Acclaimed novelist and biographer Roxana Robinson has won the Maine Literary Award for Fiction for her 2013 novel, Sparta, her riveting depiction of an Iraq War veteran’s return home. The other fiction finalists were Ron Currie Jr. for Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles and Christina Baker Kline for Orphan Train, stiff competition indeed.

The award is sponsored by the Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance and was established in 1975, and the ceremony was held May 29 at the University of Southern Maine in Portland. Robinson divides her time among New York, Connecticut, and Maine, and she serves on the council of the Maine Coast Heritage Trust, which promotes the conservation of natural places statewide.

Read my review of Sparta here and my interview with Roxana Robinson here.

Sparta: A Novel. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. 4 June 2013. ISBN 978-0-374-70957-0.