MANCHESTER, NH – Ink Link News writer Maureen Milliken was recipient of the 2025 Maine Literary Award for crime fiction, announced at a ceremony in Brewer, Maine, Thursday night.
Milliken’s book “Dying For News” [Nevermore Mystery Press, 2024] was one of four finalists in the crime fiction category, one of 17 categories awards were presented in Thursday.
Nominees for Maine Literary Awards, the state’s premier recognition for writers, must live in Maine either full or part-time. Milliken lives in Belgrade, Maine. The awards are sponsored and coordinated by the Maine Writers & Publishers Alliance, a nonprofit that supports writers, books, and publishing across Maine.
“Dying For News” is the fourth in Milliken’s mystery series featuring weekly newspaper editor and owner Bernadette “Bernie” O’Dea. The Maine-based mysteries draw heavily from Milliken’s 35 years as a journalist at daily newspapers in Maine, Massachusetts and New Hampshire.
Milliken has been a correspondent for Ink Link since December of 2021, mostly covering business and development, but also branching out into crime and feature reporting. She also writes a monthly consumer column, “It’s Your Money.” She has received 2021 and 2023 New Hampshire Press Association Distinguished Journalism awards for her work with Ink Link in the categories of business/economic and crime/courts reporting, as well as feature writing.
Milliken worked for the New Hampshire Union Leader from 1986 to 2011, as a reporter for 10 years, and then as an editor. She grew up in Augusta, Maine, and returned to Maine in 2011, where she was news editor for the Kennebec Journal, in Augusta, and Morning Sentinel, in Waterville, until 2016. She worked for Mainebiz, a B2B publication, from 2017 to 2021. Prior to her 25 years at the Union Leader, she was a reporter at the Biddeford (Maine) Journal-Tribune and the Haverhill (Mass.) Gazette.