The Department of English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at
Virginia Commonwealth University have announced that their fifth annual First Novelist Award has been given to Karen Fisher for A SUDDEN COUNTRY. Fisher will receive an honorarium of $1000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to Richmond, VA, where she and her agent, Christina Ward, will participate in the VCU First Novelist Forum on Friday, November 10, 2006.

The other finalists in contention were Uzodinma Iweala for BEASTS OF NO NATION and Dean Bakapoulos for PLEASE DON'T COME BACK FOR THE MOON.

Ron adds: It's a big day for VCU literary prizes, it seems, as the English and Creative Writing departments have just announced that they'll be giving this year's Levis Reading Prize for emerging poets to Ron Slate for The Incentive of the Maggot. Slate will accept the $1,000 honorarium at a reception in Richmond, Virginia, next week.