Save the date: This year’s Word festival will take place October 23 through 26

Writers Meet and Mingle, July 16

You’re invited! Join the Word community for camaraderie and conversation. No agenda, just talking writing, reading, and life. Order a drink or some nosh and settle in with like-minded friends, new and old.

Gather, a long-time Maine Writers and Publishers Association program, offers writers at all levels of experience six opportunities a year to get together and takes place simultaneously at various sites around the state on the third Wednesday of alternate months. Gather events are not open readings, manuscript exchanges or organized writing-prompt sessions, but offer opportunities for the literary-minded to meet and plan any of those things and more.

We’ll meet at 6 p.m., Wednesday July 16 at Marlintini’s Bar and Grill, 83 Mines Road, Blue Hill
No reservations are necessary.

May We Have Your Words?

The 2025 Word Festival Writing Contest

Word, in collaboration with The Stonecoast Review, is thrilled to offer an opportunity for writers to share their best work of fiction, fifteen hundred (1500) words or less. We especially encourage aspiring, unpublished creatives. For more information, click here.

Tuesday Night Live:
Susan Morrison and Daniel Zalewski on SNL, The New Yorker, and more

July 29, 7 p.m. at Working Loose in Blue Hill

This was a year for anniversaries: Saturday Night Live turned 50, and The New Yorker celebrated its first century. To mark the occasion, Word and Working Loose, the Blue Hill “concept shop” and art gallery, will host a conversation between two New Yorker editors, one of whom has written the definitive biography of SNL founder Lorne Michaels.  

At 7 p.m. on Tuesday, July 29, Susan Morrison, New Yorker articles editor and author of Lorne: The Man Who Invented Saturday Night Live, will be interviewed by New Yorker executive editor Daniel Zalewski. The conversation will take place at Working Loose, 49 Main Street, Blue Hill.

Lorne came out in February and instantly became a New York Times bestseller. According to the show-biz periodical Variety, “Readers are treated to the Holy Grail for any journalist hoping to crack the show: a warts-and-all week in the life of SNL, where Morrison gets to see the real process of putting the thing together.”

Before joining The New Yorker, Morrison was editor in chief of the New York Observer and an original editor of SPY magazine. Zalewski was an editor at The New York Times Magazine and Lingua Francabefore becoming The New Yorker’s features editor.

Thanks to everyone who joined us for Word 2024!

Got a minute to take a survey?

What did you think of 2024? How we can make 2025 better?

Many thanks to the delicious sponsors donating to the
Taste of the Blue Hill Peninsula
benefit reception

Aragosta Barncastle
The Blue Hill Coop The Blue Hill Wine Shop
Brooklin Candy Company
The Brooklin Inn Bucklyn Coffee
El El Frijoles Hannaford Supermarket
Marlintini’s Bar & Grill Morning Moon Café
Siam Sky

Word’s First Writing Contest Winners Announced

Every October, Word brings together readers, writers, and tellers of tales to celebrate the written and spoken word—fiction and non-fiction, children’s literature, poetry, drama, nonfiction, storytelling and more.  The festival takes place in Blue Hill, Maine where a literary tradition of great thinkers and artists extends over two hundred years and includes Jonathan Fisher, Mary Ellen Chase, and E.B. White to name a few. Many writers continue to call the Blue Hill peninsula home as does a large community of passionate readers. To celebrate this rich heritage, Word presents three days of author appearances featuring Pulitzer Prize-winning and bestselling authors, as well as local luminaries, a poetry showcase, writing workshops, panel discussions, school events, and spoken word performances to sold out crowds. 

Past speakers include Jonathan Lethem, Jennifer Egan, Lily King, Phuc Tran, Joe Hill, A.O. Scott, Susan Choi, Monica Wood, Kerri Arsenault, and Stuart Kestenbaum.

Word is made possible by the generous support of many community businesses and partner organizations as well as individual donors and volunteers. We are deeply grateful to our fiscal sponsor, Blue Hill Community Development, and to all sponsors and supporters of Blue Hill’s literary festival. Partners include WERU-FM, the Blue Hill Public Library, and Blue Hill Books.

Contact Us

word.bluehill@gmail.com
facebook.com/Word.BlueHill/

Word is a non-profit organization with fiscal sponsorship from Blue Hill Community Development