Donna Parker, author of Death in Dutch Harbor, a gripping whodunit where commercial fishing and murder meet in a remote Alaska outpost, was selected as the 2024 winner of the Nancy Pearl Book Award for genre fiction. Winners of the prestigious award for books published in 2023 were announced Saturday at the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference awards celebration.

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“I’m stunned, honored and humbled in winning this award. Nancy Pearl and librarians everywhere nurture the love of stories in all of us,” Parker said. Ms. Parker (aka D. MacNeill Parker) used her thirty years as a participant in the Alaska fishing industry to craft an authentic backdrop where strong women, gutsy men, frustrated Red Sox fans and a three-legged dog leap from the book’s pages. “Winning the Nancy Pearl Book Award tells me I succeeded in bringing alive the world of commercial fishing even as the reader flips pages in search of the culprit!”

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The Nancy Pearl Book Awards honor former Seattle librarian Nancy Pearl, a best-selling author, literary critic and former Executive Director for the Washington Center for the Book at the Seattle Public Library. She’s also appeared regularly as a columnist and on Seattle public radio and television. In 2011 Nancy Pearl was named Librarian of the Year by Librarian Journal. The Nancy Pearl Book Award contest, now in its tenth year, is sponsored by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association and is judged by librarians.