Anne de Marcken wins 2025 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award

RICHMOND, Va. (WRIC) -- The 2025 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award has been awarded to Anne de Marcken for her book, "It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over."

The award celebrates an outstanding debut novel that has been published during the previous calendar year, according to a VCU release.

De Marcken's book is described in the release as "an enigmatic exploration of grief and humanity in which an unnamed protagonist traverses through a landscape of zombies, death and destruction in search of the intangible.

The award will officially be given to de Marcken at a public event on Nov. 5 at VCU -- which will involve a reading, a moderated discussion and a Q-and-A. For more information on how to attend, click here.

In addition to this award, "It Lasts Forever and Then It's Over" has also won the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for fiction, the Pacific Northwest Book Award and is the co-winner of the 2022 Novel Prize, the release said.

The other finalists in the running for the prize, which is now in its 24th year, were Morgan Talty for "Fire Exit" and Jiaming Tang for "Cinema Love."

The release also said that the 2026 VCU Cabell First Novelist Award will soon be announcing a call for submissions of debut novels that were published in 2025. The final deadline for submissions will be Dec. 30. For more details, click here.