Portland is a port city and the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maine and the seat of Cumberland County. Portland's population was 68,408 in April 2020. The Greater Portland metropolitan area is home to over half a million people, the 104th-largest metropolitan area in the United States. Portland's economy relies mostly on the service sector and tourism. The Old Port is known for its nightlife and 19th-century architecture. The marine industry plays an important role in the city's economy, with an active waterfront that supports fishing and commercial shipping. The Port of Portland is the second-largest tonnage seaport in New England.
John Preston was an American author of gay erotica and an editor of gay nonfiction anthologies.
"Down East", also "Downeast", is a term for parts of eastern coastal New England and Canada, particularly the U.S. state of Maine and Canada's Maritime Provinces, an area that closely corresponds to the historical French territory of Acadia. The phrase apparently derives from sailing terminology: sailors from western ports sailed downwind toward the east to reach the area.
Theodora Sarah Orne Jewett was an American novelist, short story writer and poet, best known for her local color works set along or near the southern coast of Maine. Jewett is recognized as an important practitioner of American literary regionalism.
John Neal was an American writer, critic, editor, lecturer, and activist. Considered both eccentric and influential, he delivered speeches and published essays, novels, poems, and short stories between the 1810s and 1870s in the United States and Great Britain, championing American literary nationalism and regionalism in their earliest stages. Neal advanced the development of American art, fought for women's rights, advocated the end of slavery and racial prejudice, and helped establish the American gymnastics movement.
The Portland Press Herald is a daily newspaper based in South Portland, Maine with a statewide readership. The Press Herald mainly serves southern Maine and is focused on the greater metropolitan area of Portland.
Portland Magazine, also known as Portland Monthly since its inception, is a monthly magazine based in Maine.
The Diocese of Portland is an ecclesiastical territory, or diocese, of the Catholic Church for the entire state of Maine in the United States. Its mother church is the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception in Portland. Robert Deeley was installed as bishop in 2014.
Aaron Hamburger is an American writer best known for his short story collection The View from Stalin's Head (2004) and novels Faith for Beginners (2005) and Nirvana Is Here (2019).
Malaga Island is a 41-acre (170,000 m2) island at the mouth of the New Meadows River in Casco Bay, Maine. It was the site of an interracial community from the Civil War until 1911, when the residents were forcibly evicted from the island. It is now an uninhabited reserve owned and managed by the Maine Coast Heritage Trust. Public daytime access is permitted.
The Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing is a graduate program in creative writing based at the University of Southern Maine in Portland, Maine, United States. Stonecoast enrolls approximately 100 students in four major genres: creative nonfiction, fiction, poetry, and popular fiction. Other areas of student interest, including literary translation, performance, writing for stage and screen, writing Nature, and cross-genre writing, are pursued as elective options. Students also choose one track that focuses an intensive research project in their third semester from among these categories: craft, creative collaboration, literary theory, publishing, social justice/community service, and teaching/pedagogy. Stonecoast is one of only two graduate creative writing programs in the country offering a degree in popular fiction. It is accredited through the New England Association of Schools and Colleges (NEASC).
Bill Roorbach is an American novelist, short story and nature writer, memoirist, journalist, blogger and critic.
Agnes Bushell is an American fiction writer and teacher. She has published steadily since her work first appeared in print in the mid-1970s. She is the author of fourteen novels and innumerable essays and book reviews most of which have appeared in Maine newspapers and publications, including Down East Magazine. She has taught literature and writing at Maine College of Art, the San Francisco Art Institute, and the University of Southern Maine, and lives in Portland, Maine with her husband, James Bushell, a criminal defense lawyer.
Colin Woodard is an American journalist, writer and historian known for his books American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America (2011), The Republic of Pirates (2007), and The Lobster Coast (2004), a cultural and environmental history of coastal Maine.
Emma B. Dunham was an American poet and teacher of the long nineteenth century. She began writing for publication when very young, and continued to write for newspapers and magazines throughout her life. Some of her work was republished in Europe.
Eliot Cutler is a former American lawyer who was an Independent candidate in Maine's 2010 and 2014 gubernatorial races. In 2010, he placed second in a multi-way race, receiving 208,270 votes, equaling 35.9%, narrowly losing to Republican Paul LePage. In 2014 he garnered only 8.4%, placing third behind both the Democratic candidate as well as LePage, who was re-elected with 48.2% of the vote. Both times, he was claimed to be a spoiler for the Democratic candidate. In March 2022, Cutler was arrested and charged with four counts of possessing child pornography.
The Hollow Reed was a vegetarian restaurant in the Old Port district of Portland, Maine that opened on February 7, 1974, and closed in 1981, and is cited for its influence on the city's notable restaurant culture.
The Yankee was one of the first cultural publications in the United States, founded and edited by John Neal (1793–1876), and published in Portland, Maine as a weekly periodical and later converted to a longer, monthly format. Its two-year run concluded at the end of 1829. The magazine is considered unique for its independent journalism at the time.
Morgan Talty is a Penobscot writer and an assistant professor of English in Creative Writing and Native American and Contemporary Literature at the University of Maine in Orono. He won the 2023 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize.
Lael Warren Morgan was an American journalist, author and historian known for her books about Alaska's history and people.
