Stonecoast MFA Reading

The Stonecoast MFA program at the University of Southern Maine is a Top 4 ranked low residency program offering courses in Creative Nonfiction, Fiction, Poetry, and Popular Fiction. On Friday, August 18, join four of their world-class faculty and alumni for an unforgettable night of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction.

An open mic follows. If you have poems, songs, stories, to share, you are warmly welcome to sign up before the reading.

Jeanne Marie Beaumont is the author of four books of poetry, most recently Letters from Limbo (CavanKerry Press, 2016) and Burning of the Three Fires (BOA Editions, 2010), is editor of The Poets’ Grimm, and is an instructor for the Stonecoast MFA Program and the Unterberg Poetry Center of the 92nd Street Y.

Cheryl Boyce-Taylor is a poet and workshop facilitator, born in Trinidad and raised in Queens. A recipient of the 2015 Barnes and Noble Writers For Writers Award, she is the founder and curator of Calypso Muse and the Glitter Pomegranate Performance Series. Cheryl earned her MFA in Creative Writing from Stonecoast: The University of Southern Maine. She is the author of four collections of poetry: Raw Air, Night When Moon Follows, Convincing the Body and "Arrival." A poetry judge for NYFA and The Astraea Foundation, she has taught poetry workshops for The New York Public Library, Cave Canem, Poets & Writers, Poets House, The Caribbean Literary and Cultural Center, and Urban Word NYC. Her poetry has been commissioned by Jacob's Pillow, The Joyce Theater, and the National Endowment for the Arts for Ronald K. Brown, Evidence, A Dance Company. A VONA fellow, her work has been published in Poetry, So Much Things To Say:100 Calabash Poets, Aloud: Voices from the Nuyorican Poets Cafe, Pluck!, Adrienne, Poetry and Prairie Schooner. 

Cait Johnson has authored six works of spiritual non-fiction, including Celebrating the Great Mother (co-authored with Maura D. Shaw); Witch in the Kitchen; and Earth, Water, Fire, and Air. Her poetry is grounded in an appreciation of the sacredness in the everyday, nature-based spirituality, and the interconnectedness of all things; her poem “Cold Moon” was included in Measure for Measure: An Anthology of Poetic Meters, from Random House. Formerly faculty at the Stonecoast MFA in Creative Writing program at the University of Southern Maine, and an Emeritus Fellow of the Black Earth Institute, she has trained with the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology and has a private practice as an intuitive counselor in the Hudson Valley, where she writes, directs, and performs in shamanic theatre. Her latest book, The Road to Minsk, with artwork by Ania Aldrich, came out last year from Baba Yaga Press. 

Elizabeth Searle is the author of five books of fiction and several works of theater. Her new novel WE GOT HIM was a finalist for the Midwest Book Award in 2017. Her theater works include TONYA & NANCY: THE ROCK OPERA, which has been widely produced and drawn national media coverage. Her previous books are: GIRL HELD IN HOME; CELEBRITIES IN DISGRACE; A FOUR-SIDED BED, a novel that was nominated for an American Library Association book award and that is in development for film, and MY BODY TO YOU, a story collection that won the Iowa Short Fiction Prize. Elizabeth teaches fiction and script-writing at Stonecoast MFA. She lives in Arlington, MA with her husband and son.