Art in Literature & The Virginia Literary Award Dinner
Here are some photos from the twentieth anniversary celebration of the Virginia Literary Awards. My friend and colleague David Baldacci was honored this year with the 2017 Lifetime Achievement Award. Also pictured is Margot Lee Shetterly, 2017 People’s Choice Award recipient for her book, Hidden Figures.
Katherine with David Baldacci
Katherine with Margot Lee Shetterly
National Poet Laureate Emerita Rita Dove, flanked by the wonderful co-producers of the Sirius XM Book Channel Maggie Linton (left) and Kim Alexander (right)
This is also the fifth annual presentation of an award I helped create, named for my friend and colleague, Mary Lynn Kotz (author of the definitive biography of Robert Rauschenberg).
The Award is presented each October by two prestigious institutions: the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts and the Library of Virginia. (external links)
The award is the first of its kind and is given to a book that “raises the bar” on writing a book-length work about visual art in one of the following categories: history, fiction, biography, poetry, art history, social history of art, journalism, museum catalogues, and young adult literature.
A collection of photos from the 17th Annual Literary Awards (click to enlarge)
The first year’s award was presented to The Innocence of Objects by Nobel Laureate Orhan Pamuk (see photo at right). Subsequent winners have been The Embrace: Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo by Virginia Poet Laureate Carolyn Kreiter Foronda; Lisette’s List by New York Times bestseller Susan Vreeland; Portraits at an Exhibition by Patrick Horrigan; Georgia, a novel of Stieglitz and O’Keeffe by Dawn Tripp; and Sargent’s Women: Four Lives Behind the Canvas by Donna M. Lucey. The 2020 winner of the Art in Literature Award is Becoming Mary Sully: Toward an American Indian Abstract by Philip J. Deloria.
