Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora: A Poetry Reading and Book Launch

Thursday, October 26, 6-7 PM

Join poets Stuart Kestenbaum, Yael Grunseit and Meghan Sterling for the launch of Meghan Sterling’s poetry collection, Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora. Poetry! Refreshments! Celebration!

Meghan Sterling’s work has been published or is forthcoming in The Los Angeles Review, Rhino Poetry, Nelle, Colorado Review, Rattle, and many others, and has been nominated for multiple Pushcart Prizes. Her debut poetry collection, These Few Seeds (Terrapin Books), came out in 2021 and was a Finalist for the Eric Hoffer Grand Prize in Poetry. Her chapbook, Self-Portrait with Ghosts of the Diaspora (Harbor Editions) her collection, Comfort the Mourners (Everybody Press) and her collection, View from a Borrowed Field, which won Lily Poetry Review’s Paul Nemser Book Prize, are all out in 2023. She is program director at Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance. Read her work at meghansterling.com.

Stuart Kestenbaum is the author of six collections of poems, most recently Things Seemed to Be Breaking (Deerbrook Editions 2021), and a collection of essays The View from Here (Brynmorgen Press). He was the host/curator of the Maine Public Radio program Poems from Here and the podcasts Make/Time and Voices of the Future. He was the director of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts from 1988 until 2015. More recently, working with the Libra Foundation, he designed and implemented the Monson Arts residency and workshop program, where he now serves as senior advisor.  He served as Maine’s poet laureate from 2016-2021.

Yael Grunseit is a writer and film directing MFA candidate interested in the tensions between Judaism, sexuality, freedom and restriction. This year she has published her debut chapbook titled the Living Room, Rearranged published by Harbor Editions, and has a forthcoming chapbook with Bottlecap Press. Her previous writing projects can be found in Voiceworks issue #122 and #125, Shirley Magazine and at the Fiend online bookstore.

Registration is FREE, but required.