Arisa White, photo by Caitlin Jenna

Arisa White, an associate professor of English and Creative Writing at Colby College, will read her remarkable work in this National Poetry Month event at Rockland Public Library. Arisa is the author of Who’s Your Daddy, co-editor of Home Is Where You Queer Your Heart, and co-author of Biddy Mason Speaks Up, the second book in the Fighting for Justice Series for young readers. Her poetry is widely published and her collections have been nominated for an NAACP Image Award, Lambda Literary Award, and have won the Per Diem Poetry Prize, Maine Literary Award, Nautilus Book Award, an Independent Publisher Book Award, and Golden Crown Literary Award. As the creator of the Beautiful Things Project, Arisa curates poetic collaborations that are rooted in Black queer women’s ways of knowing. She is a Cave Canem fellow and serves on the Community Advisory Board for Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Currently, in development with composer Jessica Jones, Arisa is working on Post Pardon: The Opera. Learn more about her work at arisawhite.com.

White will be joined by Maine’s Poetry Out Loud State Finalists, including Charlotte Schatz of Maine Coast Waldorf School; Angelo Giordano of Portland High School; and State Runner Up Willow Knowles from Kennebunk High School.

This event is co-sponsored with Millay House Rockland, a nonprofit organization that champions poets, as well as creators and practitioners of all the arts, with a mission of restoring Edna St. Vincent Millay’s birthplace; the Maine Humanities Council, a statewide nonprofit that uses books, poetry, and big ideas to bring people together to discuss issues of importance; the University of New England Maine Women Writers Collection, a permanently endowed special collection of published and unpublished literary, cultural, and social history sources by and about Maine women; and OUT Maine, a national leader in designing rural, community-based, prevention-focused programming and training that lifts up queer youth in Maine’s isolated and under-resourced regions. Prior to the reading at the library, Arisa will lead a free poetry workshop for LGBTQ+ and allied youth at Millay House Rockland; you can learn more about the workshop here: https://secure.lglforms.com/form_engine/s/kFbqeadqH2pNebItBgLq1A

Arisa White’s poetry reading will take place in the Community Room and will be livestreamed via Zoom. For more information or for Zoom links, please email elewis@rocklandmaine.gov. Registration is not required to attend the 6:30 event at the library; seating will be first-come, first-served.