Miriam I. Rimkunas, GHS Class of ’08, recently won the Maine Writers & Publisher’s Alliance (MWPA) Maine Literary Award for their book titled “Survivor Concentrate: An Apocalyptic Fable.” Rimkunas is also a University of Maine, Orono grad with a bachelor’s degree in English with a focus on creative writing.

This year’s MWPA awards were chosen from a field of 165 books that were entered across the award’s categories and from more than 150 manuscripts that were submitted for the Short Works competition in the categories of fiction, nonfiction, poetry and drama as well as in three youth categories. More than 40 writers, librarians, editors, teachers and literary professionals served as jurors for the awards.

Rimkunas won the Book Award for the Speculative Fiction category, which combines Fantasy, SciFi and Horror. The book tells the eerie tale of a strange cottage isolated in the midst of the Siberian taiga where the three Popov sisters once lived and left mystical secret portals and bloody secrets. Now the cabin is home to young Song Min-jae, who learns he is not alone in this vast wilderness.

Daughter of Allie and John Rimkunas, of Gorham, the award-winning author is a lifelong Mainer, now living in Portland. Prior to the publication of “Concentrate,” they wrote and produced the serialized podcast “Extraordinary Terrestrials.” When not working, this cat lover enjoys knitting, playing bass, and gardening.

As part of the competition, the MWPA donates a copy of every book nominated for this year’s awards (165 books in all) to a Maine library in need. The MWPA will announce the library that will receive this year’s books in the coming weeks.

For more information or questions about the awards, please contact MWPA executive director Gibson Fay-LeBlanc at director@mainewriters.org