About - Annaliese Jakimides - Author, Journalist, Poet

Anna J 7 READING, 3/29/24 @ 6 pm: Ellsworth Public Library, Ellsworth, ME, in conjunction with the anthology Rivers of Ink: Literary Reflections on the Penobscot.

READING, 4/25/24 @ 5:30 pm: Poets/Speak!, Bangor Public Library, Bangor, ME

READING & CONVERSATION, 5/14/24 @ 7 pm: Littorally Alive, online, with writer Agnes Bushell, publisher of Littoral Books

READING, 5/16/24 @ 6 pm: Curtis Memorial Library, Brunswick, ME, in conjunction with the anthology Rivers of Ink: Literary Reflections on the Penobscot.

“Annaliese Jakimides is a singular talent. Her writing is rich, spare, always thoughtful, sometimes wrenching, and deeply honest. I am a huge fan!” …Christina Baker Kline, New York Times bestselling author of Orphan Train, A Piece of the World and The Exiles, among others

“What a voice Annaliese Jakimides has, what tone and urgency, beautiful imagery, lyricism and tightness, integrity and craft in every essay, each poem, every single line.” …Laure-Anne Bosselaar, Santa Barbara poet laureate and author of many collections, including The Hour Between Dog and Wolf, Small Gods of Grief, and Rooms Remembered

“Annaliese Jakimides’s enjambments are a lyric all within themselves and how she juxtaposes words creates the voluminous possibilities of language that many poets fail to recognize, let alone, execute.” …Randall Horton author of Dead Weight, Hook, and {289-128}: Poems and the recipient of the Gwendolyn Brooks Poetry Award, the Bea Gonzalez Poetry Award, and the American Book Award in Oral Literature as a member of the performance group Heroes Are Gang Leaders

“Such startling and wonderful work!” …Alix Kates Shulman, author of Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen, Drinking the Rain, Burning Questions: A Novel, and more

EVERY DAY, ANNALIESE JAKIMIDES shows up. She shows up to write about people and place, about the narrative of our lives—in prose and poetry, the world of the real and the world of the imaginary.

Her prose and poetry have been published in many journals and magazines, including Beloit Poetry Journal, Utne Reader, Decor Maine, and GQ, as well as in anthologies such as Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Hunger, and Family; This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men and Women; Rivers of Ink: Literary Reflections on the Penobscot; The Essential Hip Mama, About Face, and A Dangerous New World. Cited in national competitions, most recently as a finalist for the Stephen Dunn Poetry Prize, and nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net, her work has also been broadcast on NPR and MPBN. She has been a finalist twice in both poetry and nonfiction for the Maine Literary Awards. Along with Troy Casa, she is the cofounder of the Belfast Poetry Festival in Belfast, Maine.

She has had the privilege of interviewing many artists, musicians, and writers, including Tess Gerritsen, Harold Garde, Noel Paul Stookey, Lois Dodd, Daniel Minter, Jamie Wyeth, Ashley Bryan, Alex Katz, and Melissa Sweet. She is the editor of the annual monograph series of Haystack Mountain School of Crafts as well as the editor of Vision & Legacy: Celebrating the Architecture of Haystack. She facilitates life conversations discussions through the lens of books and has taught workshops about writing, parenting, the vegetarian life, and life in general.

Years ago, Jakimides traded her childhood city (Boston) for a town with less than 200 residents in northern Maine (Mount Chase), where she raised almost everything her family ate, pumped water by hand, and learned how to cohabit with moose and fox, eagles and blackflies and the extraordinary people of a small town on the edge of Baxter State Park. She now lives in an old high school in downtown Bangor, Maine, and writes in a closet.

A SAMPLING OF PUBLICATIONS

INVISIBILITY, THE CONDITION OF THINGS [The Memory Palace] … LETTING GO: DOWN BY THE RIVER [Rivers of Ink: Literary Reflections on the Penobscot] … SOUNDING HOME [Scavengers] … FROM THE WATCHBIRD ESTRELA [The Ekphrastic Review] … I TELL HENRY THE PLATE IS RED [Breaking Bread: Essays from New England on Food, Family, and Hunger] … HER.STORY [Waterwheel Review] … SKINN(MM)ING IN SEVEN CYCLES [A Dangerous New World: Maine Voices on the Climate Crisis] … LAST MOMENTS LAST [Poems from Here, Maine Public] … BODY SPEAK [Scavengers] … NO LONGER [The Ekphrastic Review] … INTO A UNIVERSE MINUS STRIPPED HEARTS AND MASS GRAVES [Maintenant 17: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art] … THE MARINES AND LOVE [Utne Reader, Hip Mama] … PAYING ATTENTION TO THE SILVER LINING [This I Believe: NPR; A Mother’s Gift, a recording curated by Liane Hansen; This I Believe II: More Personal Philosophies of Remarkable Men & Women] … OUR WORTHY STORIES [The Writing Self] … LAST WORD: LIFE ON TRACK [one of 75 back-page personal essays published in Bangor Metro] … LOSING FACE [About Face: Women Write about What They See When They Look in the Mirror] … BLUE [Maine Review] … TURNING [Hip Mama; The Essential Hip Mama] … CHOICE [Room to Grow] … WORK IN PROGRESS: KATZ’S EYE [one of 75 arts interviews published in Bangor Metro, including Maine creatives such as Alex Katz, Richard Russo, Lois Dodd, Jamie Wyeth, Melissa Sweet, Alan Bray, Cynthia Voigt, Ashley Bryan, Tess Gerritsen, Noel Paul Stookey, Mary Barnes, and, obviously, many more] … FISHING FOR LIFE [Hip Mama] … GRATITUDE BANK [Cabildo Quarterly] … PERENNIAL [Country Journal] … 400 MILLION YEARS AT RISK [GQ Italy] … FLOWERS UNBIDDEN [The MacGuffin] … IN THE SKY [Morning Motions: Evening Exits, 200+ literary essays about living on the land published in The Houlton Pioneer Times] … INTERSTICES: FOUND & FORMED, and more [Maine Home & Design] … STALLED [The Long Meanwhile: Stories of Arrival & Departure] … AN EYE FOR THE UNSEEN, and more [Décor Maine] … NANCY CUNNINGHAM DOES ROOSEVELT, and more [Bangor Daily News] … ROUTE 11 INTO A NEW WORLD, and more [Maine Times] … SWEETNESS [Scavengers] … LEAVING OUT [Scavengers] … FLOWERS [The MacGuffin] … BURNING DELPHINIUMS [Southeast Review] … THE LONG MARRIAGE [The Ekphrastic Review] … ISOLATION ASSIGNMENT [Wait: Poems from the Pandemic] … ONE AFTERNOON [Coastal Companion] … SPRINGTIME; NAMING BEGUN [Enough! Poems of Resistance and Protest] … UNBEARABLE FRAGMENTS THE ONLY WAY OUT [Maintenant 16: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art] … MY OCEAN AS THE BLIND MAN SEES IT [Off the Coast; Deep Water, Portland Press Herald] … THE LAST NIGHT/CALLED BACK [Deep Water, Portland Press Herald] … DRAGON OF LIGHT IN THE WATER [Friends of Acadia Journal] … SHUTTERING MY BOY [Diner Journal] … A SOLDIER’S DICTIONARY: THE LETTER S [Consequence] … PHOTOGRAPHS RECEIVED LATE ON A SATURDAY AFTER THE POSSIBILITY OF QUESTIONS HAS PASSED [Animus] … SURRENDER [Handsome Journal] … REUNION AT THE VIETNAM WOMEN’S MEMORIAL DEDICATION [Beloit Poetry Journal; The Other Side of Sorrow] … MAPPING; MOTION [The Plague Papers] … BETTY SHABAZZ DIED TODAY [Maine Review] … PUTTING OUT [Puckerbrush Review; Port City Poems] … WOMEN WEAR APRONS [Off the Coast] … WEATHER REPORT [Maine Review] … LAST PRINTS [Reflections of Maine] … FROM THIS SEPTEMBER DAY [Café Review; The Other Side of Sorrow] … FISH IN THE MORNING [Maine Women’s Journal] … SEA LIONS ON PIER 39, SAN FRANCISCO [Paramour] … SCAFFOLDING [Animus] … REQUEST FROM THE COUNSELOR [Cabildo Quarterly] … THROUGH THIS THISTLE OF VIRUS [Maintenant 15: A Journal of Contemporary Dada Writing & Art] … BRADFORD: THE HEART OF A SMALL TOWN, and more [Echoes Magazine] ET AL