VCU news

By Tom Gresham

Deb Olin Unferth has won the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award for the best debut novel published in 2008. Her winning book is “Vacation,” a tale of a contemporary businessman whose life takes a mysterious, heartbreaking turn.

Unferth will receive the award at the First Novelist Festival at Virginia Commonwealth University on Nov. 6. A reception for the author will be held at 5 p.m. in the Cabell Room on the fourth floor of the James Branch Cabell Library, 901 Park Ave. The First Novelist Award Ceremony, which will include a panel discussion and a reading by Unferth, will be held at 6:30 p.m. in the Richmond Salons on the second floor of the VCU Student Commons, 907 Floyd Ave.

Unferth was one of three finalists for the prize, which is now in its eighth year. The other finalists were David Mura, for “Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire,” and Jesmyn Ward, for “Where the Line Bleeds.”

Unferth is also the author of the short story collection “Minor Robberies.” Her fiction has appeared in Harper’s, NOON, the anthology “New Sudden Fiction” and elsewhere. She is the recipient of a Pushcart Prize, a Creative Capital Grant from the Warhol Foundation and fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell. She is an assistant professor at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Conn.

“Vacation,” published in September 2008 by McSweeney’s, follows a Manhattan nine-to-fiver named Myers as he tracks his wife around the city; his wife, in turn, is also tailing someone. Myers’s journey eventually leads to an unexpected trip to Nicaragua, where he meets other people on “vacation” from their daily lives.

Elizabeth Hand, in The Village Voice, writes, “Unferth's dreamy, surreal debut novel reads like an extended hallucination or out-of-body experience, as unsettling as it is compelling. The action unfolds like a postmodern—or perhaps post-mortem—farce, (and the) prose is lovely, at once precise and startling.”

More than 80 novels were submitted for consideration for this year’s prize. A group of more than 100 readers reduced the list to finalists and semifinalists. The finalists were then considered by a panel of judges that included Travis Holland, winner of the 2008 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award for “The Archivist’s Story;” Peter Orner, winner of the 2007 Award for “The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo;” and Andrew Blossom, editor of Makeout Creek and the forthcoming anthology “Richmond Noir.”

The VCU Cabell First Novelist Award celebrates the VCU MFA in Creative Writing Program’s year-long novel workshop – the first in the nation and still one of the few in existence. The winning author receives a $5,000 cash prize. Travel expenses and lodging also are provided for the author and his or her agent and editor to attend the First Novelist Festival, a series of events that focus on the creation, publication and promotion of a first novel. Co-sponsors of the award are the VCU Department of English, the James Branch Cabell Library Associates, the Friends of the Library, the VCU Libraries, the VCU Honors College and the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences.

In addition to Holland and Orner, previous winners of the award have included Karen Fisher, for “A Sudden Country;” Lorraine Adams, for “Harbor;” Michael Byers, for “Long for this World;” Isabel Zuber, for “Salt;” and Maribeth Fischer, for “The Language of Good-bye.”

The deadline for the 2010 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award is September 15 for books published January through June 2009. For books published July through December 2009, the deadline is January 15, 2010. For more information, visit www.firstnovelist.vcu.edu.