Richards Free Library

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Hale Award

Hale Award 2025 – Author Peter Heller

As summer comes to a close, we head straight into fall and the annual Hale Award Ceremony! For those of you unfamiliar with this award, it is an honor bestowed upon an accomplished author who has ties to New England. It was first awarded to the poet, Robert Frost, in 1956. Previous recipients include well-known authors such as May Sarton, David McCullough, Arthur Miller, Anita Shreve, Tomie dePaola, Jodi Picoult, and Chris Bohjalian.

This year’s recipient of the Sarah Josepha Hale Award is the bestselling author, Peter Heller! Peter has written 4 non-fiction books relating his outdoor adventures and 8 fiction thrillers! His latest novel, Burn, set in Maine, tells the story of two men who emerge from a week-long hunting trip in the Allagash, to discover that Maine has seceded from the nation.

The 2025 Hale Award Ceremony will take place on Saturday, October 4th, at 7:00 p.m. at the Newport Opera House. Peter will be awarded the Sarah Josepha Hale Medal, will speak to the attending audience for approximately 45 minutes, and will then be available to sign his books. Morgan Hill Books will have a representative on site to sell copies of Peter’s works before and after the event. As usual, this fabulous Hale Award Ceremony is free and open to the public! Also on Saturday, October 4th, prior to the ceremony itself, there will be a ticketed dinner at the Old Courthouse Restaurant at 5:00 p.m. Tickets for the dinner will be available for purchase at the Richards Free Library circulation desk, beginning Monday, September 15th.

The Sarah Josepha Hale Award Judges, Richards Free Library Board of Trustees, and Richards Free Library Staff look forward to hosting Peter Heller, and his wife Kim, at the Sarah Josepha Hale Award Dinner and Ceremony on Saturday, October 4th!

We hope to see you there!

Sally Bernier,

Library Director

Exciting News: Join Us for an Evening with Hale Award Winner Monica Wood!

We are thrilled to announce that the 2024 Hale Award ceremony will be held on September 7th at the Newport Opera House. This year’s event promises to be extra special, as we honor the talented author Monica Wood.

The ceremony starts at 7 PM and is free and open to the public. We encourage everyone to come and celebrate this remarkable literary achievement.

But wait—there’s more!

Before the ceremony, you have the unique opportunity to join us for the Hale Award Author Dinner at the Old Court House Restaurant. The dinner begins at 5 PM, and this is your chance to enjoy a meal with Monica Wood herself, alongside fellow book lovers and community members.

Tickets for the dinner are on sale now for $50 each. Seats are limited, so don’t wait to secure your spot at the table. To purchase your tickets, please call the Richards Free Library at 603-863-3430.

We look forward to seeing you there for an unforgettable evening of good food, great company, and the celebration of outstanding literary work. Don’t miss out on this special event!

Monica Wood to Accept the 2024 Hale Award

The Richards Free Library proudly announces best-selling Maine author, Monica Wood, as the recipient of the 2024 Sarah Josepha Hale Award. 

Monica Wood is an award-winning novelist, memoirist and playwright. Originally from Mexico, Maine, her writing tells character-driven stories about life-changing events. Wood was awarded the 2019 Constance Carlson Prize for contributions to the public humanities in

Maine; and the 2018 Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance Distinguished Achievement Award for her contributions to the literary arts.

Her newest novel, “How to Read a Book,” has already secured translation rights in five countries. Her previous novel, the bestselling “The One-in-a-Million Boy,” has been translated into 20 languages in over 30 countries. She is also the author of “When We Were the Kennedys,” a New England bestseller and winner of the May Sarton Memoir Award. Her other fiction, “Any Bitter Thing,” “Ernie’s Ark,” and “My Only Story” have also won awards and made bestseller lists. Her short stories have been widely anthologized and featured

on Public Radio International. Her nonfiction and reviews have appeared in O, the New York Times, Literary Hub, Down East, the San Francisco Chronicle, Martha Stewart Living, Parade and many other publications. She has also written several books for aspiring writers and three plays including “The Half-Light,” “Saint Dad,” and “Papermaker,” that in 2015 debuted in an extended run at Maine’s Portland Stage. She lives in Portland with her husband, Dan Abbott, and their cat, Susie.

Please join us Saturday September 7, 2024 at 7pm at the Newport Opera House for the award ceremony, which will include a speech by Wood as well as book sales and signing. The award ceremony is free and open to the public.

We will once again host a dinner with the author at the Old Courthouse Restaurant on the same evening at 5pm, prior to the ceremony. Dinner tickets are available for purchase at the library.

Chris Bohjalian to Accept the 2023 Sarah Hale Award

Richards Free Library and the Judges of the Sarah Josepha Hale award are pleased to announce that Chris Bohjalian is the 2023 Sarah Josepha Hale Award Medalist.  He will accept the award on September 23, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. at the Newport Opera House.

Bestselling novelist Chris Bohjalian uses his hugely popular novels to explore compelling social and historical issues like human trafficking, domestic violence, and the Armenian genocide, as well as the more intimate challenges of marriage, parenting, and sexuality. In more than 20 books, most of which have been New York Times bestsellers, Bohjalian has cultivated a wide and devoted audience. His breakout novel, Midwives, was a #1 New York Times bestseller and an Oprah’s Book Club selection. Instant New York Times bestseller The Flight Attendant was praised by USA Today as an “expertly turned thriller…an assured novel about reckoning not just with some ruthless bad guys, but private sadness as well.” An Emmy-nominated HBO Max television adaptation starring Kaley Cuoco debuted in 2020, with NPR calling it a “fizzy, dark, and funny mystery.” Bohjalian’s latest novel is the New York Times bestseller The Lioness, a blistering story of fame, race, love, and death set in a world on the cusp of great change. Writing in The New York Times, Connie Schultz praises how he “weaves life stories with such deftness, it’s impossible not to care how they end (or continue, as the case may be)”. Bohjalian’s books have been translated into 35 languages, and have been chosen as Best Books of the Year by The Washington Post, The St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Hartford Courant, The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, Kirkus Reviews, Bookpage, and Salon.  

For more information about Chris Bohjalian, please visit him on Facebook, Instagram, Goodreads, Twitter, or at chrisbohjalian.com.

For over fifty years, the Sarah Josepha Hale Award has been given by the Trustees of the Richards Free Library in recognition of a distinguished body of written work in the field of literature and letters.  The award honors author, poet, and essayist Sarah Josepha Hale, who as editor of Godey’s Lady’s Magazine shaped the opinion of nineteenth century American women.  The list of Hale Award winners includes the finest writers of our times from Robert Frost in 1956 to Colin Calloway in 2022.

For more information about the Hale award please contact Justine Fafara, Director of the Richards Free Library, Newport, NH at 603-863-3430 or rfl@newport.lib.nh.us.