Two of Jill MacLean's novels for middle-grade readers ("The Nine Lives of Travis Keating" and "The Present Tense of Prinny Murphy") won The Ann Connor Brimer Award for Atlantic Canadian Children's Literature, as did her YA free verse novel, "Nix Minus One." Her third middle-grade book, "The Hidden Agenda of Sigrid Sugden," won the Red Cedar Award. The novels received numerous nominations, four of them international.

"The Nine Lives of Travis Keating" is in the Nova Scotia school system, and also her YA novel, "Home Truths," told from the point of view of a bully; Pink Shirt Day originated in Nova Scotia, her home province.

Her poetry collection, "The Brevity of Red," was nominated for two awards.

2023 saw the publication of her historical novel for adults, "The Arrows of Mercy," set in 1348 in Berkshire, the county in England where she was born. While the setting is medieval, the themes of scorched-earth warfare, PTSD and plague are all too relevant in today's world. And yes, she worked on this novel for eight years. 

"The Arrows of Mercy" was one of three finalists in the fiction category of the nation-wide Whistler Independent Book Awards, sponsored by The Writers' Union of Canada, and received excellent reviews in The Miramichi Reader, July 2023, and The Historical Novel Society (US and UK) in August. It was one of the Best Books of 2023 for the Miramichi Reader.

"The Arrows of Fealty," the standalone sequel to "The Arrows of Mercy," was published in 2025, received a stellar review in The Seaboard Review of Books, and was one of their Best Books for 2025. A theme throughout is the oppression of the serfs and the corruption of justice that resulted in the Great Revolt of 1381, which for three days brought down king and government. Such resistance is surely relevant to our present world. 

Jill is about to start her third medieval novel, "The Arrows of Exile."