Please join us as an exhibitor or sponsor for our annual conference
May 20-21, 2024 at Sunday River Ski Resort!
*Note: the conference banner says May 19-21. Sunday 5/19 is a possible pre-conference day, so we are thinking a Monday-Tuesday registration is better ROI for exhibitors and sponsors.
This year's theme will focus on the part that libraries play as centers of democracy within their communities.
MONDAY KEYNOTE SPEAKER: Colin Woodard
Colin Woodard is the director of Nationhood Lab at the Pell Center for International Relations and Public Policy at Salve Regina University and the New York Times bestselling 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. A veteran foreign correspondent and investigative journalist, he received a 2012 George Polk Award and was a finalist for the 2016 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Reporting for his reporting at the Portland Press Herald. His bestselling history of Blackbeard’s pirate gang – The Republic of Pirates-- was made into a primetime NBC series with John Malkovich and Claire Foye and inspired Ubisoft’s Assassins Creed IV: Black Flags, for which he was a consultant. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Smithsonian, The Economist, Politico and many other publications. A graduate of Strong Elementary, Mt. Abram Regional High School, Tufts University and the University of Chicago, he was a Pew Fellow in International Journalism at the Johns Hopkins University School for Advanced International Study and is currently a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society in London. He lives in Freeport, where he is an avid user of Maine's statewide interlibrary loan service.
Tuesday Keynote Speaker: Julia Bouwsma
Julia Bouwsma lives off-the-grid in the mountains of western Maine where she works as a poet, homesteader, editor, teacher, and small-town librarian. She is Maine’s sixth Poet Laureate, currently serving a term from 2021 to 2026, and is the author three poetry collections: the forthcoming Death Fluorescence (Sundress Publications, 2025), Midden (Fordham University Press, 2018), and Work by Bloodlight (Cider Press Review, 2017). Among other honors, she is a two-time recipient of the Maine Literary Award for Poetry Book. Bouwsma is a former Managing Editor for Alice James Books, has taught in the Creative Writing department at the University of Maine at Farmington, serves on the Community Advisory Board for the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, and works as the Library Director for Webster Library in Kingfield, ME.
LODGING: Sunday River is offering a group rate on hotel rooms for any night, Sunday thru Tuesday. Here is a link to access the group rate, which will also be included in your confirmation email.
Please direct all questions by email to: atlarge2@mainelibraries.org or president@mainelibraries.org and we will be glad to assist you!
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