NMCC’s Guest Author Series Announces Return With Accomplished Guests

In celebration of Community College Month and National Poetry Month, Northern Maine Community College hosts its annual Creative Writers Reading Series, which begins April 7 and continues the following two Thursday nights, April 14. and 21.

After a pandemic hiatus, the event returns virtually this year and will be held via ZOOM, with login details available on the NMCC website and Facebook pages. Each session starts at 7 p.m. and lasts about an hour.

The series invites accomplished authors from across the United States to speak with NMCC students and the wider community, giving authors the opportunity to share their works and answer questions about writing and the creative process. NMCC English faculty member Jessica Bartlett took on the responsibility of hosting the series in 2016 and coordinates with guest writers. The event dates align with Bartlett’s Spring Creative Writing Course, which is open to the community and teaches fiction, nonfiction, and poetry.

“I am always so overwhelmed by the generosity of these writers, who take time out of their busy writing and teaching schedules to show our students the many paths a creative life can take,” Bartlett said. “There’s something truly special about a community college that attracts writers of all genres, and I look forward to introducing my students and the community to these three amazing women.”

This year’s guests are Anne Britting Oleson from central Maine, Catherine Doucette from the White Mountains of New Hampshire and Kate McIntyre from Salinas, Kansas.

McIntyre is due to read on April 7. She is the author of “Mad Prairie” (UGA Press 2021), a collection of stories that won the Flannery O’Connor Award. The collection was shortlisted for the PEN/Robert W. Bingham Award Long List for Best Debut Album. Her fiction and essays have appeared in journals such as Electric Literature, Brooklyn Rail, Denver Quarterly, the Cincinnati Review, and Copper Nickel, and she is the recipient of residencies at Hambidge, Playa, and the Spring Creek Project. She has a notable essay in America’s Best Essays 2014 and special mentions in the 2016 and 2020 Pushcart Prize anthologies. McIntyre is an assistant professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute and editor of the speculative journal flash hex.

Doucette reads April 14. Doucette grew up in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, where her passion for the outdoors sparked at home and at White Mountain School. She is passionate about skiing, running, horseback riding and hiking. Her writing ambitions were sparked at St. Lawrence University, and she later earned an MFA from Oregon State University. She currently lives in Pennsylvania, where she writes in the shadow of Hawk Mountain.

Oleson will read on April 21. She lives and writes from the mountains of central Maine. She has published five novels (“The Book of the Mandolin Player”, “Dovecote”, “Tapiser”, “Cow Palace” and her most recent, “Aventurine and the Reckoning”) and three books of poetry. A graduate of Bowdoin College and the Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine, she has taught high school literature and creative writing for over 30 years. She has three children, five grandchildren and two cats.

This is the 13th year that the NMCC has hosted the Creative Writers Reading Series, having missed 2020 and 2021.

To learn more about the Liberal Studies program or English courses at NMCC, visit nmcc.edu.