Had she her druthers, Julia Gersen would have been in the audience Thursday night at SPACE Gallery, and not on stage accepting an award on behalf of her late father, the renowned Portland bookseller Stuart Gersen.
“I wish he was up here and I was way back there clapping,” she said.
The Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance honored Gersen posthumously with its Award for Distinguished Achievement. Gersen died in January from cancer. He co-founded Longfellow Books in Portland, and was remembered by Maine’s literary community as a fiercely independent bookseller who was committed to Maine writers and readers.
“He loved you guys, and he respected your craft with every ounce of his fiber,” his son Ari said, urging those in attendance to follow his father’s path by finding “something you love, hold on to it and make a life.”
Gersen’s award was one of the highlights of MWPA awards ceremony. Some of the most recognized names in modern Maine literature won honors. Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Richard Ford won for “Let Me Be Frank with You,” presidential inaugural poet Richard Blanco won for his memoir “The Prince of los Cocuyos,” and Kate Flora become the first two-time winner in the crime fiction category for her book “And Grant You Peace.”
Kathie Fiveash won the John N. Cole Award for Maine-theme nonfiction for “Island Naturalist.”
The awards are presented annually by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance. Three young writers also won awards for their writing, and their winning submissions appear on this page.
Yarmouth writer Lily King, who has received widespread national acclaim and prestigious honors for her novel “Euphoria,” withdrew her book from consideration for the fiction award because she has won twice before. As she came on stage to present another award, MWPA director Joshua Bodwell surprised her with “the award for the best novel not nominated.”
She laughed, “I’m so honored to not have been honored.”
Other winners were:
Nonfiction, Brian Kevin for “The Footloose American”
Poetry, Betsy Sholl for “Otherwise Unseeable”
Children’s, Mark Scott Ricketts for “Adventures in Vacationland”
Young People’s Literature, Megan Frazer Blakemore for “The Spy Catchers of Maple Hill”
Anthology, The Telling Room for “The Story I Want to Tell”
Drama, Hugh Aaron
Excellence in Publishing, “Before We Eat” by Pat Brisson, published by Tilbury House
Short Works Competition, fiction, CB Anderson; nonfiction, Lesley Heiser; poetry, Rachel Contreni Flynn
Youth Competition, fiction, Emily Noyes; nonfiction, Faris Baziga; poetry, Alicia Thurston
Eavan Sibole-Little and Samuel Farnham were awarded Michael Macklin scholarships to attend the Longfellow Young Writer’s Summer Workshop at the University of Maine-Farmington.
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