Have you read a good book lately? Do you have a favorite Maine author?

The submission deadline for the 2012 Maine Literary Awards is fast approaching on March 1. The winners will be announced at an awards show-style event on May 31 at the University of Southern Maine.

Joshua Bodwell, executive director of event host Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, said the awards show will be bigger and better this year. “We’re constantly trying to refine and improve everything,” he said.

Bodwell and MWPA assistant director Stephen Abbott have made several changes. Among them are four new categories for nominations, including the John N. Cole Award, named in honor of the co-founder of the Maine Times. The award will recognize a Maine-themed nonfiction book.

Other new categories are crime fiction, speculative fiction and memoir.

“We just found there were too many complexities with judging that we could avoid by expanding the categories,” Bodwell said. “How do you judge a very quiet dramatic novel against a crime thriller? So we created the crime fiction category to address that. The same is true with speculative fiction. We have a lot of sci-fi and fantasy writers in our ranks. How do we honor them?”

The awards have long featured a nonfiction category, but memoir writing is a hot genre these days.

“We thought it made sense to judge memoir to memoir, rather than mixing them all in,” Bodwell said.

The awards are not trivial. Especially in Maine, where we are blessed with many talented writers and a long literary history and tradition going back to Longfellow, the awards represent important cultural recognition, and offer a commercial boost to the winners and nominees.

“In an increasingly crowded marketplace filled with books well worth our time, simply deciding what to read can be difficult,” Abbott said. “The Maine Literary Awards is a way to recognize and value talent. The awards provide a cultural vetting process. They help readers find writers, help writers advance their careers and help booksellers draw attention to their products.”

As was the case last year, the MWPA will print stickers to affix to books that win awards. It’s a small gesture, but a book sticker can go a long way toward advancing sales.

Last year, the MWPA printed 1,000 stickers and distributed them to bookstores across Maine. It cost the organization a couple hundred dollars in postage and printing costs.

It’s money well spent.

“You walk into a bookstore, and whether on a shelf or table, you are confronted with a sea of book covers. We are trying to create that moment of the pickup. If you pick up that book and handle it, you are that much closer to the sale. The sticker is a small thing, but we know anecdotally that it helps call attention to a book,” Bodwell said.

MWPA will donate books that receive nominations to a Maine library. Last year, it gave out two sets of books. One went to the Swan’s Island Library, which burned in 2008 and was rebuilt last year. Another set was split between the Maine State Library and the Cherryfield Library. 

Staff Writer Bob Keyes can be contacted at 791-6457 or:

bkeyes@pressherald.com

Twitter: pphbkeyes

 

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