Stephen Starring Grant, Princess Joy L. Perry, MaKshya Tolbert and Meg Medina receive Virginia Literary Awards | Library of Virginia Recognizes 2026 Recipients and Patron of Letters Degree Honoree Carly Fiorina
RICHMOND, Va. – The Library of Virginia is pleased to announce the winners of the 29th Annual Virginia Literary Awards, the Commonwealth’s premier gala honoring Virginia writers and their contributions to literature.
Presented by Dominion Energy, the Sept. 19 celebration was hosted by New York Times best-selling author and award-winning filmmaker Adriana Trigiani. Also honored was business executive and civic leader Carly Fiorina, who received an honorary Patron of Letters degree for her leadership in advancing history education, her service to Virginia’s leading cultural institutions and her contributions to preserving and promoting the Commonwealth’s rich historical legacy. The Library’s highest honor, the degree is awarded by the Library Board to individuals who have made an outstanding contribution in the realm of arts, history, humanities, or information, library or archival science.
"Each year, this celebration reminds us of the depth and talent represented in Virginia’s literary landscape,” said Librarian of Virginia Dennis T. Clark. “We’re proud of this celebration not just for the achievements we’re honoring, but also for how it reflects our commitment to connecting communities to stories and resources that shape Virginia’s history and culture.”
The literary award winners, who each received a crystal book award and monetary prize, are as follows:
- NONFICTION AWARD: Stephen Starring Grant | Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home
- FICTION AWARD: Princess Joy L. Perry | This Here Is Love
- POETRY AWARD: MaKshya Tolbert | Shade is a place
- CHILDREN’S LITERATURE AWARD: Meg Medina | Graciela in the Abyss
- PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD FOR NONFICTION: Andrew Lawler | A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution
- PEOPLE’S CHOICE AWARD FOR FICTION: Virginia Evans | The Correspondent
- ART IN LITERATURE: THE MARY LYNN KOTZ AWARD: Sue Prideaux | Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin
The Library presented the awards in front of over 250 attendees at its annual dinner and gala. Additional award sponsors included the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Troutman Pepper Locke and William & Mary Libraries. The annual gala also raised significant funds for the Library’s conservation, education and community outreach initiatives.
“The Virginia Literary Awards is a storied tradition of the Library of Virginia,” said Lucia Anna (Pia) Trigiani, president of the Library of Virginia Foundation, “an evening to celebrate and recognize the literary talent of the Commonwealth of Virginia. We are in awe of the work of all nominees and particularly the finalists, whose dedication to the craft of storytelling is the quintessential tie that binds. What better way to create and sustain connection than through the written word! The Library of Virginia Foundation is proud to lead this signature event and raise critical support for the mission and literary initiatives of the Library of Virginia."
“We are deeply grateful to the Virginia Literary Awards sponsors who recognize the power of stories to educate, inspire and connect, especially our longtime partner and presenting sponsor, Dominion Energy,” said Scott Dodson, executive director of the Library of Virginia Foundation. “This year, more than 250 community and business leaders joined our finalists to celebrate outstanding literary works and support the Library’s role as a public square. Together, they are helping ensure that Virginia’s stories are preserved, shared and accessible for generations to come."
Additional event sponsorships included Atlantic Union Bank, Christian & Barton, McGuireWoods, MercerTrigiani and Virginia Humanities.
Information on each winner and honoree is as follows:
Carly Fiorina — 2026 Patron of Letters degree honoree — is chair and CEO of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, where she leads the nation’s largest living history museum and works to ensure America’s founding story is preserved, interpreted and shared with broad and diverse audiences. She has been a member of the foundation’s Board of Trustees since 2017 and has served as its chair since 2020. Fiorina is also the national honorary chair of the Virginia 250 Commission, helping to guide the Commonwealth’s commemoration of the 250th anniversary of the United States. Previously, Fiorina served as chair and CEO of Hewlett-Packard, becoming the first woman to lead a Fortune 50 company. She is the founder and chair of the nonprofit Pathway to Promise, an organization that works with justice-involved youth so they can change their world. She also serves on the James Madison University Board of Visitors and is the author of three best-selling books on leadership.
Stephen Starring Grant — 2026 nonfiction award winner for “Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home” — is a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in creative writing and poetry. An award-winning independent filmmaker who later spent two decades in advertising, he never stopped working toward becoming a writer; now the best-selling author of “Mailman” is a sought-after speaker on resilience and reinvention.
Princess Joy L. Perry — 2026 fiction award winner for “This Here Is Love” — is the recipient of a Virginia Commission for the Arts Artist Fellowship and a winner of the Zora Neale Hurston/Richard Wright Award. Her short stories have appeared in All About Skin, African American Review and Kweli Journal.
MaKshya Tolbert — 2026 poetry award winner for “Shade is a place” — is the 2025 Art in Library Spaces Artist-in-Residence at the University of Virginia and co-stewards Fernland Studios, an open-ended studio insistent on rest, rejuvenation and reciprocity as a core compositional practice. Tolbert was the 2024 New City Arts Fellowship Guest Curator and served as 2024-25 Chair of the Charlottesville Tree Commission. She has received fellowship and residency support from the U.S.-Italy Fulbright Commission, New City Arts, Community of Writers and Nelson Byrd Woltz Landscape Architects. She holds degrees from Stanford University, the University of Virginia and the University of Gastronomic Sciences. “Shade is a place” is her first book.
Meg Medina — 2026 children’s literature award winner for “Graciela in the Abyss” — is the author of many notable and award-winning works for young readers of all ages, including the Newbery Medal-winning and New York Times best-selling book “Merci Suárez Changes Gears,” the first in a trilogy. Her most recent middle-grade novel, “Graciela in the Abyss,” is a 2026 ALSC Notable Children’s Book and a CCBC Choices 2026 selection. Meg Medina’s work examines how cultures intersect through the eyes of young people. She brings audiences stories that speak to both what is unique in Latino culture and qualities that are universal.
Andrew Lawler — 2026 People’s Choice nonfiction award winner for “A Perfect Frenzy: A Royal Governor, His Black Allies, and the Crisis That Spurred the American Revolution” — is a historian and the author of national bestseller “The Secret Token,” about the lost colony of Roanoke. As a journalist, he has written more than 1,000 newspaper and magazine articles for, among many others, The New York Times, The Washington Post, National Geographic and Smithsonian. He is a contributing writer for Science and contributing editor for Archaeology magazines.
Virginia Evans — 2026 People’s Choice fiction award winner for “The Correspondent” — is from the East Coast of the United States. She attended James Madison University for her bachelor’s in English literature, as well as Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, for her Master of Philosophy degree in creative writing.
Sue Prideaux — 2026 Art in Literature: The Mary Lynn Kotz Award winner for “Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin” — is the author of many award-winning biographies, including “Edvard Munch: Behind the Scream,” winner of the James Tait Black Prize; “Strindberg: A Life,” which was shortlisted for the Samuel Johnson prize and won the Duff Cooper Prize; and “I Am Dynamite! A Life of Friedrich Nietzsche,” which was published in 32 languages and won the Hawthornden Prize. She travelled to Tahiti and the Marquesas Islands to research “Wild Thing: A Life of Paul Gauguin,” which has won many awards and was one of the New Yorker’s top ten Best Books of 2025. Prideaux has written for many publications including the Times Literary Supplement, the Sunday Times, the Spectator, the Economist and the Art Newspaper, and has spoken at many institutions including London’s British Museum, the National Gallery, the Royal Academy, the Royal Geographical Society, the National Gallery of Scotland, and MOMA.
ABOUT THE VIRGINIA LITERARY AWARDS
In 1997, the Library of Virginia established its annual Virginia Literary Awards program to honor Virginia writers and celebrate their contributions to the literary landscape of our state and nation. Given to Virginia authors in the categories of fiction and poetry — and to nonfiction and children’s literature authors for works about a Virginia subject as well — the awards are presented at an annual celebration that has become the Library’s signature event and an eagerly anticipated cultural tradition in Richmond. While the main award recipients are selected by independent panels of judges, the Library also invites book lovers and readers to vote for their favorite works for the People’s Choice Awards for Fiction and Nonfiction. In addition, the Library presents its highest honor, the Patron of Letters degree, during this event. In the past, the Library has also bestowed a Literary Lifetime Achievement Award to recognize the enduring influence of an outstanding Virginia writer, with past winners including Earl Hamner, Lee Smith, Jan Karon, Tom Robbins, Charles Wright, Barbara Kingsolver, Rita Dove, John Grisham, Tom Wolfe and David Baldacci.
ABOUT THE LIBRARY OF VIRGINIA AND THE FOUNDATION
The Library of Virginia is the leading source of information on Virginia’s history, government and people. The Library’s collections, containing more than 134 million items, document and illustrate the lives of both famous Virginians and ordinary citizens. Our online resources draw nearly 2 million website visits per year, and our on-site records, exhibitions and events bring in thousands of visitors annually. The Library is located in downtown Richmond near Capitol Square at 800 East Broad Street, Richmond, VA 23219. Learn more at www.lva.virginia.gov.
The Library of Virginia Foundation supports the Library of Virginia and its mission by raising private financial support, managing its endowment, and helping to bring Virginia’s history and culture to life. Learn more at www.lvafoundation.org.
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