2024 Winners
MWPA is pleased to announce the winners of the 2024 Maine Literary Awards. Thank you to the nearly 400 writers who sent in their work for consideration. Thank you to the 40+ writers, librarians, editors, teachers, and literary professionals who served as anonymous jurors for the Maine Literary Awards this year.
Book Award for Crime Fiction
Katherine Hall Page, The Body in the Web
Book Award for Fiction
Shannon Bowring, The Road to Dalton
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
Book Award for Memoir
Ian Fritz, What the Taliban Told Me
Emerson Whitney, Daddy Boy
Book Award for Poetry
Adrian Blevins, Status Pending
Book Award for Young People's Literature
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
Book Award for Speculative Fiction
Brandon Ying Kit Boey, Karma of the Sun
Book Award for Excellence in Publishing
Emily Stoddard Burnham, Downtown, Up River: Bangor in the 1970s, Islandport Press
Book Award for Anthology
The Telling Room, From the Edge of the World
Drama Award
Jule Selbo, “Mary Shelley: Year with No Summer”
Short Works Competition in Fiction
Dave Patterson, “You’re Supposed to Fall Over”
Short Works Competition in Nonfiction
Amy Dempsey, "Me and Her"
Short Works Competition in Poetry
Judy Kaber, “This is the Last Backyard and Other Poems”
Youth Competition in Fiction
Avery Olson, “Memories”
Youth Competition in Nonfiction
Sophie Kilbreth, “Nobody’s Perfect, But Some Like It That Way”
Youth Competition in Poetry
Oliver Black, “would you love the earth”
SPECIAL AWARDS
2024 BOOK DONATION RECIPIENTS
As in years past, MWPA will donate a copy of every book nominated to this year’s awards (182 books in all) to a Maine library in need. We will announce this year’s library in the coming weeks.
2024 MWPA DISTINGUISHED ACHIEVEMENT AWARD
Tess Gerritsen, for exceptional and steadfast contributions to Maine literary arts as a best-selling, award-winning novelist and generous literary citizen in the state.
AND
Gary Lawless, for exceptional and steadfast contributions to Maine literary arts as a poet, editor, translator, publisher, and bookstore co-owner.