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VCU First Novelist Festival
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Vacation
Last night, Virginia Commonwealth University hosted its annual Cabell First Novelest Festival. And this year's award went to Deb Olin Unferth's Vacation.
This is Deb's first novel, but she did publish a short story collection, Minor Robberies, with McSweeney's as well. Her fiction has appeared in Harper's and NOON, and she has won a Pushcart Prize, a Creative Capital Grant from the Warhol Foundation, and fellowships from Yaddo and MacDowell.
Vacation follows a Manhattan nine-to-fiver named Myers as he tracks his wife around the city; his wife, in turn, is also tailing someone. Myers's journey eventually leads him to an unexpected trip to Nicaragua, where he meets other people on "vacation" from their daily lives.
In the panel discussion that took place last night, Deb, along with her agent and her editor, discussed the process of this book coming to life. It took Deb one and one-half years to write this book, but she only did so after scrapping a book she had been working on for three years.
Deb's editor, Eli Horowitz, called Deb a locomotive train. He said that all he did was put her on a path, and she did all of the hard work in developing this book.
