Announcing the Featured Books for Summer 2024!

Recommending Author Jaed Coffin has made his picks for the Maine Humanities' statewide community read—Marpheen Chann's Moon in Full and Shannon Bowring's The Road to Dalton.

“Marpheen's memoir helps all of us imagine Maine in ways that maybe we've never been asked to before.”

Jaed Coffin, Recommending Author

The Road to Dalton reads more like a collage than a singular painting—it's a novel with so many tricks up its sleeve.”

JAED COFFIN, Recommending Author

Announcing Jaed Coffin as Recommending Author for Read ME 2024

Coffin's selections for our 2024 statewide summer read will be announced in January with library registration opening in February.

Jaed Coffin is the author of the memoirs A Chant to Soothe Wild Elephants and Roughhouse Friday. His essays and stories have been featured in the New York Times, The Sun Magazine, Snap Judgment, Moth Radio Hour, Best American Travel Writing, and TED Channel. A contributing editor at Down East magazine, he teaches journalism and creative writing at the University of New Hampshire and has spoken at over twenty colleges and universities. He lives in his hometown of Brunswick with his wife and two daughters. 

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

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 

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, SmithsonianPolitico and dozens of other publications. Born in Waterville, he is a graduate of Mt. Abram High School, Tufts University and the University of Chicago.