Julie Campbell

VPW’s Power Is in Friendships

I always leave VPW and NFPW conferences in a melancholy mood. How can that be after spending time with wonderful friends, networking and learning?

It took me a few years to realize that was exactly why I was melancholy – I was leaving friends behind until the next meetings. My melancholy is not as bad today, though, thanks to social networking.

The VPW conference in Roanoke was at a fabulous location – the Taubman Museum of Art . Cara Modisett and her team put together a stellar line-up of speakers. I filled an entire notebook with blog topics and professional tips. 

We also helped raise money for student scholarships through the live and silent auctions organized by Louise Seals, Martha Steger, Linda Evans, Mary Martin, Sande Snead and Norma Pierce. I hope I didn’t leave anyone out because it was fabulous. The best part is that making a donation is so painless because those of us who bid get a tangible item. In my case, I’ll be having brunch at Keswick Hall with Linda. I can’t wait.

I caught up with old friends and new ones. I met Shawna Poole, daughter of Tammy Poole. Tammy and I were editorial assistants at the Roanoke Times (it was just yesterday, honest!) and I feel as if know Shawna through Tammy’s Facebook posts.

Peggy Weston shared some great travel stories and gave me an idea for a national speaker – Peggy! Did you know she’s a voice coach? Marge Swayne filled me in on her life and outbid me on the jewelry!

I got to know new member Susan Ayers, who is a fellow diva. And I saw Pauline Mitchell, a long-time member and a Virginia Communications Hall of Fame inductee.

After the conference I headed to the “Campbell Hilton” courtesy of Julie Campbell. Pam Stallsmith and I treated Julie to dinner to celebrate her recently published book.

The conferences are great because we network and learn new skills, and we also renew friendships. That’s truly the power of VPW and NFPW.

(Note: I’ll blog the conference topics in my upcoming posts.)

Writing about Virginia’s Horses Takes Patience

NFPW and VPW member Julie Campbell always has been a horse lover. So it was natural for her to write a book about the horse in Virginia.

She just didn’t realize how long it would take. She worked on the book full time while researching and writing on evenings, weekends and days off. “When you boil it down to time I spent just on the book, I’d guess it took about two years,” she said a few weeks before her book tour kicked off.

But then there was another year when it went through two rounds of anonymous reviews and subsequent revisions. She also had to find the illustrations and obtain their accompanying permissions. Tack on another year or so for production: copyediting, design, proofreading, indexing and printing.

The Horse in Virginia: An Illustrated History explores the history of horses in Virginia during four centuries, including how the horse fit into society at any given time.  The University of Virginia Press developed the concept and hired Julie to write it and find the illustrations. There are many books about different facets of Virginia horses – fox hunting, steeple chasing, thoroughbreds and racing – but there wasn’t one general history. Now there is.

Even an avid horse lover like Julie was surprised by some of her findings. “I learned that through the mid-19th century, many if not most horses in Virginia had a gait called ‘amble’ in addition to the usual walk, trot, canter, gallop,” Julie said. “It was smooth and easy to ride and very popular.”

“I also learned that Virginians are very interested in the remains of famous horses, like Traveller and Little Sorrel,” she said. “You can actually see some horse bones at Stonewall Jackson’s headquarters museum in Winchester; they belonged to the horse of a Confederate cavalryman, Turner Ashby. Both the man and horse were killed in battle during the Civil War.”

Want to know more? Ask your independent bookseller to order it for you from the University of Virginia Press. Julie will sign her book March 20 at Fountain Bookstore in Richmond and May 11 at the Library of Virginia in Richmond.

Library of Virginia Announces Winners

Adriana Trigiani hosted last night’s 12th annual Literary Awards at the Library of Virginia. As always she was engaging and humorous, connecting everyone. It’s always great fun to see her. She’s  a wonderful author who gives back so much to the book world. By the end of the evening, everyone would be conversing via Facebook. And only she could get by with calling Roger Mudd “eye candy.”

He was the winner of the People’s Choice Award in nonfiction for his “The Place to Be: Washington, CBS, and the Glory Days of Television News.” The fiction winner was Martin Clark’s “The Legal Limit.”

The gala event was great fun and many Virginia Press Women members attended, including Nancy Beasley, who was a nominee in 2006 for “Izzy’s Fire.” I hope to see Julie Campbell, who is writing a book about the horse in Virginia as a future nominee. Her book is slated to publish this spring.

VPW member Emyl Jenkins, whose latest book is “The Big Steal,” presented the fiction award to Domnica Radulescu for “Train to Trieste,” which tells the story of a young woman’s quest for freedom and shelter in Soviet-dominated Russia during the late 1970s.” Domnica is a professor at Washington & Lee, where Julie also works. The world of authors is small.

Other winners included Annette Gordon-Reed who won the nonfiction prize for “The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family.” Lisa Russ Spaar won the poetry prize for “Satin Cash.” The Weinstein Poetry Prize went to Eleanor Ross Taylor and Charles Wright. The Whitney and Scott Cardozo Award for Children’s Literature was awarded to Doreen Rappaport for “Abe’s Honest Words: The Life of Abraham Lincoln.”

Other VPW members attending included Mary Martin, George and Frances Crutchfield, Sharon Baldacci

Literary Awards

Julie Campbell, Cynthia Price, Adriana Trigiani, Nancy Beasley attend the Library of Virginia Literary Awards.

 and Jann Malone, who also served as a judge.

The Literary Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to John Grisham. He writes a novel a year and all of them have become international best sellers. There are currently more than 235 million of his books in print worldwide, which have been translated into 29 languages. His first book, however, he sold from the trunk of his car going to libraries statewide.

Libraries were an underlying theme throughout the evening. Most everyone shared their experiences of when they received their first library card. Grisham, whose family moved frequently, considered a town small time if you were only allowed to check out two books at a time. A good library would allow five.

Books, of course, were the focus, but what of their future? Grisham asked what would happen if the Kindle gained in popularity. Would holding a book, cracking it open and turning the pages go the way of the Internet? It was a weighty question and one that no one in this crowd truly wanted to contemplate.

After all, is there anything greater than opening the cover of a new book eagerly anticipating the discoveries within the pages? It’s magical and that’s what makes the Library of Virginia’s Literary Awards magical.