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. 

RECOMMENDING AUTHOR

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.

LUNGFISH

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

Tuck is slow to understand the circumstances that have driven her family to an uninhabited island off the coast of Maine, the former home of her deceased grandmother where she once spent her childhood summers. Squatting there now, she must care for her spirited young daughter and scrape together enough money to leave before winter arrives—or before they are found out.

Relying on the island for sustenance and answers, Tuck lives moment-by-moment through the absurdity, beauty, paranoia, and hunger that shoots through her life, as her husband struggles to detox.

Lungfish is the selected novel for Read ME 2023

NIGHT OF THE LIVING REZ

Set in a Native community in Maine, Night of the Living Rez is a riveting debut collection 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.

In twelve striking, luminescent stories, author Morgan Talty—with searing humor, abiding compassion, and deep insight—breathes life into tales of family and a community as they struggle with a painful past and an uncertain future.

A collection that examines the consequences and merits of inheritance, Night of the Living Rez is an unforgettable portrayal of an Indigenous community and marks the arrival of a standout talent in contemporary fiction. 

Night of the Living Rez is the selected short story collection for Read ME 2023.