The North Carolina Book Awards have a UNC hue this year. Michael Chitwood and Daniel Wallace, members of the creative writing faculty at Carolina, recently were named the winners of the 2008 North Carolina Book Awards for poetry and fiction, respectively.

Chitwood, a lecturer in the English department, received the Roanoke-Chowan Award for Poetry for "Spill," his sixth collection of poems. Carolina faculty members have won the Roanoke-Chowan award six times in the past nine years.

This is the second Roanoke-Chowan Award for Chitwood; he won in 2003 for "Gospel Road Going."

Wallace, the J. Ross Macdonald Professor of English and Creative Writing, received the Sir Walter Raleigh Award for Fiction for "Mr. Sebastian and The Negro Magician."

The book awards will be presented Nov. 8 by the North Carolina Literary and Historical Association, an affiliate organization of the N.C. Office of Archives and History.

Chitwood's "Spill" was also named a 2008 finalist for ForeWord Magazine's poetry book of the year.

In addition to his six books of poetry, which include "From Whence" and "The Weave Room," Chitwood has written a collection of essays and a book of essays and short stories.

For many years, he was a regular commentator for National Public Radio affiliate WUNC-FM in Chapel Hill.