WINTHROP — Maine’s Poet Laureate Wesley McNair will speak at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday, Jan. 14, at the Bailey Public Library. The event is part of the ongoing Winthrop Lakes Region Forum. McNair will discuss his new memoir, “The Words I Chose,” which will include selective readings.

McNair has an extensive and distinguished career. He is the recipient of fellowships from the Rockefeller, Fulbright, and Guggenheim Foundations; a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship in Literature; two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships for Creative Writers; and in 2006, a United States Artists Fellowship, fifty of which were awarded to a selection of “America’s finest living artists.”

Following his talk and question and answer session, McNair will sign his book, which will be available for purchase from Apple Valley Books.

McNair has received multiple honors and has read his poetry at the Library of Congress, as well as a wide range of colleges and universities. A television series on Robert Frost, for which he wrote the scripts, aired on affiliates of PBS and received an Emmy Award. He has received three honorary degrees for literary distinction. He has appeared 14 times on Garrison Keillor’s Writer’s Almanac, in the Pushcart Prize Annual, in two editions of The Best American Poetry, and in over 60 anthologies and textbooks. He has served four times on the nominating committee for the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry.

The event, sponsored by the Friends of the Bailey Library, is free and open to the public.

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