Caitlin Penna/Caitlin Penna for Colby College

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Colby College

Arisa White

Arisa White is an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College, the author of the collections Who’s Your Daddy, You're the Most Beautiful Thing That Happened, A Penny Saved, and Hurrah’s Nest. She is the co-editor of the anthology Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers.

Her poetry is widely published and her collections have been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Per Diem Poetry Prize, Maine Literary Award, Nautilus Book Award, Independent Publisher Book Award, and Golden Crown Literary Award. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that are rooted in Black queer women’s ways of knowing. She is a Cave Canem fellow and serves on the board of directors for Foglifter Press, as well as the Community Advisory Board for Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.

Currently, in collaboration with the composer Jessica Jones, Arisa is developing Post Pardon: The Opera, which will premiere in 2025. Learn more at arisawhite.com.

Candace Karu

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc’s first collection of poems, Death of a Ventriloquist, received the Vassar Miller Prize and was featured by Poets & Writers as one of a dozen debut collections to watch. His second book of poems, Deke Dangle Dive, was published by CavanKerry Press in 2021. His poems have appeared in magazines including The New Republic, Orion, and Tin House, and he serves as Executive Director of the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.

Margot Cochran

Julia Bouwsma

Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine, where she is a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, and small-town librarian. Bouwsma is Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate and the author of two poetry collections: Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018) and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017), both of which received Maine Literary Awards for Poetry Book. She is the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, ME.

Mihku Paul

Mihku Paul is a Wolastoqey writer and visual artist born and raised on a wild river in Maine. She is a 2010 graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program. Recent work includes Whitman on Walls with Msi-te ktahkomiq Kintagot (The Whole Earth Resounds) and the forthcoming anthology Root & Seed, A Snail Primer and Etiquette for Beginners, forthcoming in fall 2023. Her work has been published internationally and translated into Spanish and French. She lives and works in Portland.

Samaa Abdurraqib

Samaa’s recent writing can be found in Cider Press Review, Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic, Writing the Land: Maine, and in her recent chapbook, Each Day is Like An Anchor. She is the editor of a forthcoming collection of poetry called From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Writers Write the Northeast. She currently serves as the Executive Director of the Maine Humanities Council.

When she is not doing all the things, Samaa spends her time exploring the woods, waterways, mountains, and birds of the unceded territory of the Wabanaki people.