MLA Annual Conference 2024

The Maine Library Association annual conference will be held at the Sunday River resort at the Grand Summit Hotel in Newry, ME

Monday, May 20, and Tuesday, May 21. 

This year's conference theme is Libraries: Beacons of Democracy

PRE-CONFERENCE WORKSHOP ON SUNDAY, MAY 19TH, from 11:30am - 4:00pm

Let’s Talk About It! Empowering Librarians for Controversial Public Sessions and One-to-One Conversations. Facilitated by Craig Freshley. CLICK HERE to view full details and register for this event.

Monday's 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's 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.