MHC Read ME | Maine Humanities Council

A statewide summer reading experience

Read ME is the MHC’s statewide community read offered in partnership with Maine State Library and Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Every summer, the program gets Maine adults all reading two books recommended by a well-known Maine author.

Hosted by public libraries all across the state, Read ME connects Maine’s adult reading community through shared experiences, supports Maine libraries in their work to provide quality adult summer reading initiatives, and elevates the work of upcoming Maine authors.

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2023 Recommending Author

Colin Woodard

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 Director of the Nationhood Lab project at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University.

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.

Colin’s Selections

Summer 2023

Lungfish

This debut novel from Meghan Gilliss is a brilliant and heartbreaking story about addiction, doubt, marriage, motherhood, and learning to see in the dark.

Night of the Living Rez

Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection from Morgan Talty about what it means to be Penobscot in the twenty-first century and what it means to live, to survive, and to persevere after tragedy.

Bring Read Me to your library

Over 60 libraries participated in Read ME 2022. Join us again this summer.

Read ME is structured to enable even the smallest, most rural libraries to participate. All that’s required is a commitment to making each of the featured titles available to their patrons.

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Past SUmmer

Author Talks

2022: Phuc Tran Author Talk

Phuc Tran, author of the memoir Sigh, Gone, answers questions about writing, his book, family, and so much more.

2022: Meredith Hall Author Talk

Meredith Hall, author of Beneficence, answers questions from readers across the state of Maine.

2021: Kerry Arsenault Author Talk

Kerri Arsenault discusses her book Mill Town, a narrative nonfiction, investigative memoir, and cultural criticism that illuminates the rise and collapse of the working-class, the hazards of loving and leaving home, and the ambiguous nature of toxics and disease.