2024 Finalists
MWPA is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2024 Maine Literary Awards. Thank you to the nearly 400 writers who sent in their work for consideration and thank you to this year’s jurors for all of their reading and deliberating. We look forward to announcing the winners on May 30!
Book Award for Crime Fiction
Barbara Burt, Dissonance: A Novel of Music & Murder
Katherine Hall Page, The Body in the Web
Bryan Wiggins with Lee Thibodeau, The Corpse Bloom
Book Award for Fiction
Shannon Bowring, The Road to Dalton
William Dameron, The Way Life Should Be
Nick Fuller Googins, The Great Transition
Rebecca Turkewitz, Here in the Night
Book Award for Nonfiction
Gretchen Cherington, The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry
Cathie Pelletier, Northeaster: A Story of Courage and Survival in the Blizzard of 1952
Jennifer Neves, Chainsaws and Cherry Burls
Book Award for Memoir
Blue Butterfield, Maine, A Love Story
Ian Fritz, What the Taliban Told Me
Cynthia Thayer, We’re Going Home: A True Story of Life and Death
Emerson Whitney, Daddy Boy
Book Award for Poetry
Adrian Blevins, Status Pending
Richard Foerster, With Little Light and Sometimes None at All
Maya Williams, Refused a Second Date
Book Award for Young People's Literature
Anica Mrose Rissi, Wishing Season
Cameron Kelly Rosenblum, The Sharp Edge of Silence
Book Award for Children’s
Elisa Boxer (Author) & Amy June Bates (Illustrator), Hidden Hope: How a Toy & a Hero Saved Lives During the Holocaust
Alexandra S. D. Hinrichs (Author) & Jamie Hogan (Illustrator), The Lobster Lady
Meghan Wilson Duff (Author) & Taylor Barron (Illustrator), How Are You, Verity?
Book Award for Speculative Fiction
Brandon Ying Kit Boey, Karma of the Sun
Katherine Silva, The Wild Fall
Book Award for Excellence in Publishing
Kristie Billings, Sea Witch: Photographs, Poems and Forget Me Nots from a Mainer Growing Up, Seapoint Books
Emily Stoddard Burnham, Downtown, Up River: Bangor in the 1970s, Islandport Press
Willie Lee Kinard III, Orders of Service, Alice James Books
Book Award for Anthology
The Telling Room, From the Edge of the World
Steven Long (editor), Rivers of Ink: Literary Reflections of the Penobscot
Drama Award
Erin Enberg, “Weird & High Voltage”
Andrea Lepcio, “The Last Jew”
Jule Selbo, “Mary Shelley: Year with No Summer”
Short Works Competition in Fiction
Shannon Bowring, “Nativity”
Jodi Paloni, “Beast”
Dave Patterson, “You’re Supposed to Fall Over”
Short Works Competition in Nonfiction
Amy Dempsey, "Me and Her"
Tanuja Desai Hidier, "A Recipe for Love; Accompaniments for Grief"
Lee Reilly, "My Fathers"
Short Works Competition in Poetry
Leonore Hildebrandt, “Lessons in Love’s Grammar”
Judy Kaber, “This is the Last Backyard and Other Poems”
Rosa Lane, “French Sardines and Other Poems”
Youth Competition in Fiction
Morgan Crawford, “The Tide Casts No Shadow”
Nevyn Harvey, “Our Last Encounter”
Avery Olson, “Memories”
Youth Competition in Nonfiction
Kirby Douglas, “The View from Halfway Down”
Sophie Kilbreth, “Nobody’s Perfect, But Some Like It That Way”
Keza Ineza, “They Carve Their Words Through Clay”
Youth Competition in Poetry
Oliver Black, “would you love the earth”
Sophia Farago-Dumsch, "Crowgirl”
Lily Jessen, “Never”
Sophie Kilbreth, “Waxwing”