at 7:00 p.m. EST — Develop dialogue, explore the playfulness of scripts, and rediscover fun in storytelling with Adam Rodriquez-Dunn.

CURRENT STUDENTS

Shayna Carreau (Creative Nonfiction)has turned her struggle with infertility into art with her new coloring book, Cramping My F*!#ing Style: Feminine Rage Art & Calligraphy. Designed to support the cost of her IVF treatment, this bold, funny, and cathartic collection invites you to color through the chaos of hormones, hope, and healing. With intricate designs and brutally honest phrases, Carreau transforms frustration into creativity—proving that healing doesn’t have to be pretty, but your coloring pages can be. Available Here.

ALUMS 

Sarah C. Baldwin (Creative Nonfiction, S’15) wrote the six feature stories in the 2025 Heller Social Policy Impact Report, recently published by Brandeis University’s Heller School for Social Policy and Management. 

In their continued role as Editor of Prose Reviews for The Rumpus, J Brooke (Poetry, S’19) would like to remind writers who have an interest in reviewing a book that they can contact them at J.Brooke@therumpus.net.

Hank Garfield (Fiction, S’04) has a novel excerpt in the forthcoming anthology Echoes in the Fog: Reflections on the Liminal Spaces of Maine’s Coast, due out in December from 12 Willows Press. The story, entitled “Wedding on the Rocks,” is an excerpt from Hank’s as-yet unpublished novel A Sprauling Family Saga. It is the second excerpt from that work to be anthologized. “The Fifth Floor” was published in 2015 in Lovecraft, ME, edited by Shawna Galvin and Sybil Wilen.

Cindy Williams Gutiérrez (Poetry, W’08) is the recipient of a 2025 Humanities Washington Award for K-12 Education. Over the past 17 years, she has had the honor of teaching poetry to youth in every grade from K-12.  She continues to teach poetry to middle schoolers at Liberty Bell Junior-Senior High School in Winthrop, Washington and at Paschal Sherman Indian School on the Colville Reservation in Omak, Washington.

Nina B. Lichtenstein (Creative Nonfiction, S’20) is thrilled to share that the audiobook version (narrated by the author) of her memoir-in-essays Body: My Life in Parts will be released on December 3rd. It will be available on most audiobook platforms. On December 14th, she is teaching a hybrid (in person and on Zoom), generative workshop titled “Writing Our Fathers: The Good, the Bad, and the (fill in the blank)” through Maine Writers Studio. Go HERE for more info and to register. The December 17th Literary Salon & Open Mic in Brunswick will host the editor (Gillian Burnes) and two of the contributors (Stonecoast alum Dave Patterson [Fiction, W’13] and Eleanor Morse) of the new short story collection Positivity Bias: Maine Writers, Defiantly Happy Endings. Free and open to the public, find out more HERE. 

Acree Graham Macam (Fiction, W’25) was the winner of the 2025 Forge Flash Nonfiction Competition for her piece “The Genocide Unfolds on My Phone“. Additionally, her review of Marisa Meltzer’s It Girl, about the life of Jane Birkin, appeared in The Rumpus.

Nadja Maril (Fiction, W’20) is pleased to share that her creative nonfiction essay “Pass me the GRAVY,” also read by Nadja, will be published in the winter edition of Instant Noodles Literary Review. Her children’s bookWho IS Santa? continues to rank as a bestseller in the family poetry category on Amazon and any profits go to the International Pleuropulmonary Blastoma (PPB) DICER 1 Registry. The mission of the registry is to improve outcomes for children and adults with pleuropulmonary blastoma (PPB) and other DICER-1 related cancers. You can purchase a copy online here.

Laura Navarre (Popular Fiction, W’11) had no business writing a spicy witchy polyamorous why choose Christmas romance with all swords crossed to finish her Amazon bestselling Dark Witch Academy series. But she did it anyway. Gemini Christmas is a poly jolly twisted Krampus retelling new release and best avoided if you’re easily shocked.

Roxanne Ocasio’s (Popular Fiction, W’15) short story “Bruja Business,” in which Latinas blood sacrifice an ex to pay rent, was featured in Issue 16 of the Gordon Square Review. 

Marisca Pichette (Popular Fiction, S’21)finished her cozy witch novel and passed it off to her agent last month. It is now officially out on sub! Looking back at 2025, she is ending the year with a new novella, 17 stories, and 24 poems eligible for awards! She’s also delighted to share that her 2024 poem, “Every robot has a switch she can’t reach,” published in Radon Journal was nominated in the Monarch Queer Awards.

R.M. Romero’s (Popular Fiction, S’15) post-apocalyptic cli-fi novel, The Tear Collector, was named one of School Library Journal’s Best Middle Grade Books of 2025.

Catherine Schmitt (Creative Nonfiction, W’12) has an article about Wabanaki access to sea-run fish in Maine rivers in The Working Waterfront, and an essay about what happens when rivers meet the ocean in the new anthology from 12 Willows Press, Echoes in the Fog.

Linda K. Sienkiewicz (Fiction, S’09) is fired up to have her poem “The Book of Quiet Girls Who Burn” appear on New Verse News on Wednesday, November 26th. It’s for all the women who grew up hearing “Quiet, piggy.”

With excitement, Becky Thompson (Poetry, W’21) announces that a book she has co-edited, This Unruly Witness: June Jordan’s Legacy, is now out in the world (Haymarket Books). They are thrilled with the reception—selected as one of the top 100 nonfiction books for 2025 by Kirkus Reviews and highlighted in Essence, The Boston Globe, Booklist, Salon, and elsewhere. All thanks to Katherine Larson, professor at Stonecoast, for believing in this project from early on. Thank you to the Stonecoast community for highlighting witness poetry. Here are places people might want to go to readings and celebrations. 

Genevieve Williams (Popular Fiction, S’14) is pleased to announce the publication of her short story “Bitter Waters; or, the Villain’s Appointment” in the anthology Shakespeare Adjacent from 2 Jokers Publishing, following a successful Kickstarter campaign. Each story in the anthology retells a classic Shakespeare tale through a speculative-genre lens; “Bitter Waters” situates Much Ado About Nothing in an area of eastern Washington state dramatically affected by climate change.

FACULTY  

JJ Amaworo Wilson‘s (Fiction) short story “A Horse Made of Smoke,” published in Oyster River Pages in 2025, has been nominated for this year’s Best American Short Stories anthology.

Elizabeth Searle (Fiction, Scriptwriting) is reading from her new book The Drama Room in NYC on December 21st along with three Stonecoast alums reading from their fiction: Sandra Collier (Fiction, W’20), Stephanie Loleng (Fiction, W’20), and Leah Siviski (Fiction, W’20). This Stonecoast Winter Solstice reading and celebration takes place 6:00-8:00 p.m. at The Throwback Bar, 710 Amsterdam Ave in NYC; seating is limited so please RSVP to elizabeth.searle@maine.edu  . Elizabeth is also reading from The Drama Room in the virtual Dire Literary Series. She will be in conversation with Dire founder and author Tim Gager on December 4th at 7:00-7:30 p.m.—to be followed by an optional half hour Open Mic. Tune in live or watch the reading on film here. 

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