2016 Finalists

To order copies of the finalists’ books, please click on the links below which will allow you to order through this year’s MLA bookseller, Longfellow Books.

Book Award for Fiction
Enchanted August by Brenda Bowen
The Eastern by Deborah Gould

Book Award for Crime Fiction
The Precipice by Paul Doiron
The Fisherman by Vaughn C. Hardacker

Book Award for Speculative Fiction

Blissful Books & Beasts Beneath by Juss Stinson

Book Award for Nonfiction
Plucked by Rebecca M. Herzig
My Island by Patrisha McLean

Book Award for Memoir
Letters from Erastus by Anne D. Emerson
The Negotiator by George Mitchell

Book Award for Poetry
River Road by Richard Foerster
The Presumpscot Baptism of a Jewish Girl by Lizzy Lemieux

Book Award for Young People’s Literature
The Sugar Mountain Snow Ball by Elizabeth Atkinson
Azalea Unschooled by Liza Kleinman

Book Award for Children’s
One Maine Christmas Eve by Douglas Coffin
The Secret Bay by Kimberly Ridley (Illustrated by Rebekah Raye)

Book Award for Anthology (Editors)
The Wildest Peal by Alice Persons
When the Sea Spoke by The Telling Room

John N. Cole Award for Maine-themed Nonfiction
Sadie’s Winter Dream by Judith Burger-Gossart
Birth, Death, and a Tractor by Kelly Payson-Roopchand

Excellence in Publishing
Well Read, Well Fed by Marcia F. Brown (Sellers Publishing)
Full Service by David Hill (Islandport Press)

Drama Award (for film, theater, and other scripts)
Erin Enberg, Desiree Van Til

Short Works Competition, Fiction
Jennifer Dupree, Jodi Paloni

Short Works Competition, Nonfiction
Gaye Brown, Andrea Vassallo

Short Works Competition, Poetry
Linda Aldrich

Youth Competition, Fiction
Wilson Haims, Aidan Trotter

Youth Competition, Nonfiction
Emma Goltz, Yann Tanguy Irambona

Youth Competition, Poetry
Ella Boyd, Maryse Dushime