First Novelist Reading Loop, Blackbird

← v10n1, Spring 2011

Fiction from Mathilda Savitch

Features A Reading by Victor Lodato

Gallery from “Dear Sarah Jane”

Victor Lodato is the 2010 winner of the Cabell First Novelist Award for Mathilda Savitch.

The Cabell First Novelist Award is presented on behalf of the university’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. Sponsors include the Department of English, James Branch Cabell Library Associates, the Friends of the Library, the VCU Libraries, the Honors College, Barnes & Noble Bookstore, and the College of Humanities and Sciences. Initial funding for the Award came from alumnus and novelist David Baldacci. The award is named in honor of Richmond novelist James Branch Cabell, whose papers are in the collection of the VCU library that bears his name.

childhood family

Victor Lodato

Victor Lodato’s first novel, Mathilda Savitch , was published by Farrar, Straus, and Giroux in 2009. He is also the author of thirteen plays, including Motherhouse (Samuel French, 2010), for which Lodato received the 2002 Weissberger Award, and "Dear Sara Jane," which was anthologized in The Backstage Book of New American Short Plays 2004 (Back Stage). His writing appears in North American Review , Virginia Quarterly Review , The Southern Review , and Northwest Review . Lodato is a Guggenheim fellow and recipient of the Helen Merrill Award, the John Golden Prize, Julie Harris Playwriting Award, as well as fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, The Princess Grace Foundation, The Robert Chesley Foundation, The Camargo Foundation (France), and The Bogliasco Foundation (Italy).