Author Tess Gerritsen of Camden was honored at the 2024 Maine Literary Awards. Shawn Patrick Ouellette/Staff Photographer

Best-selling author Tess Gerritsen of Camden and Gary Lawless, co-owner of Gulf of Maine Books in Brunswick, received awards for distinguished achievement during the 2024 Maine Literary Awards ceremony.

The annual award winners were named Thursday by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance at Pascal Hall in Rockport. Awards were given to writers in 17 categories. Entries this year included 182 books and 201 manuscripts. More than 40 writers, librarians, editors, teachers and literary professionals served as anonymous jurors for the awards. For more information on the awards, visit mainewriters.org.

Here were the winners in each category:

Crime Fiction
Katherine Hall Page, “The Body in the Web”

Fiction
Shannon Bowring, “The Road to Dalton”

Nonfiction
Gretchen Cherington, “The Butcher, the Embezzler, and the Fall Guy: A Family Memoir of Scandal and Greed in the Meat Industry”

Memoir (co-winners)
Ian Fritz, “What the Taliban Told Me”
Emerson Whitney, “Daddy Boy”

Poetry
Adrian Blevins, “Status Pending”

Young People’s Literature
Cameron Kelly Rosenblum, “The Sharp Edge of Silence”

Children’s Literature
Elisa Boxer (Author) & Amy June Bates (Illustrator), “Hidden Hope: How a Toy & a Hero Saved Lives During the Holocaust”

Speculative Fiction
Brandon Ying Kit Boey, “Karma of the Sun”

Excellence in Publishing
Emily Stoddard Burnham, “Downtown, Up River: Bangor in the 1970s,”  Islandport Press

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”