On Saturday the Library of Virginia named the winners of its twelfth annual literary awards, which recognize Virginia writers for works published in the previous year. The poetry and fiction honorees, both on the faculty of universities in Virginia, are poet Lisa Russ Spaar and novelist Domnica Radulescu. Each will receive a prize of thirty-five hundred dollars.
Spaar, a professor of English and director of the Area Program in Poetry Writing at University of Virginia in Charlottesville, took the award for her fourth collection, Satin Cash (Persea Books). The book borrows its title from Emily Dickinson's poem 402: "I pay—in Satin Cash/ You did not state—your price—."
The poetry finalists were Claudia Emerson for Figure Studies: Poems (Louisiana State University Press) and Eric Pankey for The Pear as One Example: New and Selected Poems, 1984-2008 (Ausable Press).
Radulescu won for her debut novel, Train to Trieste (Knopf). The Romanian-born writer teaches romance languages at Washington and Lee University, where she is also director of the women's studies program.
The shortlisted authors in fiction were Geraldine Brooks for People of the Book (Viking) and David A. Taylor for Success: Stories (Washington Writers' Publishing House).
Pulitzer Prize winner Annette Gordon-Reed was also honored with the award in nonfiction, for her much-lauded book The Hemingses of Monticello (Norton), which sheds light on the lives of Thomas Jefferson and the Hemings family at the Charlottesville estate they shared. Gordon-Reed teaches at New York Law School.
The library will be accepting entries of books of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction (including creative nonfiction) for next year's awards—three copies each of titles with a 2009 publication date—until February 5.