Free to enter, Cabell First Novelist Award, prize: $5,000 (books published in the USA)

Deadline: 15 January 2011, 15 September 2011

The award celebrates the year-long 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. Created 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 promising new works, and from that short list, three prominent judges choose the recipient of the First Novelist Award.

Deadlines for the VCU Cabell First Novelist Award

Books published January thru June 2010: September 15, 2010
Books published July thru December 2010: January 15, 2011

Winner will be announced in June 2011.

To submit, simply send 3 copies for review to

Cabell First Novelist Award
VCU Department of English
900 Park Avenue, Hibbs Hall, Room 306
P.O. Box 842005
Richmond, VA 23284-2005

Submissions must be first published in the United States during the 2010 calendar year. Self-published novels are not eligible.

More information here.