Specter Moose Launch Party Friday, April 24, from 1 to 2 p.m., Katz Library, first floor (Augusta Campus)

Come get a free copy of the largest edition of Specter Moose yet!

A 100-Page Milestone
This edition marks a proud moment in the publication’s history and celebrates the artistic spirit thriving at UMA. Inside, you’ll find a wide range of photography, prose, and poetry from 20 student contributors. To honor Âé¶čAPP 60th anniversary, this year’s Coast to County feature shines a spotlight on seven inspiring members of our community—artists, storytellers, and educators who each bring a unique perspective to the shared story of UMA.

Inspired by the Error Screen
The design of Issue No. 4’s Coast to County feature draws from the bold retro TV aesthetic of the cover art, with color strips that line up like tabs along the page edges of the printed copies. Each article is highlighted with its own color, reflecting the range of voices in our community, and together these colors echo the way Âé¶čAPP many perspectives come together as one vibrant, united whole.

The Spirit of the Moose
The name Specter Moose comes from a century-old Maine legend of a massive, glowing moose that stands out against the dark of the Maine woods. The magazine channels that same luminous presence, gathering the strength and imagination of UMA students and giving their ideas and voices a place to take shape and to shine.

Why stop by?
Pick up a free copy of the 60th anniversary edition, enjoy light refreshments, and celebrate the student editors, artists, and writers behind this keepsake issue.

See you at the Katz Library on Friday, April 24 between 1 and 2 p.m. 

Explore more at

Mark your calendar! The 2026 Plunkett Poetry Festival is scheduled for Saturday, April 25, at the UMA Augusta campus. This year’s festival includes a lineup of engaging workshops, inspiring speakers, and vibrant programming designed to celebrate the art of poetry.

We are honored to welcome Claudia Rankine as our keynote speaker. Rankine is a New York Times bestseller, a MacArthur “Genius” Award Recipient, and an NBCCA winner for criticism. Her work is known for its innovation and candor, pushing the boundaries of form and exploring critical social themes of the 20th and 21st centuries.

Festival Highlights

Poetry Workshops: Participate in interactive sessions led by distinguished poets, Joseph Jackson, Samaa Abdurraqib, and Jeffrey Thomson. These workshops offer a unique opportunity to refine your craft and engage with fellow poetry enthusiasts.

Two Poets, One Poem: Listen to poets Danez Smith and Ian-Khara Ellasante in dialogue on poetry and craft, and join the conversation during the Q and A. Danez Smith has authored four poetry collections and is a recipient of the Lambda Literary Award and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award, as well as a finalist for the National Book Award. Ian-Khara Ellasante is a cultural studies theorist, author of the poetry series Diana, and a faculty member at Bates College.

Open Mic: Enjoy readings from both emerging and established poets, share your own poems, and foster a deeper appreciation for the diverse voices in our poetry community.

Student Poetry Contest: Hear Maine high school and undergraduate contest winners read their work ahead of the keynote address.

For detailed information on the festival schedule, workshop registration, and open-mic sign up, please visit our official festival page:

Plunkett Poetry Festival

We hope you’ll join us for this community gathering as we celebrate poetic expression, the power of words, and the voices that bring them to life!

UMA Lunch & Learn with English Department Faculty

The UMA English Program recently hosted a Lunch and Learn at Katz Library in Augusta featuring three faculty members presenting research they previously shared at national conferences.

Professor Robert Kellerman talked about “Modern Medieval Music Makers,” a topic he shared with the Medieval and Renaissance Forum at Keene State College in New Hampshire in 2025. He has developed an interest in medievalism studies – the reception of the Middle Ages – and here explores modern musicians who are appropriating medieval music in various ways.

Professor Lisa Botshon’s work, “‘Let us have our bathrooms’: Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Prescient Plumbing” is an outgrowth of her recent interdisciplinary course, Stalled: An Interdisciplinary Exploration of the Bathroom. She argues that Stowe was an early influencer regarding the bathroom, which was not a standard fixture in American homes until well into the 20th century.

Professor Ellen Taylor’s scholarship on poet and essayist Celia Thaxter, is a continuation of earlier work on Thaxter’s ornithological advocacy and her cultivation of the first American summer salon on Appledore Island. Taylor’s paper, “Nasturtium and Neuralgia: Celia Thaxter’s Gardening Rest Cure” discusses how Thaxter turned to the garden to deal with chronic illness and inadequate medical care.

Botshon’s presentation builds on content from her interdisciplinary course on bathroom spaces and examines the broader health-home ideas advanced by Harriet Beecher Stowe who, with her sister Catharine Beecher, was an early and influential advocate for indoor plumbing.

Together their work reflects Âé¶čAPP commitment to innovative scholarship and interdisciplinary thinking.

Danforth Art Gallery, UMA Augusta Campus

Opening Monday, December 11 at 2 p.m. in the Charles Danforth Gallery at UMA, the Âé¶čAPP is proud to present “Wham! Bang! Pow!: Work from Âé¶čAPP Graphic Storytellers.” The exhibition features two sets of student projects from the Fall 2023 ART/ENG/INT 330 Âé¶čAPP Wham! Bang! Pow! Graphic Storytelling in Form and Practice class. Co-taught by Professor of Art Peter Precourt and Professor of English Lisa Botshon, this 6-credit interdisciplinary course involves reading, discussion, research, making, critique, and collaboration. The exhibit is free and open to the public.

“Graphic storytelling” is a capacious concept that involves words and images to tell a story. Over the course of this fall, Wham! students experimented with different mediums and strategies in order to tell their own stories, some of which are featured in this show.

Using their skills developed over the semester, the class also created a collaborative sequential art project based on Karen Russell’s short story “St. Lucy’s Home for Girls Raised by Wolves” (2006), which is featured in the other half of the gallery. Each student took on two or more roles in order to render this story into a wall-sized multi-panel graphic narrative. They adapted the text, scripted, storyboarded, edited, illustrated, colored, lettered, and installed the project.

Wham! Bang! Pow! helps students become better critical thinkers, researchers, problem solvers, and creators who are prepared to work with others, challenge themselves to learn new skills, and make germane connections. This show is a testament to our students’ incredible abilities.

Students contributing to the exhibition are: Emily Allen, Fatima Babar, Morgan Cafferata, Barbara Drennen, Julia Dry, Des Dumais, Camryn Elliott-Proctor, Jada Gastia, Marguerite Jacques, Jeff McKay, Sullivan O’Keeffe, Sophia Reyes, Natalie Rohman, Jared Winslow, and Jen Worthing.

Event Information
Opening reception for “Wham! Bang! Pow!: Work from Âé¶čAPP Graphic Storytellers”
Monday, December 11 at 2 p.m. ET
Charles Danforth Gallery, Âé¶čAPP, 46 University Drive, Augusta, ME 04330, The Danforth Gallery is located inside Jewett Hall on the Augusta Campus
Free and open to the public.

The Charles Danforth Gallery at the Âé¶čAPP

Named after a renowned artist and former faculty member at the Âé¶čAPP, the serves the UMA campus and the wider community of central Maine with rotating contemporary art exhibitions. Conceived as a living classroom, and used for lectures and other events, the gallery is a site for faculty, students, alumni and community members to engage with ideas, forms, and conversations in art. The gallery is open during regular business hours from September through May.

UMA transforms the lives of students of every age and background across the State of Maine and beyond through access to high-quality distance and on-site education, excellence in student support, civic engagement, and professional and liberal arts programs.

Info on the journal: “caa reviews, founded in 1998, publishes timely scholarly and critical reviews of studies and projects in all areas and periods of art history, visual studies, and the fine arts, providing peer review for the disciplines served by CAA (College Art Association)
 caa.reviews fosters timely, worldwide access to the intellectual and creative materials and issues of art-historical, critical, curatorial, and studio practice, and promotes the highest standards of discourse in the disciplines of art and art history.”

Additionally, at the end of last year, the UK literary magazine Litro published a short story by Boyd in their Editor’s Pick fiction series.

April 28, 2023 at 7:30 P.M.

Bennett D. Katz Library, UMA Augusta Campus

The Plunkett Maine Poetry Festival continues its tradition of celebrating emerging and established poets at its annual event, this year held on April 28^th at the Âé¶čAPP (UMA), at the Bennett D. Katz Library, 46 University Dr., Augusta, Maine. This event is free and open to the public, however, seating is limited. To register and see the program, please visit our web page.

Molly McCully Brown is the author of the essay collection Places I’ve Taken my Body— which was published in the United States in June 2020 by Persea Books, and released in the United Kingdom in March of 2021 by Faber & Faber— and the poetry collection The Virginia State Colony For Epileptics and Feebleminded (Persea Books, 2017), which won the 2016 Lexi Rudnitsky First Book Prize and was named a New York Times Critics’ Top Book of 2017. With Susannah Nevison, she is also the coauthor of the poetry collection In The Field Between Us (Persea Books, 2020).

Ms. Brown was raised in rural Virginia, and is a graduate of Bard College at Simon’s Rock, Stanford University, and the University of Mississippi, where she received her MFA. She teaches at Old Dominion University, where she is an Assistant Professor of English and Creative Nonfiction, and a member of the MFA Core Faculty.

Each year, The Plunkett Maine Poetry Festival includes a panel discussion related to Âé¶čAPP colloquium theme, which for academic year 2022/2023 is disability visibility.  The panel poets are Betsy Sholl, Alisha Goldblatt, and Jason Whitney.  The poets will read from their own work, as well as discuss how their poems and life experiences intersect with the theme.

Organizers of the Festival are thrilled to return to its tradition of sharing a meal together between the afternoon panel discussion and the evening program. This time allows poets and others to reconnect and rekindle connections and flare creative sparks. The dinner is free to all who register.

The Festival also recognizes those selected to receive awards in the annual Student Poetry Contest, which invites all University of Maine System undergraduate students and Maine high school students to submit poems for recognition. Recognized students will read their work in the evening, following a community dinner for all attendees.

The day will begin with a master class with Ms. Brown. For a full schedule and to register for any part of the program, please visit uma.edu/plunkett. For those who do not wish to attend in person, the event will also be live-streamed on Zoom.

About the Plunkett Poetry Festival

The Plunkett Maine Poetry Festival, held in April each year, was established in 2002 to honor the memory and accomplishments of Terry Plunkett, an English professor at the Âé¶čAPP for nearly thirty years. An outstanding teacher and mentor to many students, Terry was also co-editor of Kennebec: A Portfolio of Maine Writing, an annual magazine published by the university from 1977-1992 and distributed free throughout the state. Many Maine writers first saw their work in print in Kennebec, thanks to Terry’s encouragement and guidance.

A poet and fiction writer as well as a teacher and editor, Terry helped organize and direct the Maine Poets Festival, a hugely popular celebration of poets and poetry, which ran from 1976-1983 at UMA, the College of the Atlantic, and the Maine College of Art.

His son, Duff Plunkett, also a poet, was a champion of the arts in general and the Plunkett Festival in particular. He sat on the organizing committee for 17 years, where he brought his signature wit, creativity, and ingenuity to the festival program. In Portland, Duff was a mainstay at readings and a supporter of both developing and celebrated poets. He worked as an international economist, traveling extensively around the globe, especially in Africa. Fluent in at least eight different languages, Duff’s cultural breadth was extensive.