Fifty-Eight-Year-Old Lit Mag Wins Virginia Governor's Award

The Virginia Commission for the Arts and the Virginians for the Arts Foundation recently announced that Shenandoah: The Washington and Lee University Review has won a prestigous Governor's Award for the Arts. Virginia governor Timothy M. Kaine will present the award to the literary journal, which was founded in 1950 by Washington and Lee students and faculty members, at the state capital in Richmond on September 17. Shenandoah editor R. T. Smith, who has been with the publication for thirteen years, and managing editor Lynn Leech, who has been on staff for twenty-one, will accept the award.

Shenandoah is one of ten recipients of the award, which was given in the categories of individual artists, arts organizations, and arts patrons. The Governor's Awards have been given only three other times in the state's history: 1979, 1985, and 2000, when poet Nikki Giovanni, novelist George Garrett, and the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts were among the winners.

"This recognition for the magazine is really a tribute to the staff, the student interns, the writers, and subscribers who invest their time and energy in the creation and distribution of serious writing," Smith was quoted as saying in a press release. "I hope it will also serve to remind people of Washington and Lee's ongoing commitment to the fine arts. For the past fifty-eight years, Shenandoah has been one expression of that commitment."