Wesley McNair

is the Poet Laureate of Maine and the author of nineteen books, including most recently, The Words I Chose: A Memoir of Family and Poetry and Lovers of the Lost: New & Selected Poems. He has won grants from the Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Guggenheim foundations and two NEA grants in creative writing. He has been invited to read his poetry by the Library of Congress, and was chosen as one of five state poets laureate to read at the National Book Festival in Washington, DC, co-chaired by President Barack Obama and Michele Obama.