Freeport Folio presents Maine Poet Laureate Betsy Sholl.

“Selected by President Obama as the fifth Presidential Inaugural Poet in U.S. history, Richard Blanco was the youngest, the first Latinx, immigrant, and gay person to serve in that role. In 2023, Blanco was awarded the National Humanities Medal by President Biden from the National Endowment for the Humanities.  Born in Madrid to Cuban exile parents and raised in Miami in a working-class family, Blanco’s personal negotiation of cultural identity and the universal themes of place and belonging characterize Blanco’s many collections of poetry, including his most recent, Homeland of My Body, which reassess traditional notions of home as strictly a geographical, tangible place that merely exist outside us, but rather, within us.”

We are so pleased the delightful poet Samaa Abdurraqib, the Executive Director of the Maine Humanities Council, will be our Featured Poet for the event. “About The Author

Samaa Abdurraqib, PhD, lives, writes, and loves in Wabanaki Territory. She is the editor of From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast (2023). Her poetry has appeared in Cider Press Review, Obsidian, Big Wing Review, and the collection Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic (2022). Samaa is a certified Maine Master Naturalist. She is always listening for birdsong.” (Diode Editions Publishing)