Kristen Green, a veteran journalist who grew up in Farmville, became the winner of the 2016 Literary Award for Nonfiction on Saturday during the Library of Virginia’s 19th annual Literary Awards. Green won the award for her book, Something Must Be Done about Prince Edward County.

According to a Library of Virginia press release, the judges felt that Green, in grappling with the difficult questions about her family’s complicity in the school closures and their legacy in Prince Edward County, demonstrates the truth of William Faulkner’s adage that the past isn’t even past — as the perceptions of scarcity, competition and fear that were employed to justify segregation appear in today’s headlines about schools, resources and fair treatment. 

Green has worked at several newspapers, including the Richmond Times-Dispatch, San Diego Union-Tribune and Boston Globe. Farmville is the only community in the nation to close its schools for five years rather than desegregate. She attended the all-white Prince Edward Academy, which did not admit black students until 1986. Green earned her bachelor’s degree at the University of Mary Washington and holds a master’s degree in public administration from Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.

Something Must Be Done about Prince Edward County has received recognition as a New York Times Bestseller in Education and in Race and Civil Rights; a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice; Southern Indie Bestseller; Washington Post Notable Nonfiction for 2015; and a Booklist Editors’ Choice: Adult Books, 2015 selection. It was longlisted for the 2016 Andrew Carnegie Medals for Excellence in Nonfiction.

Something Must Be Done about Prince Edward County was also this year’s People’s Choice Award winner for nonfiction through online voting.

Other nonfiction finalists with Green were: Twisted: My Dreadlock Chronicles by Bert Ashe and Madison’s Hand: Revising the Constitutional Convention by Mary Sarah Bilder and Madison’s Hand by legal historian Mary Sarah Bilder.

The Library of Virginia also named Jon Pineda as the recipient of the 2016 Literary Award for Poetry for Little Anodynes, which the judges felt was a beautifully crafted book employing memory and language as a way of salvaging the present.

“Pineda uses form to navigate place and identity in a wonderful hybrid of verse and prose reminiscent of A. R. Ammons and even William Faulkner,” judges said. With its perhaps paradoxical title, Little Anodynes is a big book with sequence of lyrical, personal narratives that explore Pineda’s biracial identity, the death of his sister, and the joys and fears of fatherhood.

Pineda was born in Charleston, S.C., and raised in Chesapeake, is a poet, novelist and nonfiction writer, and an assistant professor of English, linguistics, and communications at the University of Mary Washington (UMW), where he recently received the 2016 UMW Alumni Association Outstanding Young Faculty Member Award. Pineda graduated from James Madison University and Virginia Commonwealth University.

Also, Robert Goldwick, originally from Lexington, won the 2016 Emyl Jenkins Sexton Literary Award for Fall of Princes. The 2016 Library of Virginia Lifetime Achievement Award went to Nikki Giovanni, known as the “Princess of Black Poetry.” The Art in Literature: The Mary Lynn Kotz Award went to Patrick E. Horrigan for Portraits at an Exhibition: A Novel, the story of a young man’s search for the meaning of life amid a gallery of old masters’ portraits. The first recipient of the Library of Virginia’s Honorary Patron of Letters Degree is Carole M. Weinstein. Weinstein was recognized in the community for her service to, and love of, cultural and educational institutions.