After recruiting the help of his colleague, Laura Browder, the two launched VCU’s First Novelist Award in 2001, to honor writers who have just published their first novel and bring them to the university. Now, 10 years later, the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award has become one of the university’s major fall events.
“It started out very small, as just a glimmer, as a way to enhance teaching at VCU and has become a prestigious national award that involves a lot of the university,” says Susann Cokal, VCU professor, author and director of the MFA Program, as well as one of the event’s main planners alongside De Haven. Initial funding was provided by the Dean of Humanities and Sciences, Dr. Stephen Gottfredson. VCU graduate and best-selling author David Baldacci soon offered his support to the program, doubling the prize and establishing a fellowship program for one of the graduate students to devote his or her time to the organization of the award event.
After those first five years, funding for the award and festival passed into the hands of VCU’s Cabell Library, namely the Cabell Associates. “It was an ideal match between the Cabell Associates and the First Novelists,” explains VCU Librarian John Ulmschneider. Founded in the mid-1970s by Margaret Cabell in memory of her late husband, writer James Branch Cabell, the Cabell Associates promote the scholarship of James Cabell, as well as reading and literature in general. Their goal in the next 10 years is to double the prize again and to make the prestige of the award such that publishers will want to advertise their winners and nominees. “It is exciting to be part of this effort in Richmond, this significant growth and support for the writers of the area.”
And grown it has, which is evident from the extent of the selection process.
“At around January, there’s a letter that goes out to publishers asking for submissions of first novels from the previous calendar year,” says De Haven. Once they do, members of the VCU and Richmond community check out the books, read them and rate them. The first year, they only received about 12 submissions; now they receive over 100. From there, the award committee narrows the submissions down to eight to 10 semi-finalists, then three finalists. A team of three judges then deliberates over the three finalists for six weeks to determine a winner. “The judges change every year,” says Cokal, but tradition has it that one of the three is the previous year’s winner, and “the others are two nationally prominent writers or critics.” This year’s judges were Tim Hulsey, Dean of the VCU Honors College; Marcela Valdes, critic and books editor for The Washington Examiner; and Victor Lodato, author of Mathilda Savitch and winner of the 2010 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award.
Latest Comments