Winners of Library of Virginia awards

The Library of Virginia last night announced the winners of the 12th annual Literary Awards during a gala celebration at the library in downtown Richmond. Winners must be Virginia authors or, in the case of nonfiction, have written works on a Virginia subject.

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Domnica Radulescu was awarded the fiction prize for "Train to Trieste," which the independent panel of judges called a stunning debut novel written in lyrically beautiful prose. The book tells the story of a young woman's quest for freedom and shelter in Soviet-dominated Russia during the late 1970s, of her escape to build an American life overshadowed by what she left behind and her pilgrimage in middle age to reclaim the landscapes of her youth.

Radulescu was born in Romania and came to the United States in 1983. She is a professor of romance languages and head of the women's-studies program at Washington and Lee University in Lexington.

The other finalists were Geraldine Brooks for "People of the Book" and David A. Taylor for "Success: Stories."

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The nonfiction prize went to Annette Gordon-Reed for "The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family," which the judges said offers a bountiful meditation about race, family and human choices. The book centers on the family of Sally Hemings, a slave at Monticello, and the children many historians believe she bore by Thomas Jefferson.

Gordon-Reed is a professor of law at New York Law School and won the Pulitzer Prize in history for "The Hemingses of Monticello."

The other finalists were Drew Gilpin Faust for "This Republic of Suffering: Death and the American Civil War" and Nancy Ross Hugo and Jeffrey Kirwan for "Remarkable Trees of Virginia."

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Lisa Russ Spaar is the recipient of the poetry prize for "Satin Cash," her fourth collection. The judges said her poems abound in surprising inversions of syntax.

Spaar is an associate professor of English and the founder and director of the Area Program in Poetry Writing for undergraduates at the University of Virginia.

The other finalists were Claudia Emerson for "Figure Studies: Poems" and Eric Pankey for "The Pear as One Example: New & Selected Poems, 1984-2008."

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The winner of the People's Choice Award in fiction was Martin Clark's "The Legal Limit." The People's Choice Award in nonfiction went to Roger Mudd's "The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News."

The finalists for People's Choice Awards are selected by a panel of independent Virginia booksellers and librarians from a list of books nominated for the library's Literary Awards. Winners are decided by readers voting online and in libraries.

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Two poets were the winners of the Weinstein Poetry Prize: Eleanor Ross Taylor and Charles Wright.

Taylor, a longtime resident of Charlottesville, has been publishing books of poetry since 1960. Among her other honors are the Shelley Memorial Prize awarded by the Poetry Society of America and the Aiken Taylor Award for Modern Poetry.

Wright, who has taught poetry and writing at the University of Virginia for nearly 30 years, has won numerous other awards, including the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Griffin Poetry Prize, the PEN Translation Prize and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

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Previously announced were the recipients of the Lifetime Achievement Award, novelist John Grisham, and the Whitney and Scott Cardozo Award for Children's Literature, Doreen Rappaport for "Abe's Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln."