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THE SELECTION PROCESS The First Novelist Award honors the best debut novel published during a calendar year. For the calendar year of 2007, we received more than 80 novels from presses large and small. The selection of the winner was a months-long process that involved over 100 readers from Virginia Commonwealth University and the community of Richmond, VA. They narrowed the books to a list of finalists and semifinalists, which were announced in May, 2008. This year's judges are Valley Haggard, Book editor for Style Weekly magazine; Ann McMillan, author of Chickahominy Fever: A Civil War Mystery, among many others; and
THE AWARD CEREMONY This year's winner will be invited to attend the annual First Novelist Ceremony at Virginia Commonwealth University, where he will receive a $1000 cash prize as well as travel expenses and lodging accomodations. The ceremony will take place in the fall of 2007 and is designed to highlight the journey of a new writer from idea to publication with specific focus on those elements that make the winner unique. Typically, the itinerary includes a luncheon, a visit with a graduate fiction workshop, a public reading followed by a Q&A session, and other social events that draw together MFA and undergraduate students, Richmond's literary community and the public at large.
THE HISTORY OF THE AWARD The VCU First Novelist Award was created Laura Browder, playwright and author (Her Best Shot, Slippery Characters, Rousing the Nation), and Tom De Haven, novelist and facilitator of the VCU novel workshop (It's Superman!, Funny Papers, Derby Dugan's Depression Funnies). The award is presented annually on behalf of VCU's MFA in Creative Writing Program. It is made possible in part by the generosity of Richmond writer and VCU alumnus David Baldacci (Total Control, Absolute Power). Co-sponsors include the eFollett VCU Bookstore. The award is supported by Virginia Commonwealth University and the VCU Department of English. The award celebrates the nation's first—and still one of the very few—year-long novel workshops. Created to recognize a rising new talent in the literary world who has successfully published a first novel, nominations are solicited from MFA programs nationwide as well as from publishers, editors, agents, and writers. A panel of readers narrows the field to ten or twelve promising new works of fiction. From that short list, readers select three finalists, and from these finalists three prominent judges choose the recipient of the award. Travel expenses to Richmond and lodging accommodations for the author, agent, and editor are provided, as well as a $1000 cash prize for the author.
SUBMITTING TO THE AWARD The deadline for submissions to the 2009 award (honoring a debut novel published in the American literary market in the calendar year 2008) is February 13, 2009. Please send 3 copies for review to: THE VCU FIRST NOVELIST AWARD For more information, email us at firstnovel@vcu.edu.
AWARD STAFF Award Coordinator Advisors to Committee English Department Chair Previous Baldacci Fellows
ABOUT THE SCULPTURE Allan Rosenbaum, designer of the award (pictured above), is an artist and Professor of Ceramics at Virginia Commonwealth University. He is the recipient of grants and fellowships from the Wisconsin Arts Board and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. His work has been included in dozens of exhibtions nationally and internationally and he is represented in public collections including the Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian National Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; Taipei County Yingge Ceramics Museum, Taipei, Taiwan; Arkansas Art Center Decorative Arts Museum, Little Rock, AR; and Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA. His public commissions include the Virginia Governor's Arts Awards 2000 and the City of Richmond Ambulance Authority. He was one of thirty North American artists chosen to exhibit work in the First Taiwan Ceramics Biennale 2004 in Taipei, Taiwan.
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