Parable Path Discussion Project

What if community is the key to our resilience?

**Please note that the March 14th session has been rescheduled to March 21st due to the snow storm**

The Lewiston Public Library will host a three-session Discussion Project this spring entitled “What if community is the key to our resilience?” facilitated by Samara Cole Doyon. The program will focus on The Water Knife by Paolo Bacigalupi, Vigil Harbor by Julia Glass, and Parable of the Sower by Octavia Butler. Participants will have the opportunity to engage with each other and the big questions that impact all of us. What if humanity is both its own nemesis and savior? What if we read these texts as both a parable about our present and a warning for our future? What if the future is ours to collectively create?

The group will meet in LPL’s Jeanne Couture Room from 5:30 – 7 PM on March 21st and April 4th, and culminate on April 25th in a tri-community discussion of Parable of the Sower, bringing together groups at Bangor Public Library, Curtis Memorial Library in Brunswick, and Lewiston Public Library. This program is free. Books are provided. Space is limited.

For more information and to register, please contact the Library’s Adult & Teen Services Department at 513-3135 or lplreference@lewistonmaine.gov.

Author and facilitator Samara Cole Doyon is an educator, facilitator, and children’s book author. Her debut picture book, Magnificent Homespun Brown (Tilbury House Publishers, January, 2020), won both a Lupine Award and an International Literacy Association Award. She has been offering author presentations and leading literary discussion groups and writing workshops since 2020, works as a Membership and Program Coordinator at Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, and resides with her husband, two children, and rescue pup in Lewiston.

This Discussion Project program is part of Parable Path Maine, a framework for community organizing and artistic engagement based on Octavia E. Butler’s Parable of the Sower. This initiative is led by multi-hyphenate musician Toshi Reagon, Bowdoin College’s Joseph McKeen 2022-23 Visiting Fellow, and is supported by Maine Humanities Council, Indigo Arts Alliance, and Bowdoin College. In addition to this Discussion Project and other community events across the state, Toshi and Bernice Reagon’s congregational opera adaptation of Parable of the Sower will be performed at Merrill Auditorium in Portland, Maine, on April 14. This one-night-only event is presented by Indigo Arts Alliance and Portland Ovations in association with Bowdoin College.