2026 Artists, Poets & Presenters
A Feast of Poetry and Song • Tues May 12 • 6:00 - 7:15pm • Hosted at the Camden Public Library
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Linda Buckmaster
Former Poet Laurate of Belfast, Linda Buckmaster’s poetry, essay, and fiction have appeared in more than forty journals. Her most recent book is Journey Waters. Poems, Prose, Places (Huntress Press 2025), a retrospective of 25 years of writing. Her multi-genre Elemental: A Miscellany of Salt Cod and Islands (Huntress Press 2022), was a Finalist in the Maine Literary Awards. She currently leads community-based writing workshops.
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Emma Krosschell
Emma lives in Brooksville, Maine, with her partner and their dog. She spends her time wandering in the woods and baking as much bread as she can. Her first poetry collection, Hermitage, was published by Littoral Books in 2024.
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Jim Krosschell
Jim has published poems and essays in some 85 journals, plus two essay collections: One Man’s Maine, which won a Maine Literary Award, and Owls Head Revisited. His newest collection of poetry is titled Man Afield. He lives in Deer Isle, ME and Newton, MA, and volunteers on Boards for Coastal Mountains Land Trust and Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance.
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Eric Schow
Eric is a Maine Maritime alum from Massachusetts, now lives in Belfast after journeying across North America by sea and land. Though writing never came easily, at 40 he’s finally embracing it. Eric builds boats for a living, enjoys meditation, and time with his girlfriend April. Most days, you’ll find him at the Belfast dog park around 4pm, pondering life and enjoying the moment.
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Tim Sheehy
Tim is happily retired from a career in communications. He and his wife live in the Midcoast where they've sailed for 25 years, tending lovely gardens when not volunteering at organizations focused on connecting people with each other and nature. He is passionate about sailing, hiking and motorcycling, and is a published travel writer; his creative arts include poetry and acoustic music.
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Donna Spruijt-Metz
Donna Spruijt-Metz is an emeritus psychology professor, MacDowell fellow, rabbinical school drop-out, and former classical flutist. Her debut poetry collection is General Release from the Beginning of the World (2023, Free Verse Editions). She was featured as one of “5 over 50 debut authors” in Poets & Writers Magazine (11/23). She is the author of three chapbooks, and translates Dutch poetry.
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Louisa Stancioff
Born and raised in rural Maine, Louisa has emerged as a gifted writer with a cinematic eye for richly detailed, emotionally-charged character studies. She grew up learning traditional Bulgarian music from her paternal grandfather’s family and sang American folk and roots tunes with her friends. After years of touring and recording with her indie folk band, Dyado, and a dramatic stint in LA in 2020 that inspired many songs and a move back to Maine, she went solo. Her debut album "When We Were Looking" was released in April 2024 with Yep Roc Records. She is in the works of recording her second album.
The Sonic Café hosted by John and Rachel Nicholas • Thurs May 14 • 7-9pm • Pascal Hall in Rockport
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Kate Fiano (she/her)
Kate Fiano is a singer-songwriter and public school music teacher. Kate has released two albums; “Finding the Brighter Side” 2008 and “Revolution” 2012. Kate has taken the stage at popular venues across the country. Since moving to Maine, she has been writing new songs and performing throughout the Midcoast and is the winner of the 15th Annual Maine Songwriters 2025 Songwriting Contest.
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Peter Gallway
Peter Gallway is a singer-songwriter, performer, record producer, and author, with thirty albums and more than fifty production and special projects to his credit, including Time and Love: The Music of Laura Nyro, and works for film and musical theater. He performs around the world, collaborates with Japanese guitarist Yoshiyuki Sahashi in the EN project, British keyboardist Harvey Jones as the electronica ensemble Parker Gray, is married to singer- songwriter Annie Gallup, with whom he collaborates in the folk/Americana duo Hat Check Girl.
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Andre Lascoutx
Andre Lascoutx is a guitarist, singer & songwriter originally from Mid-Coast Maine recently returned from living, playing & recording in Nashville, TN for the last two decades. Andre has two albums of original music; 2013’s Riverside & the 2019 release Fairweather Friend produced by Grammy Award winning engineer Chad Brown featuring guitarist Doug Lancio (Patty Griffin, Bob Dylan).
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John and Rachel Nicholas
John and Rachel Nicholas have been making music together since they met, blending soulful harmonies with a love of folk and roots traditions. Based in Midcoast Maine since 2012, they perform as a duo and with their band The Lowdown. They also host the Good Trouble Project, a concert series supporting local causes.
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Chris Ross
Chris Ross is a native of Hancock and 2014 winner of the "Songwriter of the Year" award at the New England Music Awards. Known for his cinematic lyrics and sharp humor, Ross’ wit matches his musical talent.
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Sara Trunzo
Sara Trunzo is an award-winning singer-songwriter and community organizer. Informed by rural living and working class values, Trunzo writes what Adobe and Teardrops called “political country music at its finest.” She’s a board member of WERU, Documentary Songwriters, and Maine Songwriters Association. Her 4th record, Better Than I Was, came out 2025.
Meet the 2026 Maine Poets & Musicians
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Samaa Abdurraqib
Samaa Abdurraqib is the author of Towards a Retreat and the editor of From Root to Seed: Black, Brown and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast. She is a certified Maine Master Naturalist and is the Executive Director of Maine Humanities.
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Ian-Khara Ellasante
Ian-Khara Ellasante is a poet and cultural studies scholar. Originally from Memphis, they now live in Southern Maine and teach at Bates College. A Cave Canem fellow and finalist for the National Poetry Series 2024 competition, Ian-Khara has published poetry and critical writing in various journals and anthologies.
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Alice Limoges
Alice Limoges canon is lit up by her storytelling, soulful voice and textural instrumentals. She has 6 original albums/EPs, performed on Jon Samson’s Grammy Award winning album, in 2025 her song “Hurricane Alley” won the Maine Songwriting Contest.
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Betsy Sholl
Betsy Sholl’s tenth collection of poetry is As If a Song Could Save You, winner of the Four Lakes Poetry Prize, (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022). She served as Poet Laureate of Maine from 2006-2011.
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t love smith
t love smith (they/them) is a queer poet living on Wabanaki land studying at Stonecoast MFA where their graduate research project, Trans Poetics Archive, published Maine’s first transgender poetry anthology, Monster Beauties, and curated the Transcendence Poetry Festival.
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Bruce Willard
Bruce Willard’s books include Holding Ground (2013), Violent Blues (2016) and In Light of Stars (2021), with a fourth, As Land Between Water, forthcoming in Spring 2027. Willard directs the Blue Raven Poetry Series in Rockland, Maine.
2026 Workshops
We will read and write poetic forms that reflect and respond to themselves. Using mirror and contrapuntal poems by Jamaal May, Rita Dove, and Tarfia Faizullah, we will consider how these forms shift meaning and depth.
Samaa Abdurraqib, a certified Maine Master Naturalist and Executive Director of Maine Humanities, is the author of Towards a Retreat and editor of From Root to Seed: Black, Brown and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast.
This workshop is Saturday May 16 from 10:00am - 12:00pm at the Congregational Church in Camden.
We will look at a variety of poems, from Hafez to Mary Oliver, to learn how to contextualize the lyric poem, so the personal transcends the concerns of the "I" and moves outward to larger issues — social, political, and philosophical.
Sandra Lynn Hutchison has published two books of poetry, a memoir, and a translation of Mahvash Sabet's prison poems. She is the recipient of a Jane Kenyon Poetry Fellowship and Emily Dickinson Poetry Prize.
This workshop is Saturday May 16 from 10:00am - 12:00pm at the Congregational Church in Camden.
We will explore Edna St. Vincent Millay’s girlhood in Camden through examples from her juvenilia to see how the themes that would dominate her adult poetry – nature, romantic love, and sense of self – began.
Jen Munson, a National Board Certified teacher has over 25 years of teaching experience at Camden Hills Regional High School. Operations Manager of Millay House, she is currently working on a collection of Millay’s juvenilia.
This workshop is Saturday May 16 from 10:00am - 12:00pm at the Congregational Church in Camden.
How do we discover what we don’t know we know or feel and get underneath our immediate or habitual reactions? This workshop will feature prompts that try to surprise us into new ways of approaching our work and concerns.
Betsy Sholl has published ten collections of poetry. She is faculty emerita in the MFA in Writing Program of Vermont College of Fine Arts and served as Poet Laureate of Maine from 2006 to 2011.
This workshop is Saturday May 16 from 10:00am - 12:00pm at the Congregational Church in Camden.
Two Ponds Press: Words & Images • Sat May 16 • 3:15pm
A celebration of collaboration.
Ken Shure and Liv Rockefeller
©Tara Hill
Two Ponds Press, an award-winning publisher of fine press books devoted to reimagining the artist book, is featured in this presentation celebrating its 15th anniversary. Four distinctive works—born of collaboration among poets, writers, illustrators, photographers, designers, and book artists—anchor the program.
As poets read from these books and images unfold on screen, we are invited into an immersive conversation between word and image. Books will also be showcased at a table in the Festival Book Fair.
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Boundaries
Richard Blanco | Poet
Jake Hessler | Photographer
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Perspectives from the Knife's Edge
Mihku Paul | Poet
Stephen Hannock | Artist
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Caponigro
John Paul Caponigro | Poet
Paul Caponigro | Photographer
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Gold Trees
Claire Millikin | Poet
Joyce Tenneson | Photographer
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Richard Blanco
is the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history—the youngest, first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. Born in Madrid to Cuban exiled parents and raised in Miami, the negotiation of cultural identity and place characterize his body of work.
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Mihku Paul
is a Wolastoqey poet and educator raised on the banks of a wild Maine river. She is a graduate of the Stonecoast MFA program, interdisciplinary artist and Food Sovereignty activist. She lives and works in Portland.
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John Paul Caponigro
is a pioneer among photographers working with digital media. His art has been exhibited internationally. He combines his background in painting with traditional and alternative photographic processes.
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Claire Millikin
is the author of ten collections of poetry, including Magicicada winner of the Foreword Indie Award (2024). Millikin’s new book of poems Nightlight is forthcoming in June 2026. Claire teaches for the University of Maine system.