Cabell First Novelist Award
VCU Department of English

The VCU First Novelist Award was founded in 2001 by Laura Browder and Tom De Haven. Richmond native and VCU alumnus David Baldacci generously funded and supported the fledgling award in its early years.

The award was renamed the Cabell First Novelist Award in 2009 as James Branch Cabell Library joined the Department of English and its MFA program to cosponsor the award. Cabell Library began hosting the award website in summer 2011.

The award celebrates the novel workshop offered by VCU’s MFA in Creative Writing Program—which was the nation's first year-long novel workshop, and still one of the very few. To recognize a rising new talent in the literary world who has successfully published a first novel, nominations are solicited nationwide from publishers, editors, agents, and writers. A panel of readers narrows the field to three or four works, and from that short list, three judges choose the recipient of the Cabell First Novelist Award.