In the fall of 2004, VCU graduate and best-selling author David Baldacci (Total Control, Absolute Power) began funding a fiction fellowship for the MFA program. The David Baldacci Fiction Fellowship covers the cost of tuition and provides a stipend equal to that of a graduate teaching assistantship. Recipients assist in administration of the First Novelist Award and the Levis Reading Prize and also co-teach, with graduate faculty, an undergraduate fiction workshop.

For 2007-08, the fellowship has been awarded to Kate Bradley. Bradley graduated from Elon University in North Carolina in 2006 with a BA in English literature and creative writing. While at Elon, she taught reading and writing to elementary school students, studied sociology in Australia, and presented independent research at national conferences. She also served as the editor of Elon's literary magazine, Colonnades.

Baldacci also continues to provide substantial funding for the program's VCU Visiting Writers Series. Last year's visitors included, among others, Ellen Bryant Voigt, Sheri Reynolds, Gerald Stern, Joan Connor, and George Saunders.