News & Events
October 8, 2025 – Word Blue Hill Literary Arts Fetival
Saturday, October 25, 2025
1:00 PM -2:00 PM
Blue Hill Public Library 5 Parker Point Road Blue Hill, ME, 04614 (map)
While Maine often is depicted by writers and artists in broad brushstrokes, there is more than meets the eye to the rural corners of our state. This panel brings together three Maine writers working in fiction, poetry, and memoir: Michelle Lewis, Audrey Gidman, and Cynthia Thayer. These writers will explore how living in Down East and inland Maine, as well as other remote communities, shapes the stories we tell.
Free event
Moderator Michelle Lewis the author of Spare, which was the recipient of the Barrow Street Prose Prize chosen by Mary Cappello, and Animul/Flame, which won the 2018 Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize chosen by Bob Hicok. Her recent work has appeared in Bennington Review, Copper Nickel, Massachusetts Review, and Denver Quarterly among others. She lives in West Bath.
Audrey Gidman is a queer poet living in Maine. She is the author of two chapbooks, body psalms (Slate Roof Press, 2023), winner of the Elyse Wolf Prize, and griefnotes, forthcoming from Porkbelly Press. Her poems can be found in Rust + Moth, Birdcoat Quarterly, The Night Heron Barks, Luna Luna, SWWIM Every Day, The Shore, Bear Review, and elsewhere. She serves as guest editor for Frontier Poetry and chapbook editor for Newfound
Cynthia Thayer was born in New York City and raised in Nova Scotia. She earned her BA and MA in British Literature from Bridgewater State University in Massachusetts. Since she moved to Maine in 1976, she has organically farmed, taught, spun and dyed wool, woven, and written novels, short stories, and essays. She teaches for Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and at other various venues. She founded Schoodic Arts for All in 1998. Two of her novels were published by St. Martin’s Press and one by Algonquin Books. Her memoir, We’re Going Home, was published by Islandport Press in 2023 and was a finalist for the Maine Literary Award. She lives with her farming partners on Darthia Farm in Gouldsboro.
August 4, 2025 – Speaking Dates Announced
August 4, 2025
10 Questions from the Masshachusetts Review!
https://massreview.org/2025/08/04/10-questions-for-michelle-lewis/
May 7, 2025 – A review of Spare has been published in The Ocean State Review!
May 2024 – Michelle Recommends
Michelle recommends Morgan Parker’s You Get What You Pay For in The Common’s Friday Reads!
October 2, 2023 – Spare to be Published by Barrow Street Press
Barrow Street Press announced their 2023 Prose Contest winner, chosen by contest judge Mary Cappello. Spare by Michelle Lewis will be published in Fall 2024 as part of the Barrow Street Prose Series. Michelle’s poetry book, Animul/Flame (Conduit Books & Ephemera), was the winner of Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize chosen by Bob Hicok and was a finalist for the 2020 Maine Literary Award and winner of the 2020 Midwest Literary Award.
About Spare:
Spare is a work of creative nonfiction that weaves lyric prose with personal history, research, and documents. It aims to explore issues surrounding class and marginalized populations side by side with the struggles of personal and social accountability. Spare crosses genres, toggling between formally diverse sections until they layer upon each other to create a momentum that allows the narrative voice to speak in a unified way to complex themes.
February 11th, 2023 ~ The Bookey Readings at the Bailey
Featuring Michelle Lewis and Dennis Camire
39 Bowdoin Street, Winthrop, ME.
3:00 PM
Michelle Lewis is the recipient of the 2018 Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize chosen by Bob Hicok. She is the author of Animul/Flame (Conduit Books & Ephemera), and two chapbooks, Who Will Be Frenchy?(dancing girl press) and The Desire Line (Moon Pie Press). Her poetry has appeared in Bennington Review, Indiana Review, Copper Nickel, Hunger Mountain, and Denver Quarterly among others. She has written essays and reviews for journals such as Gettysburg Review, Rain Taxi, and Electric Lit. Her lyric memoir, Spare, was a semifinalist for the 2021 Autumn House Nonfiction Prize. She has received writing fellowships at Vermont Studio Center, Monson Arts, and The Studios in Key West, and most recently, she was a resident at Studio Faire in Nérac, France.
Dennis Camire is a writing instructor at Central Maine Community College. His poems have appeared in Poetry East, Spoon River Review, The Mid-American Review and other journals and anthologies. An Intro Journal Award Winner and Pushcart Prize nominee, his most recent book is Combed by Crows, Deerbrook Editions. Of the collection. X. J. Kennedy says: “Dennis Camire is an up and comer… The poems engage us with their promising titles, and deliver with skill and energy.” Of Franco-American origin, he lives in an A-frame in West Paris, Maine.
March 30, 2022 – Studio Faire Welcomes Michelle for the Month of April.
September 17, 2021 — Michelle’s book Spare was selected as a semifinalist for the Autumn House 2021 Nonfiction Book Prize.
December 7, 2020 — Poetry Reading: Key West, Florida
A Poetry Reading with Michelle Lewis, AIR
Monday, December 7 at 6pm
Free.
(Limited capacity. Attendees must pre-register.)
Location: Hugh’s View rooftop garden, 533 Eaton Street
October 10, 2020 — Animul/Flame is reviewed by José Edmundo Ocampo Reyes in October RHINO Reviews.
October 1, 2020 — See You in The Keys…
June 27, 2020 – Michelle’s book. Animul/Flame has won the Midwest Book Award for Debut Poetry!
June 27, 2020 – Animul/Flame was reviewed in The Kenyon Review. William Billiter says, “Michelle Lewis’s Animul/Flame is a self-assured, keenly wrought debut, bespattered with blood and wit and heartbreak.”
May 7, 2020 – Animul/Flame has been chosen as a finalist for a Book Award for Poetry from the 2020 Maine Literary Awards. Read about the finalists here.
May 6, 2020 – Animul/Flame is a finalist for the 2020 Midwest Book Awards for Debut Poetry Book! Read the release.
Our Debut Poetry finalists are "Dear Descendent" by Carol Masters and "Animal/Flame" by Michelle Lewis. @conduitmagazine @chicpoetics
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.#publishing #bookawards #midwestbookawards #mipa #poetry #debutpoetry pic.twitter.com/O9mgAJ3HRk— MidwestBookAwards (@MIPABookAwards) May 6, 2020
October 21, 2019 – Read Unspeakable: A Conversation Between Michelle Lewis & Jeffrey Morgan published in Rain Taxi. Michelle talks to press-mate and Minds On Fire prize winner Jeffrey Morgan about his book The Last Note Becomes Its Listener and shares insights about her book Animul/Flame.
April 11, 2019 – Small Press Distribution has listed Animul/Flame as a SPD Recommends book.
March 29, 2019 – FRESH WORDS! Join Michelle and Jeffrey Morgan, Winner of the Minds On Fire Open Book Prize, at the Conduit Booth T7024 on Friday, March 29 at 11-12 at AWP in Portland, Oregon where they will be signing their books!
12/19/18 – Animul/Flame has been chosen by Bob Hicok as the Winner of the 2018 Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize for Conduit Books & Ephemera. Learn more about Conduit Books and the Marystina Santiestevan First Book Prize.
9/15/18 – Pleased to announce that Michelle’s manuscript, Animul/Flame, was a finalist for the Inlandia Institute/Hillary Gravendyk Book Prize!
6/17/18 – Michelle’s manuscript, Animul/Flame, was a finalist for the Marsh Hawk Press Poetry Prize. Read the announcement here.
8/26/17 – Up the Staircase Quarterly has nominated Michelle’s poem Drowning for Best of the Net 2017. View the nominees.
5/30/17 – Michelle’s manuscript, Animul/Flame, was a semi-finalist for the Ahsahta Press Sawtooth Poetry Prize. Kudos to all! Read the announcement here.
4/18/17 – Michelle’s manuscript, Animul/Flame, was a finalist for the 2017 Emily Dickinson First Book competition awarded by the Poetry Foundation. Though finalists are not publicized, this statement is authorized by the Poetry Foundation—woot!
3/8/17 – Michelle’s manuscript, Animul/Flame, has been selected as a semi-finalist for the 2017 Perugia Press Prize, an award for the best first or second book of poetry by a woman. Congratulations all! Read the announcement.
8/1/16 – Michelle will be a featured performer at the Belfast Poetry Festival in October in collaboration with Maine performance and installation artist Ariel Hall. This curated show of collaborative projects between poets and visual and/or performing artists in Belfast galleries and other venues is a highlight of Belfast’s popular annual festival. Schedule TBA. Learn more, submit, attend, or volunteer.
