The Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University is pleased to announce The Tenth Annual Levis Reading Prize has been awarded to Joshua Weiner for his collection From the Book of Giants, published by The University of Chicago Press.

Previous prizes have gone to Ron Slate for his collection The Incentive of the Maggot, Spencer Reece for The Clerk's Tale, David Daniel for Seven-Star Bird, Susan Aizenberg for Muse, Steve Scafidi for Sparks from a Nine-Pound Hammer, Nick Flynn for Some Ether, Joel Brouwer for Exactly What Happened, Sandra Alcosser for Except by Nature, and Belle Waring for Dark Blonde.

In memory of Larry Levis, the distinguished poet and teacher who was our colleague until his untimely death in 1996, the Department of English at Virginia Commonwealth University aims to encourage poets early in their careers by sponsoring an annual award for the best first or second book of poetry.

Entries may be submitted by either author or publisher, and must include a copy of the book (48 pages or more), a cover letter, and a brief biography of the author including previous publications. (Entries from vanity presses are not eligible.) The book must have been published in the previous calendar year. Entrants wishing acknowledgment of receipt must include a self-addressed stamped postcard.

The annual entry deadline is January 15th. Materials received after that date will be returned unopened. Because we cannot guarantee their return, all entries will become the property of the VCU Department of English.

Judges come from faculty of the VCU Department of English and the VCU MFA Program in Creative Writing.

The winner receives an honorarium of $1000 and are invited, expenses paid, to Richmond to present a public reading in the following fall.

Send all materials to:

Levis Reading Prize
VCU Department of English
P.O. Box 842005
Richmond, VA 23284-2005

For further information, call 804.828.1329 or e-mail englishgrad@vcu.edu