Levis Reading Prize Archive
VCU Department of English

Eleventh Annual Levis Reading Prize 2008
Matthew Donovan for Vellum

The Department of English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University are pleased to announce that Vellum by Matthew Donovan was selected as the winner of the 2008 Levis Reading Prize, awarded in the name of the late Larry Levis for the best first or second book of poetry published in the calendar year 2007. Mr. Donovan received an honorarium of $1000 and was brought to Richmond all expenses paid for a reception and public reading in September, 2008. In addition, his work was featured in the fall 2008 issue of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, published jointly by VCU and New Virginia Review, Inc.

Photo by BLWC

Vellum was published by Mariner Books. Donovan is the winner of the 2006 Katherine Bakeless Nason Prize for poetry, selected by Mark Doty and awarded by Middlebury College and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. His poems have appeared in several journals, including Poetry, Agni, the Gettysburg Review, and the Kenyon Review. He received his MFA from New York University and in 2004 was awarded a literature fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts. He is currently an assistant professor of creative writing at the College of Santa Fe and lives in New Mexico with his wife and son.

We would like to express our most sincere thanks to all who entered and thus made this annual contest such a success.

~

Tenth Annual Levis Reading Prize 2007
Joshua Weiner for From the Book of Giants

The Department of English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University are pleased to announce that From the Book of Giants by Joshua Weiner was selected as the winner of the Tenth Annual Levis Reading Prize, awarded in the name of the late Larry Levis for the best first or second book of poetry published in the calendar year 2006. Mr. Weiner received an honorarium of $1000 and was brought to Richmond all expenses paid for a reception and public reading in September, 2007. In addition, his work was featured in the fall 2007 issue of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, published jointly by VCU and New Virginia Review, Inc.

Photo by Ralph Alswang

From the Book of Giants was published by The University of Chicago Press. Weiner is the author of The World's Room. He is the recent recipient of the Rome Prize in Literature from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters and a Whiting Writers’ Award. He has published poems and prose in Best American Poetry, the Nation, the American Scholar, New York Review of Books, Chicago Tribune, Threepenny Review, TriQuarterly, Chicago Review, Boston Review, Yale Review, Slate, and elsewhere. Weiner has written poems about the need for music, the fear of fatherhood, the fear of a beloved child growing up and disappearing. His poems employ formal conventions in unexpected ways, and they have a searching quality about them, a vivid clarity.

We would like to express our most sincere thanks to all who entered and thus made this tenth contest such a success.

~

Ninth Annual Levis Reading Prize 2006
Ron Slate for The Incentive of the Maggot

The Department of English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University are pleased to announce that The Incentive of the Maggot by Ron Slate was selected as the winner of the Ninth Annual Levis Reading Prize, awarded in the name of the late Larry Levis for the best first or second book of poetry published in the calendar year 2005. Mr. Slate received an honorarium of $1000 and was brought to Richmond all expenses paid for a reception and public reading in September, 2006. In addition, his work was featured in the fall 2006 issue of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, published jointly by VCU and New Virginia Review, Inc.

Photo by George  Disario

The Incentive of the Maggot was published by Houghton Mifflin. Ron Slate is the winner of the 2004 Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize for poetry, selected by former U. S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky and awarded by Middlebury College and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He is a graduate of the Stanford University writing program and was the editor of the Chowder Review from 1973-1988. In more than twenty-five years in corporate business, he has been vice president of global communications for a major computer technology company and chief operating officer of a biotech start-up. He lives in Milton, Massachusetts.

We would like to express our most sincere thanks to all who entered and thus made this ninth contest such a success.

~

Eighth Annual Levis Reading Prize 2005
Spencer Reese for The Clerk's Tale

The Department of English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University are pleased to announce that The Clerk's Tale by Spencer Reece has been selected as the winner of the Eighth Annual Levis Reading Prize, awarded in the name of the late Larry Levis for the best first or second book of poetry published in the calendar year 2004. Mr. Reece received an honorarium of $1000 and was be invited to Richmond all expenses paid for a reception and public reading in September, 2005. In addition, his work was featured in the fall 2005 issue of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, published jointly by VCU and New Virginia Review, Inc.

Photo by Carol Watson

The Clerk's Tale was published by Houghton Mifflin. Spencer Reece is the winner of the 2003 Katharine Bakeless Nason Prize for poetry, selected by the U. S. poet laureate Louise Glück and awarded by Middlebury College and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. Reece was born in 1963 in Hartford, Connecticut. His poems have appeared in The New Yorker, Boulevard, and small magazines in Canada, Australia, and Britain. The Clerk's Tale was fifteen years in the making. Reece is an assistant manager at Brooks Brothers in Palm Beach Gardens. He lives in Juno Beach, Florida.

We would like to express our most sincere thanks to all who entered and thus made this eighth contest such a success.

~

Seventh Annual Levis Reading Prize 2004
David Daniel for Seven-Star Bird

The Department of English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University are pleased to announce that Seven-Star Bird by David Daniel has been selected as the winner of the Seventh Annual Levis Reading Prize, awarded in the name of the late Larry Levis for the best first or second book of poetry published in the calendar year 2003. Mr. Daniel received an honorarium of $1000 and was invited to Richmond all expenses paid for a reception and public reading in September, 2004. In addition, his work was featured in the fall 2004 issue of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, published jointly by VCU and New Virginia Review, Inc.

Photo by Melissa Frost

Seven-Star Bird was published by Graywolf Press and is Mr. Daniel's first full-length collection. He is the poetry editor of Ploughshares magazine. His poems and reviews have appeared in numerous journals, including Agni, Harvard Review, the Literary Review, Post Road, and Witness. He lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts, with his wife and their sons.

We would like to express our most sincere thanks to all who entered and thus made this seventh contest such a success.

~

Sixth Annual Levis Reading Prize 2003
Susan Aizenberg for Muse

The Department of English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University are pleased to announce that Muse by Susan Aizenberg has been selected as the winner of the Sixth Annual Levis Reading Prize, awarded in the name of the late Larry Levis for the best first or second book of poetry published in the calendar year 2002. Ms. Aizenberg received an honorarium of $1000 and was invited to Richmond all expenses paid for a reception and public reading in October, 2003. In addition, her work was featured in the fall 2003 issue of Blackbird: an online journal of literature and the arts, published by VCU and New Virginia Review, Inc.

Photo by Denise Brady

Muse, a finalist in the Crab Orchard Award Series in Poetry for 2002, was published by Southern Illinois University Press. It is Ms. Aizenberg’s first full-length collection. She is the coeditor (with Erin Belieu) of The Extraordinary Tide: New Poetry by American Women, a contributing editor to the Nebraska Review, and author of a chapbook-length collection of poems, Peru, which appears in Take Three: 2: AGNI New Poets Series. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Journal, AGNI, Chelsea, Prairie Schooner, and the Philadelphia Inquirer. Aizenberg is currently an assistant professor of English and creative writing at Creighton University in Omaha, Nebraska.

We would like to express our most sincere thanks to all who entered and thus made this sixth contest such a success.