Carrie Brown, visiting associate professor of English at Sweet Briar College, has been awarded a 2004 Literature Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts in the fiction category. The noted novelist is one of 42 writers the NEA chose out of 1,422 applicants for the $20,000 award.

The grants, according to NEA guidelines, are the organization's "most direct investment in American creativity, encouraging the production of new work and allowing writers the time and means to write." In addition to the Literature Fellowship, NEA grants are distributed in categories including Creativity, Services to Arts Organizations and Artists, and Leadership Initiatives.

Brown, who applied for the grant in the fall of 2003, said she was thrilled upon learning of her recognition - if not a little dumbfounded. "You apply so far in advance that you forget about it," she confessed. "I was very pleased, of course. There's nothing like having your work affirmed, particularly at a level of such stature. It's a significant award for a writer. NEA [recognition] is substantive, important support."

To get her name in the NEA's rather sizable hat, Brown simply sent in a story and put her name in the top right-hand corner. Her submission was read and judged by a pool of fellow writers that the NEA chooses each year.

Although many writers depend on grants to carry them through to their next project, Brown says she's fortunate to also have employment at Sweet Briar under circumstances and in a setting that allow her to pursue her muse. Still, the mother of three says grant money has palpable benefits.

"I felt a certain weight fall off me," she said of the NEA windfall. "It's a wonderful thing to have your talent affirmed in a way that's financially meaningful enough to make a difference."

Brown, the author of four novels and a collection of short stories, The House on Belle Isle, is no stranger to literary accolades. Her first novel, Rose's Garden, won the Barnes & Noble Discover Award in 1998. In 2001, her novel The Hatbox Baby earned her the Great Lakes Book Award, the Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize for best work of fiction by a woman, and the Library of Virginia Award. Her story collection was a finalist for the Library of Virginia Book Award in 2002.

"Wings," a story published by The Georgia Review in 2002, was one of the works cited by the American Society of Magazine Editors in naming the Review a finalist in the fiction category for the 2002 National Magazine Award. In addition, Lamb in Love, Brown's second novel, has just been optioned for film.

Brown's latest novel, Confinement, was published by Algonquin Books this spring to glowing reviews. A People magazine reviewer called Confinement a "beautiful" novel. Sandra Scofield of the Chicago Tribune commented, "In Carrie Brown's capable hands, flashbacks are the stuff of poetry, history and love."

A frequent book reviewer for The Washington Post and the Chicago Tribune, as well as an occasional essayist and lecturer, Brown will start on a novel this summer based on the lives of 19th century brother-and-sister astronomers William and Caroline Herschel.

Brown is married to novelist John Gregory Brown, Julia Jackson Nichols professor of English at Sweet Briar, where he directs the creative writing program.

For media inquiries, please contact Shannon Wells, SBC media relations coordinator, at (434) 381-6833 or swells@sbc.edu.