Three 2008 Martin Dibner Memorial Fellowships in fiction has been awarded to Sara Donnelly of Portland, Patrick Downes of West Rockport and Ben Kostival of Saco. The Maine Community Foundation awards the fellowships annually to promising Maine writers seeking to develop their writing skills.

Donnelly, who is managing editor at Mainebiz, is a 2000 graduate of Wesleyan University where she received high honors for her senior thesis, a collection of short fiction titled Grace and Other Stories. As a journalist she has won honors for her reporting. She will be attending the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop in Portland, Oregon.

A graduate of Skidmore College, Downes has studied furniture design at the Center for Furniture Craftsmanship in Rockport, Maine. Publication credits include Experience Life Magazine and the 2004 Guide to Literary Agents. He is at work on a novella, Arrival.

Kostival holds a BA from Alfred University and an MFA from the University of Alaska Fairbanks. He is a substitute teacher in the Saco, Maine, school district. He has published fiction in Willow Springs Literary Journal, Frisk and Rendezvous. Kostival is completing a novel, Elm and North.

This year's judge was writer Bill Roorbach of Farmington. Roorbach's latest book is Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey (Dial Press). He also contributed an essay to A Healing Touch (Down East Books), a book to benefit Waterville Hospice Volunteers, edited by Richard Russo.

The Dibner fellowship alternates between fiction and poetry. Next year’s deadline, for poets, is January 15, 2009. Guidelines can be found at www.mainecf.org or by calling, toll free, 1-877-700-6800.

Novelist and historian Martin Dibner served on the Maine Arts Commission and was the first director of the Payson Gallery at Westbrook College. Several friends created this fund to honor Dibner's contributions to the art of writing.