Carrie Brown, a creative writing teacher at Sweet Briar College, is a finalist for her second Library of Virginia Literary Award. Her novel, “Confinement,” is her third book to be nominated in the fiction category.

Brown, a former journalist, won the fiction award in 2001 for “The Hatbox Baby” and was a finalist for “The House on Belle Isle and Other Stories” in 2003. She also is the author of “Rose’s Garden” and “Lamb in Love.”

“Confinement” (Algonquin Books) is the story of Arthur Henning, a refugee from Vienna and London, who relocates in the New York suburbs after World War II. Brown’s prose and insightfully drawn characters re-create the mid-20th-century world in this tale of redemptive love.

The Library of Virginia and the Library of Virginia Foundation recently announced the finalists for the eighth annual Library of Virginia Literary Awards. Other finalists in the fiction category are Joe Jackson for “How I Left the Great State of Tennessee and Went on to Better Things” (Carroll and Graf Publishers) and Leslie Pietrzyk for “A Year and a Day” (William Morrow). Judges chose from 110 books nominated for awards in three categories — fiction, non-fiction and poetry.

Winners will be announced Oct. 15 at the Library of Virginia at a celebration honoring Virginia authors and friends. Tickets are $75. For more information, please call (804) 371-4795.

The finalists for the best non-fiction work about Virginia or by a Virginia author are:

• Joseph J. Ellis for “His Excellency: George Washington,” Alfred A. Knopf
• Melvin Patrick Ely for “Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War,” Alfred A. Knopf
• Camilla Townsend for “Pocahontas and the Powhatan Dilemma,” Hill and Wang

The finalists for the best book of poetry by a Virginian are:

• Rita Dove for “American Smooth: Poems,” W. W. Norton and Co.
• Ruth Stone for “In The Dark,” Copper Canyon Press
• Charles Wright for “Buffalo Yoga,” Farrar, Straus and Giroux

The recipient of the Library of Virginia Lifetime Achievement Award is Merrill D. Peterson, noted Jeffersonian scholar and professor of history emeritus at the University of Virginia.

Honor books also were named in each category. They are:
Fiction: “Enchanted Heart” by Felicia Mason, Dafina Books–Kensington Publishing Corp.
Non-fiction: “Sir William Berkeley and the Forging of Colonial Virginia” by Warren M. Billings, Louisiana State University Press, and “Scandal at Bizarre” by Cynthia Kierner, Palgrave Macmillan.
Poetry: “Insomnia Diary” by Bob Hicok, University of Pittsburgh Press.