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Samaa Abdurraqib recalls witnessing the sandhill crane migration on the Platte River in Wood River, Nebraska, in April 2024, how she came to that encounter and departed from it but never really left.

Abdurraqib is a writer, naturalist, and the executive director of the Maine Humanities Council.

She earned a PhD in English literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and taught at Bowdoin College, after which she transitioned from academia to the non-profit sector.

Living on unceded Wabanaki Territory in Maine, she engages deeply with the landscape as a certified Maine Master Naturalist. Her writing often explores correlations of nature, identity, and resilience.

When she is not facilitating community engagement or writing, she is often exploring the woods and waterways of Maine. As an avid avian friend, she closely monitors their migration patterns. 

Overall, she believes that even the smallest changes in the natural world can ripple out to have large impacts.

She is the editor of From Root to Seed: Black, Brown, and Indigenous Poets Write the Northeast (2023) and the author of the poetry collections Each Day Is Like an Anchor (2020) and Towards a Retreat (2025).