Garrett gets governor's award

Staff report

George Garrett, recently retired as the Henry Hoyns Professor Emeritus of Creative Writing at U.Va., has been named one of four individual recipients of the Governor's Awards for the Arts 2000, announced Sept. 10.

Garrett is best known for his trilogy of historical novels based in Elizabethan England -- Death of the Fox, The Succession and Entered from the Sun. His genres include novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, literary criticism and history. Garrett first taught at the University from 1962 to 1966, then directed the graduate program in contemporary literature and creative writing at Hollins College from 1967 to 1971. In 1984, Garrett was named to U.Va.'s Hoyns professorship.

A prolific writer, his other well-known works include: The Sorrows of Fat City; My Silk Purse and Yours; Whistling in the Dark; Welcome to the Medicine Show: Postcards, Flashcards, Snapshots; and his most recent novel The King of Babylon Shall Not Come Against You.

Garrett has received numerous awards and honors throughout his career, including the American Academy of Arts and Letters Award, the T.S. Eliot Award, and the PEN/Faulkner Bernard Malamud Award for Short Fiction.

Other winners in the individual artists category are writer Nikki Giovanni of Christiansburg; composer Adolphus Hailstork of Virginia Beach; and painter and educator Theresa Pollak of Richmond, who recently celebrated her 101st birthday.

The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts in Sweet Briar and the Wolf Trap Foundation for the Performing Arts in Vienna were named winners in the producing and presenting organizations category.

Rounding out the list of nine winners are the Galax Moose Lodge No. 733, recognized for putting on the Old Fiddlers' Convention in Galax for the past 65 years; the Richmond-based Philip Morris Family of Companies; and Daisy Portuondo of Wise, all in the arts patrons category.

Staige Blackford, editor of the U.Va.-based Virginia Quarterly Review, served on the panel of judges for the awards.

Gov. Jim Gilmore and First Lady Roxane Gilmore will honor the winners at ceremonies Oct. 14 at 8 p.m. at the Carpenter Center in Richmond. Each will receive an original sculpture created by Allan Rosenbaum, a member of the arts faculty at Virginia Commonwealth University.

The awards ceremony is open to the public. Tickets are available through Ticketmaster at (804) 262-8100 or at the Carpenter Center box office. For information, contact Tammy Shackelford at (804) 783-8140.