Three literary-minded magazines took top honors at Utne Reader's 20th Annual Independent Press Awards last night.

The literary journal, Virginia Quarterly Review, won the general excellence prize, Lapham's Quarterly took the best new publication award, and The Walrus won the best writing award. Amanda Ernst, the excellent new blogger at FishbowlNY, blogged the awards.

Here's more from the release: "A central part of our process in putting together Utne Reader is to winnow the best material by sharing our favorite magazine, journal, newsletter, and zine articles with our fellow editors and then getting together to debate, denigrate, celebrate, rant, and nitpick--often for hours. We critique reporting, assess literary value, parse arguments, deconstruct logic, and air our personal opinions as we figure out which stories merit the descriptor 'The Best of Alternative Press,' the tagline on the cover of our magazine."