Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance: Home
Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance is a thirty-five year old nonprofit whose mission is to enrich the cultural life of Maine by supporting writers and the literary arts.
2012 Maine Literary Awards Open for Nominations!
The 2012 Maine Literary Awards are now open for nominations! Entries will be accepted until March 1, 2012 and the winners will be announced live on May 31, 2012. The new nomination form with guidelines is available on our website HERE.
We are excited to announce four new categories in the Book Awards this year!
The new John N. Cole Award for Maine-Themed Nonfiction has been generously sponsored by Just Write Books of Topsham. In addition to being the co-founder of the influential Maine Times, Cole was an avid outdoorsman and fisherman who wrote regularly and enthusiastically about his passion for the state.
As an experiment, we are also offering three new categories this year alongside our traditional Fiction and Nonfiction categories. Books may now be entered in Crime Fiction, Speculative Fiction, and Memoir.
Crime Fiction is an umbrella category for books that fall into one of the following general categories: crime, noir, thriller, suspense, mystery, police procedurals, and cozys. Speculative Fiction is an umbrella category for books that fall into one of the following general categories: science fiction, fantasy, dystopian, horror, and supernatural.
Submissions in these new categories are elective—authors may also nominate crime or speculative fictional works for the general Fiction category.
Please feel free to contact us if you have any questions about the new categories or the awards in general!
>> NOMINATION FORM & GUIDELINES
>> Please contact us at info@mainewriters.org if you'd like a free copy of the 2012 MLA poster.
MWPA's Winter Workshops
Sessions in Prose, Poetry, and Professionalizing in Portland and Bangor
WABI SABI & POETRY
with Carolyn Locke
Saturday, March 3 & Saturday, March 17
1:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m.
Bangor Public Library
A Two-Part Workshop
STEVE ALMOND IN MAINE
Saturday, March 10
SPACE Gallery in Portland
Two Prose Workshops
(I) How to Make Your Prose Sing (and Why It Should)
12:00 p.m. to 3:00 p.m.
(II) How to Use Your Obsessions to Jumpstart Your Writing
3:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m.
BOOK REVIEW BRIGADE
with William Bushnell
Saturday, April 7 and April 28
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Bangor Public Library
A Two-Part Workshop
BOOK PROPOSAL BOOT CAMP
with Mark Chimsky
Saturday, April 21
1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
Glickman Family Library, USM Portland
2011 Maine Literary Awards
The 2011 Maine Literary Award winners were announced live on Thursday, July 14. Click HERE for a list of the winners!
*If you’d like a copy of this poster to hang somewhere in your community, please send us your address at info@mainewriters.org and we’d be happy to mail you one!
We ♥ Maine Poetry!
How the MWPA celebrates poetry on inauguration day
At 12PM on January 5, 2011—while Governor Paul LePage was celebrating his inauguration in Augusta—more than 100 poetry loving souls gathered at the base of a statue of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and celebrated poetry. Readers ranged in age from their mid-teens to their mid-seventies! Missed the fun? See the links below!
If you’d like to send in a $2 donation to the MWPA, we’ll mail you: one “I ♥ MAINE POETRY” sticker, two MWPA bookmarks, and one large sticker with a quote from Portland Poet Laureate Steve Luttrell that reads “BEWARE! When Poets are provoked, there is much speech!” These are only available while supplies last.
+ Read “Election Day,” the poem Maine Poet Laureate Betsy Sholl poem may have read at the inauguration of Governor Paul LePage...had she been invited. PDF
+ Portland Poet Laureate Steve Luttrell’s remarks before he read his poem “Machigonne.” PDF
+ MWPA Executive Director Joshua Bodwell’s op-ed about Governor Paul LePage’s decision to banish poetry from his inauguration. PDF
+ The much-revered Poetry magazine (founded in 1912) blogged about our little event here in Maine! LINK
+ The Portland Press Herald’s Bill Nemitz interviewed Henry Wadsworth Longfellow about his thoughts on Governor Paul LePage’s decision. LINK
+ At the poetry celebration, someone handed me a poem by Kate Barnes (the first Maine Poet Laureate) called “Neighborliness” and said, “I was going to read this because this is what Maine is really all about!” LINK
+ Photos of the event! PDF
PEN New England Honors MWPA
Thirty-five years of service to Maine writers and publishers rewarded
The MWPA is proud to announce that it has won PEN New England’s Friend to Writers Award! The prize is given to just one individual and one organization each year. The MWPA will be accepting the award on November 18, 2010 at Lesley University in Cambridge at PEN New England’s Annual Book Party.
MWPA on Facebook
Are you a fan of MWPA on Facebook? Are you sure?
For some time now, the MWPA has had two pages on Facebook. One is called "Maine Writers." The other is called (aptly enough!) "Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance."
Extremely soon, the "Maine Writers" page will be deleted so as to eliminate duplication...and confusion!
Please CLICK HERE today to visit the correct MWPA Facebook...and then click "JOIN"!
On Turning Thirty-Five
MWPA Celebrates Anniversary, Hires New Director
On August 12, 2010, the MWPA celebrated its birthday in style with a Celebration that featured authors from across Maine. If you missed the party here's what the Maine Sunday Telegram had to say about the event!
That same evening, the new MWPA welcomed its new executive director, Joshua Bodwell. Maine art guru Bob Keyes recently profiled the new director in the Portland Press Herald.