The Library of Virginia Literary Awards are given to outstanding Virginia authors in the areas of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry. Past winners include Deborah Eisenberg, Donald McCaig, Suzanne Lebsock, Carrie Brown, Charles Wright, Richard Bausch, Ruth Stone, Melvin Patrick Ely, and Edward P. Jones. This is a juried award, and winners in each category receive a $3,500 prize and engraved crystal book. The awards are sponsored by U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management, and Weinstein Properties.
The Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry is also awarded at the event. This award, founded in 2005, is given each year to a poet with strong connections to central Virginia. The $10,000 annual prize recognizes significant recent contribution to the art of poetry and is awarded on the basis of a range of achievements in the field of poetry.
12th Annual Library of Virginia Awards
The 12th Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards Celebration, hosted by celebrated Virginia author Adriana Trigiani, took place at the Library on Saturday evening, October 17, 2009. Award winners announced that evening were:
Poetry: Lisa Russ Spaar. Satin Cash. Persea Books.
Fiction: Domnica Radulescu. Train to Trieste. Alfred A. Knopf.
Nonfiction: Annette Gordon-Reed. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. W. W. Norton Company.
People's Choice Award for Fiction: Martin Clark, The Legal Limit
People's Choice Award for Nonfiction: Roger Mudd, The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News
Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient: John Grisham
Fiction: Domnica Radulescu. Train to Trieste. Alfred A. Knopf.
Nonfiction: Annette Gordon-Reed. The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family. W. W. Norton Company.
People's Choice Award for Fiction: Martin Clark, The Legal Limit
People's Choice Award for Nonfiction: Roger Mudd, The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News
Lifetime Achievement Award Recipient: John Grisham
Presentations were also made at the Celebration to the Weinstein Poetry Prize recipients Charles Wright and Eleanor Ross Taylor and to the Cardozo Award for Children’s Literature recipient Doreen Rappaport for Abe’s Honest Words.
2008 Winners & Finalists Library of Virginia Literary Awards- 11th Annual Awards
2008 Fiction finalists & winners were:
Helon Habila - Joint 2008 Winner
Measuring Time: A Novel
Penguin Books
Janet Peery - Joint 2008 Winner
What the Thunder Said: A Novella and Stories
St. Martin’s Press
Carrie Brown
The Rope Walk: A Novel
Pantheon Books
2008 Nonfiction Finalists
Wesley C. Hogan- 2008 Winner
Many Minds, One Heart: SNCC's Dream for a New America
The University of North Carolina Press
Barbara Kingsolver with Steven L. Hopp and Camille Kingsolver
Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year of Food Life (P.S.)
HarperCollins Publishers
Peter Wallenstein
Cradle of America: Four Centuries of Virginia History
University Press of Kansas
The judges also selected an honorable
2008 Poetry Award Finalists
R.T. Smith- 2008 Winner
Outlaw Style: Poems (The Arkansas Poetry Series)
The University of Arkansas Press
Constance Merritt
Blessings and Inclemencies: Poems
Louisiana State University Press
Charles Wright
Littlefoot: A Poem
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Fiction Winners
| Title and Author | Annual Awards |
|---|---|
| Thanksgiving Night: A Novel, Richard Bausch | 10th Annual Awards |
| Twilight of the Superheroes, Deborah Eisenberg | 10th Annual Awards* |
| The Quick-Change Artist: Stories, Cary Holladay | 10th Annual Awards |
| March: A Novel Geraldine Brooks | 9th Annual Awards* |
| Little Criminals: Short Stories Kurt Rheinheimer | 9th Annual Awards |
| Holy Skirts René Steinke | 9th Annual Awards |
| Confinement Carrie Brown | 8th Annual Awards * |
| How I Left the Great State of Tennessee and Went on to Better Things Joe Jackson | 8th Annual Awards |
| A Year and a Day Leslie Pietrzyk | 8th Annual Awards |
| The Stories of Richard Bausch Richard Bausch | 7th Annual Awards |
| The Known World Edward P. Jones | 7th Annual Awards * |
| True Cross T. R. Pearson | 7th Annual Awards |
| Hello to the Cannibals: A Novel Richard Bausch | 6th Annual Awards * |
| The Gypsy Man Robert Bausch | 6th Annual Awards |
| The House on Belle Isle and Other Stories Carrie Brown | 6th Annual Awards |
| Year of Wonders: A Novel of the Plague Geraldine Brooks | 5th Annual Awards |
| Dugan Under Ground Tom De Haven | 5th Annual Awards * |
| I, Roger Williams Mary Lee Settle | 5th Annual Awards |
| The Hatbox Baby: A Novel Carrie Brown | 4th Annual Awards * |
| Graveyard of the Atlantic Alyson Hagy | 4th Annual Awards |
| The Dress Lodger Sheri Holman | 4th Annual Awards |
| Someone To Watch Over Me Richard Bausch | 3rd Annual Awards |
| The Story of A Million Years David Huddle | 3rd Annual Awards |
| Pictures of a Dying Man Agymah Kamau | 3rd Annual Awards * |
| The Hearts of Soldiers Joan Vannorsdall Schroeder | 3rd Annual Awards |
| The Half-Life of Happiness: A Novel John Casey | 2nd Annual Awards |
| Wingtips: Stories by Avery Chenoweth | 2nd Annual Awards |
| Jacob’s Ladder: A Story of Virginia During The War Donald McCaig | 2nd Annual Awards * |
| News of the Spirit Lee Smith | 1st Annual Awards |
| The Way to Cobbs Creek Dabney Stuart | 1st Annual Awards |
| Black Zodiac Charles Wright | 1st Annual Awards * |
Non-Fiction Winners
| Title and Author | Annual Awards |
|---|---|
| Archie and Emelie: Love and Madness in the Gilded Age, Donna M. Lucey | 10th Annual Awards |
| Sold American: Consumption and Citizenship, 1890-1945, Charles F. McGovern | 10th Annual Awards |
| Steel Drivin’ Man: John Henry, The Untold Story of an American Legend, Scott Reynolds Nelson | 10th Annual Awards* |
| At Day’s Close: Night in Times Past A. Roger Ekirch | 9th Annual Awards* |
| A Land As God Made It: Jamestown and the Birth of America James Horn | 9th Annual Awards |
| A World on Fire: A Heretic, an Aristocrat, and the Race Joe Jackson | 9th Annual Awards |
| His Excellency: George Washington Joseph J. Ellis | 8th Annual Awards |
| Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War Melvin Patrick Ely | 8th Annual Awards * |
| Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma Camilla Townsend | 8th Annual Awards |
| In the Presence of Mine Enemies Edward L. Ayers | 7th Annual Awards |
| An Expendable Man: The Near-Execution of Earl Washington, Jr. Margaret Edds | 7th Annual Awards |
| A Murder in Virginia: Southern Justice on Trial Suzanne Lebsock | 7th Annual Awards * |
| Richmond Burning: The Last Days of the Confederate Capital Nelson Lankford | 6th Annual Awards |
| A Blessed Company: Parishes, Parsons, and Parishioners in Anglican Virginia, 1690-1776 John K. Nelson | 6th Annual Awards |
| Managing White Supremacy: Race, Politics, and Citizenship in Jim Crow Virginia J. Douglas Smith | 6th Annual Awards * |
| Chance in the House of Fate: A Natural History of Heredity Jennifer Ackerman | 5th Annual Awards |
| John Marshall and the Heroic Age of the Supreme Court R. Kent Newmyer | 5th Annual Awards * |
| Lift Up Thy Voice: The Grimke Family's Journey from Slaveholders to Civil Rights Leaders Mark Perry | 5th Annual Awards |
| Eye of the Storm Charles F. Bryan Jr. and Nelson Langford | 4th Annual Awards |
| Five Sisters: The Langhornes of Virginia James Fox | 4th Annual Awards |
| Princes of Ireland, Planters of Maryland: A Carroll Saga Ronald Hoffman | 4th Annual Awards * |
| German Boy: A Refugee’s Story Wolfgang W. E. Samuel | 4th Annual Awards |
| What The River Means Elizabeth Hodges | 3rd Annual Awards |
| The Rise and Fall Of the American Whig Party Michael F. Holt | 3rd Annual Awards |
| Forced Founders Woody Holton | 3rd Annual Awards |
| Robert Gwathmey Michael Kammen | 3rd Annual Awards * |
| Confederates in the Attic Tony Horwitz | 2nd Annual Awards |
| Slave Counterpoint Philip Morgan | 2nd Annual Awards * |
| We Mean To Be Counted Elizabeth Varon | 2nd Annual Awards |
| William Styron: A Life James L. W. West III | 2nd Annual Awards |
| Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings Annette Gordon-Reed | 1st Annual Awards |
| Stonewall Jackson James I. Robertson Jr. | 1st Annual Awards * |
| From Calabar to Carter’s Grove Lorena Walsh | 1st Annual Awards |
Poetry Winners
| Title and Author | Annual Awards |
|---|---|
| What to Eat, What to Drink, What to Leave for Poison, Camille Dungy | 10th Annual Awards |
| Fire Baton, Elizabeth Hadaway | 10th Annual Awards* |
| Ornithologies, Joshua Poteat | 10th Annual Awards |
| Late Wife: Poems Claudia Emerson | 9th Annual Awards |
| Reliquaries by Eric Pankey | 9th Annual Awards |
| Family Preserve: Poems Dabney Stuart | 9th Annual Awards* |
| American Smooth: Poems Rita Dove | 8th Annual Awards |
| In the Dark Ruth Stone | 8th Annual Awards * |
| Buffalo Yoga Charles Wright | 8th Annual Awards |
| Torn Sky Debra Nystrom | 7th Annual Awards * |
| Brightwood: Poems R. T. Smith | 7th Annual Awards |
| The Saint of Letting Small Fish Go Eliot Khalil Wilson | 7th Annual Awards |
| The Caged Owl: New and Selected Poems Gregory Orr | 6th Annual Awards |
| Shadow of Heaven: Poems Ellen Bryant Voigt | 6th Annual Awards |
| A Short History of the Shadow Charles Wright | 6th Annual Awards * |
| Icon and Evidence Margaret Gibson | 5th Annual Awards |
| Messenger: Poems R. T. Smith | 5th Annual Awards * |
| Alluvial Katherine Soniat | 5th Annual Awards |
| The Drowned City Jennifer Atkinson | 4th Annual Awards |
| Texas School Book Depositor: Prose Poems Cathryn Hankla | 4th Annual Awards |
| Cenotaph: Poems Eric Pankey | 4th Annual Awards * |
| Summer Lake: New and Selected Poems David Huddle | 3rd Annual Awards |
| Hammerlock Tim Seibles | 3rd Annual Awards |
| Late Leisure: Poems Eleanor Ross Taylor | 3rd Annual Awards * |
| The River Hills & Beyond: Poems Lou V. Crabtree | 2nd Annual Awards * |
| On Long Mountain Elizabeth Seydel Morgan | 2nd Annual Awards |
Gift of Jade Margaret Ward Moreland |
2nd Annual Awards |