Starting in 2023, MWPA and the Maine Crime Wave established the Lea Wait Award. Lea was a frequent panelist at the Maine Crime Wave and a finalist for the Maine Literary Award and beloved in Maine’s writing communities. She was also a USA Today best-selling author and speaker and wrote the Mainely Needlepoint mystery series, the Shadows Antique Print mystery series, and the Maine Murder Mystery series, among others.

Each year, the Lea Wait Award goes to a writer who has made significant contributions to the Maine crime writing community and whose own work exemplifies excellent writing across a variety of related genres, forms, and styles. In 2023, we gave the first Lea Wait Award to Kathy Lynn Emerson. We are proud to present the second Lea Wait Award to Kate Flora.

Kate Flora grew up on a chicken farm in Maine where the Friday afternoon trip to the library was the high point of her week. She attended law school and worked in the Maine attorney general’s office, protecting battered kids, chasing deadbeat dads, and representing the Human Rights Commission.

The author of twenty-six books spanning many genres including crime fiction, true crime, memoir, and nonfiction, and many short stories, Flora’s been a finalist for the Edgar, Agatha, Anthony, and Derringer awards. She won the Public Safety Writers Association award for nonfiction and twice won the Maine Literary Award for crime fiction. Flora has taught writing for the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, Brown University Continuing Education, The Cambridge Center for Adult Education, the Cape Cod Writer’s Conference. She blogs with the Maine Crime Writers.

Flora’s latest books include the stand-alone domestic suspense Teach Her a Lesson, published in May, 2023 by Encircle Publications, and Death Sends a Message, the 12th Thea Kozak mystery. She’s in many anthologies and some her stories are collected in Careful What You Wish For.

She is a founding member of the New England Crime Bake, the region’s annual mystery conference, and the Maine Crime Wave. With two other crime writers, she started Level Best Books, where she worked as an editor and publisher for seven years. She served a term as international president of Sisters in Crime, an organization founded to promote awareness of women writers’ contributions to the mystery field.