Two University professors were named among the winners of the 17th Annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards last week.
Poet Rita Dove received The Carole Weinstein Prize in Poetry and Historian Elizabeth Varon won the Literary Award for Nonfiction for her book “Appomattox: Victory, Defeat, and Freedom at the End of the Civil War.”
Each recipient was awarded a monetary prize and an engraved crystal book.
The Carole Weinstein Prize is given annually to a poet whose body of work strongly relates to Virginia. A four-member Board of Curators selects the recipient of the $10,000 prize.
Dove, an English professor, received the Pulitzer Prize in 1987 for her book of poems “Thomas and Beulah.” More recently, she received the 2008 Library of Virginia Lifetime Achievement Award after serving as poet laureate to the United States from 1993-95, as consultant to the Library of Congress from 1999-00 and as the poet laureate of Virginia from 2004-06. She has also been awarded a host of other honors, including 25 honorary doctorates.
“I had no idea that I was going to be able to exert any kind of influence nationwide, but I did have faith in the power of poetry to change lives, and I decided to let that faith in poetry guide me through,” Dove said. “The results were gratifying and exciting. When I left the office [of poet laureate to the United States], I felt that my belief in poetry had only been strengthened from the responses that I had gotten from people all over the country.”
Dove said she was notified of her award significantly before the ceremony date.
“I had to keep quiet for several months,” Dove said. “Though it was wonderful to be spared the stress of wondering if I was going to be chosen out of a group of nominees, it was also very difficult to keep quiet about it.”
In Varon’s book, meanwhile, which received the Literary Award for Nonfiction, Varon narrates the surrender of Lee to Grant at Appomattox Court House, which brought about the end of the Civil War.
“When I first heard my name announced,” Varon said. “I thought about how grateful I was to be recognized that night alongside the wonderful writers who were present there at the awards ceremony, and about how deep my debt of gratitude is to the Library of Virginia.”
Varon, University Langbourne M. Williams professor of American history, has also published “Disunion!: The Coming of the American Civil War, 1789 - 1859” and “Southern Lady, Yankee Spy: The True Story of Elizabeth Van Lew, A Union Agent in the Heart of the Confederacy.”
Varon said the award comes as a high honor.
“People sometimes observe that writing is solitary work, and in a sense it is, but for me the most satisfying aspect of being a historian is that the work has brought me friendships and community,” Varon said. “I felt very proud to be a Virginian when I got the award.”
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