Community Calendar

Join us at Libby Library on Friday, September 19 at 5:30pm for an Author Talk with Robin Foster. She’ll be here to discuss her book Grit & Ghosts: Following the Trail of Eight Tenacious Women across a Century.

Copies of the author’s books will be available for purchase & signing at this event. This program is free, open to the public, and no registration is required.

About the book:

As a student and teacher of history, Robin Foster is well aware that humans have persisted through major hardships as long as they have existed. When faced with the anxious dread many felt at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, Foster began seeking stories of tenacious women of the American West who had survived their own hardships in a world that threw the unexpected at them. During one of the most uncertain periods of her life, Foster hit the road, embarking on a journey to find these determined women of the past and finding herself along the way. Grit and Ghosts tells the stories of eight women who speak to a shared human experience of struggle, and the grit required to move through it.
Landscape and memory become deeply intertwined throughout Grit and Ghosts as Foster wanders through park ranger Marguerite Lindsley’s Yellowstone, through Mexican faith healer Teresa Urrea’s Sonoran Desert, and through author Gertrude Stein’s deeply altered Oakland. Part excavation, part resurrection, Grit and Ghosts is permeated with the individual and collective memories of Foster and her subjects, like ghosts of history.

About the author:

Robin Foster studied creative writing at Bennington Writing Seminars and has a PhD in American Studies from Rutgers University-Newark. She is the author of GRIT AND GHOSTS: FOLLOWING THE TRAIL OF EIGHT TENACIOUS WOMEN ACROSS A CENTURY (Nebraska Press Bison Books, 2024); Carl Van Doren: A Man of Ideas (National Indie Excellence Awards Finalist for 2019); and The Age of Sail in the Age of Aquarius: The South Street Seaport and the Crisis of the Sixties (2016). Her work has been published in Rooted2: The Best New Arboreal Nonfiction, Another Chicago Magazine, Goats Milk Magazine, and the Journal of Urban History.

The Rockport Library Foundation is excited to welcome award-winning journalist, director, and best-selling author Sebastian Junger for a talk at the Rockport Opera House on Friday, September 19, at 6:30 p.m.
Known for riveting and emotionally compelling books like "The Perfect Storm," "War," and "Tribe," Junger will present his latest book, "In My Time of Dying." His near-fatal health emergency lead to this powerful reflection on death—and what might follow. The book is part medical drama, part searing autobiography, and part rational inquiry into the ultimate unknowable mystery.

Barswallow Books will offer a selection of Junger’s books for sale and signing at the event following the presentation. The event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited. Tickets can be reserved by visiting: https://rockportoperahouse.thundertix.com/events/252208

This program is generously supported by The Rockport Library Foundation, a non-profit whose mission aims to sustain a legacy of sharing worlds of experience and information within our community. Learn more about The Foundation at rockportlibraryfoundation.org.

Mark Your Calendars !
The library is proud to host this special event

Maine Authors in the park!

September 20th 10am -2pm.
Old Mill Park,1211 Main Street
Clinton, Maine
For a day filled with remarkable Authors.
Catch up with favorites, meet some new
at this exceptional event!
Amy Calder ,Ron Joseph, Tim Caverly, Mac Smith, Michelle Shores, Karla Jordan
Pam Oertel, Kaitlyn Rollins, Jon Lewis, Melody Paul, Allision Keeton Vaughn,
Hard Hackey and more !
Food Truck available.

Saturday, September 20, at 2 PM. Author Kate Flora. As part of the Patsy Bray Mahoney Lecture Series, we are pleased to welcome Kate Flora to the Louis T. Graves Memorial Public Library on Saturday, September 20, at 2:00 p.m. Ms. Flora will read from her latest book, “Those Who Chose Evil” and talk about the writing process. Kate Flora’s fascination with the darker side of human nature began in the Maine attorney general’s office, where she encountered everything from deadbeat dads to child abusers to discriminatory employers. This exposure ignited her curiosity about what drives people to cross moral and legal lines. Now the author of twenty-eight books across crime fiction, true crime, memoir, and nonfiction, Flora’s works have earned her a finalist spot for prestigious awards like the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Derringer. She has twice won the Maine Literary Award for crime fiction, taken home the Public Safety Writers Association award for nonfiction, and received lifetime achievement honors from both the New England Crime Bake and the Maine Crime Wave. Refreshments will be provided by the Graves Library Snack Team. Copies of the book will be for sale and signed after the program. Additional parking is available at the Fire Department Parking Lot (North Street). The Louis T. Graves Memorial Public Library is located at 18 Maine Street, Kennebunkport. For further information, please call 207-967-2778 or visit www.graveslibrary.org.

Join the Lewiston Public Library for Baby Storytime in-person in the Children’s Department weekly on Tuesdays* from 10:15am to 11:15am.
*(The Library will be closed on Tuesday, November 11th in observance of Veterans Day.)

Recommended for children ages 0 – 3 years old and their caregivers.

Enjoy an interactive storytime with your baby that includes early literacy fun with books, songs, rhymes and body movement. Play and social time immediately follow the program.

This program is free, open to the public, and no registration is required. Siblings are always welcome.

Please stay home if you or your child are sick and not feeling well.

The Lewiston Public Library is located downtown at 200 Lisbon Street at the corner of Pine Street.

More information on Storytime programs is available by contacting the Lewiston Public Library at 513-3133 or LPLKids@lewistonmaine.gov.

The Wendell Gilley Museum and the Southwest Harbor Public Library are teaming up to host poet and park ranger Christian Barter to the Museum on Tuesday, Sept. 23 from 5:30 to 6:30pm as part of an occasional series called Reading with Wings.

An award-winning poet, Barter explores nature and human nature in his verse, and he has a critically lauded new collection called “The Ends” that he will share that night. In “The Ends,” Barter explores both the landscape of Maine and the lives lived there. In “Champlain,” a poem that imagines the discovery of Mount Desert Island where Barter has lived most of his life, and in “Acadia,” a poem written in honor of the park, he addresses the issue of our stewardship of the earth; in a series of sonnets dedicated to the outsider artist James Hampton, he explores what it means to devote a lifetime to the creation of a work of art.

“These are the poems of a writer sure of his craft and at the height of his skill,” says Jeffrey Thomson, author of “Museum of Objects Burned by the Souls in Purgatory.”

Barter has served as poet laureate of Acadia National Park, and works on the trail crew for Acadia National Park planning and overseeing construction and rehabilitation of hiking trails.

His first book The Singers I Prefer was a Lenore Marshall Prize finalist; his second, In Someone Else's House, was the winner of the 2014 Maine Literary Award for Poetry; Bye-bye Land, a book-length poem, was published by BOA Editions in early 2017 and won the Isabella Gardner Prize. His poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, Georgia Review, The American Scholar, Epoch and other magazines, and has been featured on Poetry Daily, Verse Daily and The Writer's Almanac.

oin local authors Laura Bonazzoli and Cynthia Reeves for this discussion of the dual-narrative novel, its advantages for readers, and its challenges for writers. Bonazzoli and Reeves will describe the form, identify some popular examples, and read from their own dual-narrative novels:

Laura Bonazzoli’s novel Our Share of Morning is narrated in turns by two sisters coming of age between 1933 and 1950 in a mill town west of Boston, in a neighborhood scarred by the secret it holds. It was just published on September 12, 2025.

Cynthia Reeves' novel The Last Whaler is narrated in turns by a beluga whaler and his botanist wife, who are stranded and fight to survive the long polar winter of 1937-38 at his remote Arctic whaling station. It has won multiple awards since its publication in 2024.

Books will be available for sale courtesy of hello hello books, with an opportunity for signings. Light refreshments will be served. Free and open to the public.

Learn more about Laura Bonazzoli on her website: laurabonazzoli.com

Learn more about Cynthia Reeves on her website: cynthiareeveswriter.com

Calling all historically curious, story-driven readers to...

Join Izzy Ruta, Auburn Public Library; Laura Juraska, Androscoggin Historical Society; and Ben Snethen, Lewiston Public Library as we explore fiction with a historical twist each month.

We'll be reading and discussing:

Monday, September 29th, at 5:30pm, meet at the Androscoggin Historical Society, 93 Lisbon St.

Frozen River by Ariel Lawhon, 2023
“follows Martha a midwife and healer as she navigates motherhood, her career, secrets, and murder in 1789 Maine.”

Monday, October 27th, at 5:30pm, meet at the Auburn Public Library, 49 Spring St.

North Woods by Daniel Mason, 2023
“is about a single house in the woods of New England told through the lives of those who inhabit it across the centuries.”

Future reading to be determined by those who come.

Participants will be expected to obtain a copy of the book independently. You may place a hold on Minerva using your library card or contact either the Auburn Public Library or the Lewiston Public Library for assistance with how to borrow a copy of this month's selection.

Free and open to the public. There will be a reception at 5 P.M. with good food and drinks.

After 54 years of brutal dictatorship and 14 years of merciless war, Syrians have achieved their freedom. How did the Syria get here? What challenges and opportunities lie ahead? Northwestern University Professor Wendy Pearlman explores these questions, drawing from interviews that she conducted with more than 500 displaced Syrians around the world over the past 13 years and featured in her two books, We Crossed A Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria (2017) and The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora (2024). Combining these moving personal stories with her own political analysis, Pearlman puts the stunning collapse of the Assad regime in a broader historical context and reminds us of what is at stake, in human terms.

Biography
Wendy Pearlman is the Jane Long Professorship of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Political Science at Northwestern University. She earned her PhD from Harvard, has studied Arabic and the Arab world for thirty years, and is the author of six books and more than 40 academic articles or book chapters on the Middle East. Since 2011, she has interviewed more than 500 Syrians around the world about their life experiences. She shares their testimonials in two books. We Crossed a Bridge and It Trembled: Voices from Syria, published in 2017 and longlisted for the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, is a mosaic of personal testimonials chronicling the Syrian uprising, war, and displacement crisis. The Home I Worked to Make: Voices from the New Syrian Diaspora, published in 2024, interweaves narratives of displaced Syrians on five continents reflecting on losing home, searching for home, and rethinking the meaning of home.

Girard Innovation Hall
UNE-Portland
716 Stevens Avenue
Portland, ME 04103

Join the Lewiston Public Library for Baby Storytime in-person in the Children’s Department weekly on Tuesdays* from 10:15am to 11:15am.
*(The Library will be closed on Tuesday, November 11th in observance of Veterans Day.)

Recommended for children ages 0 – 3 years old and their caregivers.

Enjoy an interactive storytime with your baby that includes early literacy fun with books, songs, rhymes and body movement. Play and social time immediately follow the program.

This program is free, open to the public, and no registration is required. Siblings are always welcome.

Please stay home if you or your child are sick and not feeling well.

The Lewiston Public Library is located downtown at 200 Lisbon Street at the corner of Pine Street.

More information on Storytime programs is available by contacting the Lewiston Public Library at 513-3133 or LPLKids@lewistonmaine.gov.