The VCU Department of English has just announced the 14 semifinalist books for this year's VCU Cabell First Novelist Award:

• "Fobbit" by David Abrams (pub. Black Cat)
• "Hope: A Tragedy" by Shalom Auslander (pub. Riverhead Books)
• "No One Is Here Except All of Us" by Ramona Ausubel (pub. Riverhead Books)
• "The People of Forever Are Not Afraid" by Shani Boianjiu (pub. Hogarth)
• "A Land More Kind Than Home" by Wiley Cash (pub. William Morrow)
• "Forgotten Country" by Catherine Chung (pub. Riverhead Books)
• "The Book of Jonas" by Stephen Dau (pub. Blue Rider Press)
• "When Captain Flint Was Still a Good Man" by Nick Dybek (pub. Constable & Robinson)
• "Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk" by Ben Fountain (pub. Riverhead Books)
• "Girlchild" by Tupelo Hassman (pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• "The Song of Achilles" by Madeline Miller (pub. Ecco)
• "The Yellow Birds" by Kevin Powers (pub. Little, Brown and Co.)
• "Mr. Penumbra's 24-Hour Bookstore" by Robin Sloan (pub. Farrar, Straus and Giroux)
• "The Girl Below" by Bianca Zander (pub. William Morrow)

This group was chosen from almost 140 submissions based on reviews by readers from the Department of English, the VCU Friends of the Library, and others in the VCU community. Thank you to everyone who served as a reader and helped to make such an exciting selection of novels. Shortly, the three finalists will be decided from among the 14 semifinalists, and those three will then be read by the judges, who will choose the winner.