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
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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. 

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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.

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