Over $96,000 supporting 14 projects across Maine

Maine State Library

Jason Reynolds at Reading Round Up 2023

Augusta

$5,000

Italian Studies Program, Colby College

Italian Trans Geographies: A Film Series

Waterville

$5,500

Maine Adult Education Association

Nourishing Educators 2023

Dover-Foxcroft

$6,850

Island Readers & Writers

'Dear Teacher….' A Celebration of Literacy and Rural Education

Mount Desert

$7,412

The Kneeling Art Photography Project 

Taking a Knee for Change Workshops

Portland

$7,500

Penobscot Theatre Company

Transformer Tales

Bangor

$7,500

Wild Blueberry Heritage Center

Collecting and Presenting Stories of the Wild Blueberry Lands

Addison

$7,250

Castine Historical Society

Hidden Legacies: Uncovering Castine's African American History

Castine

$4,910

Indigo Arts Alliance

Art in the Wake: Reckoning and Re-membering 

Portland

$7,500

Juneteenth Downeast

Juneteenth Downeast Commemoration 2023: Illuminating the Continuum of the Black Experience in Maine

Steuben

$7,490

Classical Uprising

Where do you like to go? - Celebrating Maine’s changing identity in the 21st century

Portland

$7,500

Mayo Street Arts

Taíno Language & Culture Summit

Portland

$6,713

The Telling Room

Growing an Audience for Maine’s Young Authors: The Telling Room’s 2023 Statewide Anthology Project 

Portland

$7,500

Cobscook Institute

Collaborative Design & Facilitated Process to Establish a Director of Indigenous Teaching & Learning at Cobscook Institute

Trescott Township

$7,500
Learn more about MHC Grants

Join us for a community reception at Lewiston Public Library

  • Friday, March 31, 2023
  • 4:00-6:00PM

Join us at an upcoming community reception to meet Samaa Abdurraqib, MHC's Executive Director! 

You'll hear a welcome from MHC's board chair, words from a community partner, and hear Samaa share her vision and goals for the coming years.

You'll also have a chance to chat informally with Samaa over light refreshments. We hope you'll join us. 

Join us in Lewiston to meet Samaa

Announcing the Featured Books for Summer 2023!

Recommending Author Colin Woodard has made his selections for the MHC's statewide community read—Morgan Talty's debut shorty story collection Night of the Living Rez and Meghan Gilliss's debut novel Lungfish.

“Raw, powerful, loving, this is a book that many Mainers will feel especially close to.”

Colin Woodard, Recommending Author

…there’s the beauty of place and nature and connectedness, the drama of families and marriage and parenting and living over the edge and out to sea.”

Colin Woodard, Recommending Author
Bring Read ME to your library

Over $4,000 supporting five projects across maine

Mechanics' Hall

Participatory Arts at Mechanics' Hall

Portland

$1,000

Museum L-A

The Mainer Project: A Community Conversation

Lewiston

$2,000

Penobscot Marine Museum

From Maine to Around the World

Searsport

$975

Halcyon Music

After All: A Musical Reflection on the Trajectories of Our Nation

Rockland

$1,000

University of Southern Maine Art Galleries

Braiding Circles

Gorham

$1,000
Learn more about MHC Grants

Over $14,000 supporting eight projects across maine

Maine Multicultural Center

Bangor

$1,000

Saco School District

Saco

$2,000

Frenchman Bay Library

Sullivan

$2,000

Literacy Volunteers of Kennebec

Augusta

$2,000

ArtsFarmington

Farmington

$1,791

Holycon Music

Rockland

$2,000

Portland Public Library

Portland

$2,000

Portland Ovations

Portland

$2,000
Learn more about MHC Grants

MWPA is partnering on MHC's statewide community read

Starting this year, the MHC and Maine State Library are joining up Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance to make Read ME even better. The Read ME summer reading program has always aimed to elevate the work of up-and-coming Maine authors–in part by enriching the ways we bring together established Maine authors with folks just getting their voices out. We are excited to deepen our relationship with the vibrant community of Maine writers through this partnership. 

“MWPA is happy to join with MHC and the Maine State Library on the Read ME program! We have long admired this program in which each year one wonderful Maine writer picks two Maine books (and two writers!) to focus on in the coming year through events and reading groups at participating libraries throughout the state. Maine is lucky to have so many writers who live here and are inspired by this place in all kinds of ways, and this program helps us all discover new work.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, MWPA Executive Director 
Learn more about Read ME

Colin Woodard chosen as recommending author for Read ME 2023

Colin Woodard is the author of six books including American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America; Union: The Struggle to Forge the Story of United States Nationhood; and The Lobster Coast: Rebels, Rusticators and the Struggle for a Forgotten Frontier. He’s on the staff of the Portland Press Herald -- where he received a George Polk Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist -- and is a fellow at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy.

His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Economist, Smithsonian, Politico and dozens of other publications. Born in Waterville, he is a graduate of Mt. Abram High School, Tufts University and the University of Chicago.

Learn more about Read ME
Photo by James Hardman

There’s something irresistible about an anniversary. Maine’s bicentennial, the centennial of women’s suffrage, the upcoming 250th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence: All invite public commemoration. But what are we doing when we mark these anniversaries? Celebrating our past? Interrogating it? Something else entirely?

Presented in partnership by the Maine Humanities Council, Maine Suffrage Centennial, and Maine Historical Society.

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