Samaa Abdurraqib

Samaa Abdurraqib currently serves as the Executive Director of the Maine Humanities Council. Prior to working at Maine Humanities, Samaa held positions at the Maine Coalition to End Domestic Violence, the ACLU of Maine, and was a Visiting Professor of Gender & Women’s Studies at Bowdoin College. She has served on the board of several Maine-based nonprofits, and has worked with many nonprofits and organizations as a contract consultant, a leadership coach, and a facilitator. Since 2017, Samaa’s creative life has been focused on writing and sharing her poetry. Some of Samaa’s academic writing can be found in Bad Girls and Transgressive Women in Popular Television, Fiction, and Film (2017) and Teaching Against Islamophobia (2010). Recently, her poetry can be found in Cider Press Review, Bigger Than Bravery: Black Resilience and Reclamation in a Time of Pandemic (2023), Obsidian: Literature & Arts in the African Diaspora. Her chapbook, Towards a Retreat, was a finalist for the 2022 Maine Writers and Publisher’s Chapbook Contest. She is the editor of From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast (2023).She is a newly certified Maine Master Naturalist and loves to spend her time exploring the woods, waterways, mountains, and birds of the unceded territory of Wabanakiak.