2024 Virginia Literary Awards Finalists
The Virginia Literary Awards are given to outstanding Virginia authors in the areas of fiction, nonfiction and poetry (and, in the case of nonfiction, also by any author about a Virginia subject).
FICTION FINALISTS
RACHEL BEANLAND | The House Is On Fire
Rachel Beanland’s debut novel, “Florence Adler Swims Forever,” was named a New York Times Editors’ Choice and one of the best books of the year by USA Today and received the National Jewish Book Award for Debut Fiction. “The House Is On Fire,” her second novel, was selected as an Indie Next pick by the American Booksellers Association, a GMA Buzz Pick by “Good Morning America,” a “most anticipated” book by the Washington Post, and one of the best books of the year by NPR and The New Yorker. Beanland has benefitted from Bread Loaf Writers' Conference fellowships and residencies at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts, the Key West Literary Seminar, the Hambidge Center and the Eastern Frontier Educational Foundation. She attended the University of South Carolina and earned an M.F.A. in creative writing from Virginia Commonwealth University. Beanland lives in Richmond, where most recently she was the 2023–2024 writer-in-residence at the University of Richmond.
SADEQA JOHNSON | The House of Eve
Sadeqa Johnson is the New York Times bestselling author of five novels. Her accolades include being an NAACP Image Award nominee, a Hurston/Wright Foundation Legacy finalist, a Black Caucus of the American Library Association Literary Award honoree, and the winner of the Library of Virginia’s People’s Choice Award for Fiction. She is a Kimbilio Fellow and teaches in the M.F.A. program at Drexel University. Originally from Philadelphia, she currently lives near Richmond with her husband and three teens.
WINNER: ANGIE KIM | Happiness Falls
Angie Kim moved as a preteen from Seoul, South Korea, to the suburbs of Baltimore. After graduating from Interlochen Arts Academy, she studied philosophy at Stanford University and attended Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. Her debut novel, “Miracle Creek,” won the Edgar Award and the International Thriller Writers’ Thriller Award, and was named one of the 100 best mysteries and thrillers of all time by Time, and one of the best books of the year by Time, the Washington Post, Kirkus Reviews and the “Today” show. “Happiness Falls,” her second novel, was an instant New York Times bestseller and a book club pick for “Good Morning America,” Barnes & Noble, Belletrist and the Book of the Month Club.
NONFICTION FINALISTS
EDWARD L. AYERS | American Visions: The United States, 1800–1860
Edward Ayers is the University Professor of the Humanities and president emeritus at the University of Richmond. The author of eight books, he has won both the Bancroft Prize and the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize for his scholarship, been named National Professor of the Year, received the National Humanities Medal from President Barrack Obama at the White House, served as president of the Organization of American Historians, and was the founding board chair of the American Civil War Museum in Richmond. He is executive director of New American History and Bunk, initiatives dedicated to making the nation’s history more visible and useful for a broad range of audiences.
ASHLEY SHEW | Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement
Ashley Shew is a hard-of-hearing chemobrained amputee with Crohn's disease and tinnitus (“gotta catch ‘em all!”), and an associate professor of science, technology and society at Virginia Tech. She's author of “Against Technoableism: Rethinking Who Needs Improvement” and “Animal Constructions and Technological Knowledge.” She is the recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Grant on Disability, Experience and Technological Knowledge and is principal investigator on an Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Higher Learning Grant on Just Disability Tech Futures. Shew believes in cross-disciplinary, cross-disability and public-facing scholarship and has written for IEEE Technology and Society, Nursing Clio, Nature, WIRED, MIT Technology Review and the Chronicle of Higher Education. She participates locally with the Disability Alliance and Caucus at Virginia Tech and the New River Valley Disability Resource Center.
WINNER: ELIZABETH R. VARON | Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South
Elizabeth R. Varon is the Langbourne M. Williams Professor of American History at the University of Virginia and a member of the executive council of UVA's John L. Nau III Center for Civil War History. Varon grew up in northern Virginia and received a B.A. from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. from Yale University. She has taught at Wellesley College and Oxford University. She is the author of six books, including “Armies of Deliverance: A New History of the Civil War,” which won the Gilder Lehrman Lincoln Prize. Her most recent book, “Longstreet: The Confederate General Who Defied the South,” was reviewed in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, The Atlantic and The Guardian. Her current project is a biography of humanitarian Clara Barton.
POETRY FINALISTS
ARIANA BENSON | Black Pastoral: Poems
Ariana Benson is a Southern Black ecopoet whose debut collection, “Black Pastoral,” won the Cave Canem Poetry Prize. A Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellow, Benson has also received the Furious Flower Poetry Prize and the Graybeal Gowen Prize for Virginia Poets. Her poems and essays appear or are forthcoming in Poetry magazine, Ploughshares, Poem-a-Day, The Yale Review, The Kenyon Review and elsewhere. Benson is a proud alumna of Spelman College, where she facilitates creative writing and storytelling workshops for HBCU (Historically Black College and University) students. Through her writing, she strives to fashion vignettes of Blackness that speak to its infinite depth and richness.
BIB HICOK | Water Look Away
Bob Hicok is the author of 11 books of poetry and a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He is the recipient of nine Pushcart Prizes, a Guggenheim and two National Endowment for the Arts Fellowships, and his poetry has been selected for inclusion in nine volumes of “Best American Poetry.”
WINNER: JANINE JOSEPH | Decade of the Brain: Poems
Janine Joseph is a poet and librettist from the Philippines. She is the author of “Decade of the Brain” and “Driving Without a License,” winner of the Kundiman Poetry Prize, and is co-editor of “Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora.” Her poetry, essays and critical writings have appeared in numerous publications, including Newsweek, The Nation, The Atlantic, Orion, Poets & Writers, Poem-a-Day and the Smithsonian’s “What It Means to Be American” project. She has commissioned works for Symphony New Hampshire, the Washington Master Chorale and the Houston Grand Opera. Since 2016, she has organized for Undocupoets, a nonprofit literary organization that advocates for poets who are currently or who were formerly undocumented in the United States. A recipient of fellowships from MacDowell and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, she is also a Paul and Daisy Soros Fellow and a Public Voices Fellow of The OpEd Project. Joseph is an associate professor of creative writing at Virginia Tech.
