MaineBusiness.com

YARMOUTH (Maine)—Islandport Press, an independent publisher based in Maine, has received the prestigious 2009 Focus on New England Award for Outstanding Regional Literature from Barnes & Noble Inc. The world’s largest bookseller gives the award annually to a publisher or author who has significantly contributed to literature promoting New England. All Barnes & Noble stores across the six-state region vote to choose the recipient.

Family-owned Islandport Press, which is based in Yarmouth, publishes books and other media largely focused on the Northern New England states of Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. The company each year publishes a mix of original titles, out-of-print classics and CDs. Founded by Dean and Michelle Lunt, Islandport Press published its first book, “Hauling by Hand: The Life and Times of a Maine Island,” in February of 2000. It has since published 40 titles and will celebrate the 10th anniversary of the release of “Hauling by Hand” early next year.

Islandport has enjoyed some of its success in children’s books. In the past two years, it has reissued four illustrated children’s books by legendary Maine artist Dahlov Ipcar, including both “Hardscrabble Harvest” and “The Cat at Night” in 2009. It also published “At One” written by popular children’s author Lynn Plourde and illustrated by Leslie Mansmann. This fall, it published “The Scallop Christmas” by first-time author Jane Freeberg of Georgetown and illustrator Astrid Sheckels of Massachusetts.

The company has also published several successful humor books and CDs. It helped reinvigorate the iconic Maine humor stories of Bert and I with its production of a 50th anniversary CD collection in 2008. This year it published its first Vermont-based humor book, “Not Too Awful Bad: A Storyteller’s Guide to Vermont” by Leon Thompson. That title follows last year’s “Live Free and Eat Pie! A Storyteller’s Guide to New Hampshire” by Rebecca Rule, and “down the road a piece: A Storyteller’s Guide to Maine” by John McDonald.

Previous winners of the Focus on New England Award were National Book Award winner Nathaniel Philbrick and publishers Commonwealth Editions of Massachusetts, and Arcadia Publishing, which has offices in New Hampshire.