The Department of English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University are pleased to announce that Radial Symmetry by Katherine Larson has been selected as the winner of the 2012 Levis Reading Prize for the best first or second book of poetry published in the calendar year 2011. The award is named in memory of the late Larry Levis, the poet who taught at VCU. Larson will receive an honorarium of $2000 and will be brought to Richmond, expenses paid, for a reception and public reading on September 20th, 2012.

Katherine Larson’s Radial Symmetry (Yale University Press, 2011) was also selected by Louise Glück as the winner of the Yale Series of Younger Poets. Larsen’s work has appeared in AGNI, Boulevard, The Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Poetry, and Poetry Northwest, among other publications. She is the recipient of a Ruth Lilly Fellowship, the Union League Civic and Arts Foundation Poetry Prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. In addition to her literary career, Larson has worked as a molecular biologist and field ecologist. She lives in Arizona with her husband and daughter.

This year the Prize Committee would also like to recognize the outstanding books of two additional finalists, Anthony Carelli for his collection Carnations (Princeton University Press, 2011) and Brian Barker for The Black Ocean (Southern Illinois University Press, 2011).

The Levis Reading Prize is presented on behalf of VCU’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. Sponsors include the VCU Department of English, James Branch Cabell Library Associates, VCU Friends of the Library, the VCU Libraries, the VCU Honors College, Barnes & Noble @ VCU, and the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences, with primary funding provided by the family of Larry Levis.

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

For further information about the Levis Reading Prize, see http://www.has.vcu.edu/eng/resources/levis_prize/levis_prize.htm, call 804.828.1329, or contact Katelyn Kiley, Levis Fellow, at kileyk@vcu.edu

The Department of English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University are pleased to announce that We Don’t Know We Don’t Know by Nick Lantz was selected as the winner of the 2011 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 2010. Mr. Lantz will receive an honorarium of $1500 and will be brought to Richmond all expenses paid for a reception and public reading in September, 2011.

Nick Lantz is the author of two recent collections of poetry. We Don’t Know We Don’t Know (Graywolf Press, 2010) won the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference Bakeless Prize, the Great Lakes Colleges Association New Writers Award, and the Council for Wisconsin Writers Posner Book-Length Poetry Award. The Lightning That Strikes the Neighbors’ House (University of Wisconsin Press, 2010) was selected by former U.S. Poet Laureate Robert Pinsky for the Felix Pollak Prize. Lantz has received fellowships from the Wisconsin Institute for Creative Writing and the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and his work has appeared in Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Poetry Daily, and FIELD, and has been featured on the nationally syndicated radio program The Writer’s Almanac with Garrison Keillor. He has taught creative writing at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Tinker Mountain Writers’ Workshop, Queens University Low-Residency MFA, and Gettysburg College where he was the 2010-2011 Emerging Writer Lecturer. In fall 2011, he will join the faculty at Franklin and Marshall College.

This year the Prize committee would also like to recognize two finalists, Nicky Beer for her collection The Diminishing House (Carnegie Mellon, 2010) and Daniel Johnson for How to Catch a Falling Knife (Alice James, 2010).

The Levis Reading Prize is presented on behalf of VCU’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. Sponsors include the VCU Department of English, James Branch Cabell Library Associates, VCU Friends of the Library, the VCU Libraries, the VCU Honors College, Barnes & Noble@VCU, the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences, with additional funding provided by the family of Larry Levis.

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

Poet Peter Campion, winner of this year’s VCU Levis Reading Prize, will give a reading this week, on September 24 at 8PM at the Grace Street Theater.
Peter Campion is the author of two collections of poetry, Other People (2005) and The Lions (2009), both from the University of Chicago Press. He also published a monograph on the painter Mitchell Johnson in 2004, with Terrence Rogers Fine Art.

His poems and prose have appeared recently in “ArtNews”, “The Boston Globe”, “Modern Painters”, “The New York Times”, “The New Republic”, “Poetry”, “Slate”, and “The Yale Review”. Campion has received a George Starbuck Lectureship at Boston University, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship at Stanford University, a Pushcart Prize, and a Civitella Ranieri Individual Artist’s Fellowship. He is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Auburn University and edits the journal Literary Imagination, which is published by Oxford University Press.

The Levis Reading Prize is presented on behalf of VCU’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. Sponsors include the VCU Department of English, the James Branch Cabell Library Associates, Friends of the Library, the VCU Libraries, the VCU Honors College, Barnes & Noble @ VCU Bookstore, the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences and the Levis family.

Honoring the life and writing of poet Larry Levis (1946-1996) and marking the acquisition of his papers by the James Branch Cabell Library of Virginia Commonwealth University, the Department of English and its MFA in Creative Writing Program have organized a three-day literary conference, from Sept 22-24th, featuring a keynote reading by Philip Levine, Levis’s literary friend and former teacher. The conference also presents a kick-off event featuring David St. John, as well as several days of panels and discussions from a stellar group of participating poets and editors from around the country. The celebration concludes with a special evening celebrating the award of the Levis Reading Prize to the 2010 winner, Peter Campion, author of The Lions.

The Department of English and the MFA Program in Creative Writing at Virginia Commonwealth University are pleased to announce that The Lions by Peter Campion was selected as the winner of the 2010 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 2009. Mr. Campion will receive an honorarium of $1500 and will be brought to Richmond all expenses paid for a reception and public reading in September, 2010.
Peter Campion is the author of two collections of poetry, Other People (2005) and The Lions (2009), both from the University of Chicago Press. He also published a monograph on the painter Mitchell Johnson in 2004, with Terrence Rogers Fine Art. His poems and prose have appeared recently in “ArtNews”, “The Boston Globe”, “Modern Painters”, “The New York Times”, “The New Republic”, “Poetry”, “Slate”, and “The Yale Review”. Campion has received a George Starbuck Lectureship at Boston University, a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and Jones Lectureship at Stanford University, a Pushcart Prize, and a Civitella Ranieri Individual Artist’s Fellowship. He is an Assistant Professor in the English Department at Auburn University and edits the journal Literary Imagination, which is published by Oxford University Press.
The Levis Reading Prize is presented on behalf of VCU’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. Sponsors include the VCU Department of English, James Branch Cabell Library Associates, Friends of the Library, the VCU Libraries, the VCU Honors College, Barnes & Noble @ VCU Bookstore, the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences, with additional funding provide by the family of Larry Levis.

Poet Katie Ford, winner of this year’s VCU Levis Reading Prize, will give a reading next week, on September 24 at 8PM in VCU Commons, Richmond Salons.
Katie Ford’s Colosseum was selected for the 12th Annual Levis Reading Prize. The collection, which was published by Graywolf Press, stems from Ford’s experiences living through Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath in New Orleans. Ford examines both ancient and contemporary catastrophes in the book with particular attention to Katrina’s power and impact.
The Levis Reading Prize is presented on behalf of VCU’s MFA in Creative Writing Program. Sponsors include the VCU Department of English, the James Branch Cabell Library Associates, Friends of the Library, the VCU Libraries, the VCU Honors College, Barnes & Noble @ VCU Bookstore, the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences and the Levis family.

MFA student Andrea Cleary has been selected to serve as next year’s Larry Levis Fellow in support of the administration of the Levis Reading Prize.