Freeport Folio is proud to announce the next event in its quarterly open mic poetry series with a special evening featuring acclaimed Portland Poet Laureate Maya Williams.

The event will take place Thursday, July 24, 2025 at 7:00-8:30 PM in the Bradley Room at Freeport Community Services, 53 Depot Street, Freeport. The event is free and open to the public with open mic sign-ups available at the door.  We welcome students, seasoned poets, first-time readers, and those who want to bask in the power of poetry and the spoken word.

About our Featured Reader Maya Williams (ey/they/she) is a religious Black multiracial nonbinary suicide survivor who served as Portland, ME's seventh poet laureate for a July 2021 to July 2024 term. Eir debut full length poetry collection Judas & Suicide (Game Over Books, 2023) was selected as a finalist for a New England Book Award. 

Their second full length poetry collection, Refused a Second Date (Harbor Editions, 2023), was selected as a finalist for a Maine Literary Award. They won two chapbook prizes: What's So Wrong with a Pity Party Anyway? won Garden Party Collective's Chapbook Prize in 2024 selected by mónica teresa ortiz; and Feminine Morbidity won The Headlight Review's Chapbook Prize selected by Olatunde Osinaike in 2025. Maya is also proud to have contributed prose to venues such as The Rumpus, Black Girl Nerds, LGBTQ Nation, The Daily Beast, Honey Literary, and more. You can follow more of Maya's work atmayawilliamspoet.com.