2016 Maine Literary Awards Winners
In 2016, nearly one hundred and forty books were entered across the award’s categories; compare that to the 2011 awards when seventy books total were submitted. In addition, more than one hundred manuscripts were submitted into the award’s Short Works Competition, and nearly sixty Maine students submitted work in the same categories in the award’s Youth Competition.
Book Award for Fiction
Closer All the Time by Jim Nichols
Book Award for Crime Fiction
An Unbeaten Man by Brendan Rielly
Book Award for Speculative Fiction
The Realm of Misplaced Hearts by 
Rick Hobbs
Book Award for Nonfiction
Love and Other Ways of Dying by Michael Paterniti
Book Award for Memoir
How to Cook a Moose by Kate Christensen
Book Award for Poetry
Little Arias by Kristen Case
Book Award for Young People’s Literature
Either the Beginning or the End of the World by Terry Farish
Book Award for Children’s
The Lemonade Hurricane by Licia Morelli (Illustrated by Jennifer E. Morris)
Book Award for Anthology (Editors)
A Gateless Garden by Liza Bakewell
John N. Cole Award for Maine-themed Nonfiction
Ghost Buck by Dean Bennett
Excellence in Publishing
Historical Atlas of Maine
by Stephen J. Hornsby & Richard W. Judd
(University of Maine Press)