Maine Poet Laureate Selected for Reading at National Book Festival in Washington, D.C.

Wesley McNair, the Poet Laureate of Maine, has been selected as one of five state poets laureate to give a poetry reading at the National Book Festival, in Washington, DC.

The National Book Festival, organized and sponsored by the Library of Congress, will be held on the National Mall on September 24 and 25. President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama are the honorary chairs of the event and will be in attendance. Elizabeth Sinclair of the Maine Humanities Council will introduce Mr. McNair.

A crowd of over 150,000 is expected, as well as 100 authors and illustrators, including Toni Morrison, Russell Banks, Garrison Keillor, Mary Gordon and Sherman Alexie. The Festival will begin on September 23 with a dinner for authors at the Library of Congress, followed by an author breakfast on September 24 at the “Washington Post.”

Wesley McNair is Poet Laureate of Maine and has authored or edited 18 books, including poetry, essays and anthologies. His most recent volume of verse is “Lovers of the Lost: New & Selected Poems” (David R. Godine). His poetry has appeared in the Best American Poetry, the Pushcart Prize annual, the Writer’s Almanac, NPR’s Weekend Edition and more than 60 anthologies. He has held grants from the Fulbright and Guggenheim foundations, two Rockefeller fellowships and two NEA grants in creative writing. Selected for a United States Artists Fellowship in 2006, the current US Poet Laureate, Philip Levine, has called Mr. McNair, “one of the great storytellers of contemporary poetry.”

For more information: 207-228-8263 or director@mainewriters.org