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