2025 Finalists
MWPA is pleased to announce the finalists for the 2025 Maine Literary Awards. Thank you to the 300+ writers and publishers who sent in their work for consideration and thank you to this year’s 30+ jurors for all of their reading and deliberating. We look forward to announcing the winners on May 29!
Book Award for Crime Fiction
Paul Doiron, Pitch Dark
Kathryn Lasky, Mortal Radiance
Maureen Milliken, Dying for News
Thomas Ricks, Everyone Knows But You
Book Award for Fiction
Sarah Braunstein, Bad Animals
MZ, The Moorings of Mackerel Sky
Cynthia Reeves, The Last Whaler
Morgan Talty, Fire Exit
Book Award for Nonfiction
Caroline Alexander, Skies of Thunder
Margot Anne Kelley, A Gardener at the End of the World
Ellen Ruppel Shell, Slippery Beast: A True Crime Natural History with Eels
Book Award for Memoir
Susan Kellam, Brilliant Disguise
Natalia Mbadu, Surely the Darkness Will Cover Me
Penny Guisinger, Shift: A Memoir of Identity and Other Illusions
Book Award for Poetry
Mike Bove, Soundtrack to Your Next Panic Attack
Claire Millikin, Magicicada
Rosa Lane, Called Back
Book Award for Young People's Literature
Gail Donovan, Sparrow Spreads Her Wings
Madeleine Turgelsky, At the Corner of Christopher Street
Book Award for Children’s
Elisa Boxer and Marieke Nelissen, The Different Tree
Dorson Plourde and Isabella Fassler, Garbage Gulls
Jacqueline Tourville and Amy Guglielmo, Lucy! How Lucille Ball Did It All
Book Award for Speculative Fiction
Amy Safford, Goode Vibrations of the Wresting Place
e.k. sathue, youthjuice
Charlene Vanderslide, The Mermaid Stone
Book Award for Excellence in Publishing
Ayokunle Falomo, Autobiomythography of, Alice James Books
Stuart Kestenbaum and Susan Webster, A Quiet Book, Brynmorgen Press
Carl Little and David Little, Art of Penobscot Bay, Islandport Books
Book Award for Anthology
Kara Douglas and Erin O’Mara (editors), Alive to This: Essays on Living Fully by 20 Maine Writers
Steven Long (editor), North Woods at Night: Literary Reflections on Maine’s Largest Forest
The Telling Room, This Moment and the Next
Drama Award
Ron Capps, “Silenced”
Jayne Decker, “Through the Trees: An Elegy for Stage”
Bess Welden, “Madeleines”
Short Works Competition in Fiction
Steward Engesser, “The Ship That Sails”
Rebecca Turkewitz, “The Mill Girls”
Will Willoughby, “Downstream Benefits”
Short Works Competition in Nonfiction
Hollie Adams, “A Partial List of Inconvenient Truths”
Penny Guisinger, “Raptor”
Short Works Competition in Poetry
Rosa Lane, “Saltmarsh and Other Poems”
Jude Marx, “i dream my gender a thousand shades of green and Other Poems”
Isabel Neal, “Five Poems”
Youth Competition in Fiction
Sylvia Guarna, “Catch and Release”
Sophie Kilbreth, “Perfect Stranger”
Beatrice Schatz, “Death of a Salesman”
Youth Competition in Nonfiction
Elise Garcia de Reynal de Saint-Michel, “Where the River Meets the Sky”
Cameron Pinchbeck,” Granite Timbre”
Molly Trainor, “Survival of the Flawed”
Youth Competition in Poetry
Len Harrison, “After the Turtle Years”
Makili Matty, “Sleepwalking”
Ruby Van Dyk, “Three Poems”