Stories from around the world told by young adults of Portland can be read – and seen – in Scarborough this month.

The Story House Project, a presentation of stories written by teenagers who immigrated to Portland, will be at the Scarborough Public Library until the end of November. The project was put together by The Telling Room, a nonprofit writing program in Portland dedicated to young writers and storytellers between the ages of 8 and 18.

For this project, The Telling Room put together a compilation, called “I Remember Warm Rain,” of the stories of 15 young immigrants from Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Somalia and Sudan. The writers then collaborated with students at Maine College of Art to create posters that illustrate their stories, which became “The Story House Project.”

Throughout the month, the library has scheduled programs to coordinate with the exhibit. On Wednesday, Nov. 28, Gibson Fay-LeBlanc, executive director of The Telling Room, will be visiting the library to lead a workshop for Scarborough’s own young writers. There are 20 openings in total, and the library will be accepting participants until those slots are filled.

“There was a hope that as students and young adults visited the library and viewed the exhibit, it would inspire them to write down their own stories, their own reflections,” said Celeste Shinay, manager of programming and development at the library.

Shinay said so far the response to the exhibit from Scarborough residents of all ages has been tremendous, but is especially powerful for the peers of the young immigrant writers.

“Many teens in our community have never experienced this kind of thing,” Shinay said about the stories, many of which are about living in war-torn countries as a child and seeing family members killed.

Shinay said reading the stories in the library has been a moving experience for many people. “The impact is very immediate,” she said.

The exhibit represents about a year of work done by the writers, The Telling Room and the MECA students. So far, it has traveled from Space Gallery in Portland to the University of Southern Maine, to the Portland Public Library, to the Lewiston Public Library, and now, to Scarborough.

“We thought it was a great opportunity to get these stories into a totally different community,” Fay-LeBlanc said about bringing the exhibit to Scarborough.

According to Fay-LeBlanc, the next destination for the exhibit is still undetermined, but The Telling Room would like to spread the stories to communities, such as ones in western and northern Maine, that are less aware of the immigrant population in Portland and would be surprised to see that these stories are coming from residents of their own state. He said they would consider bringing the exhibit to other states, as well, but don’t have any specific plans to do so.

The Telling Room was founded by Sara Corbett, a contributing writer to the New York Times Magazine. After writing her own piece about the lost boys of Sudan, she realized that there were stories just as amazing and interesting that could come out of Portland. Initially, the group started working with an English as a second language art class at Portland High School. Students from other schools joined on as well, and, according to Fay-LeBlanc, “it took off.”

Though not all the writers kept it up, for the 15 who stayed with it, Fay-LeBlanc said, “there was a big pay off.”

Fay-LeBlanc said at the workshop Wednesday he plans to give Scarborough teenagers the chance to tell their own stories and respond to those in the exhibit.

Though the workshop is for teens, the exhibit has the ability to affect library-goers of all ages.

Beth Bellemere, a trustee at the library, said she found the combination of written word, illustration and the physical environment created by the walls on which the posters are presented to be unique and “very powerful.”

On a visit to the library last week, Tristen Lilly, 6, immediately ran into the giant maze of posters, hiding behind the tall walls. He gazed over the works of art, stopping in front of a poster with a soccer ball in the middle.

“It looks really cool,” he said.

A Closer Look:

A workshop for young writers will be held at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 28, in conjunction with “The Story House Project” – an exhibit displaying the stories of 15 young immigrants. To register for the workshop, call the library at 883-4723 or e-mail at [email protected].

Library trustee Beth Bellemere says she found the combination of written words, illustrations and the environment created by the walls where the posters hang to be unique and Tristen Lilly, 6, points to an illustration on display at the Scarborough Public Library as a part of “The Story House Project,” which collected the work of 15 young immigrants.