Levis Reading Prize introduces students to broad range of work, gets recognition beyond VCU

Emily McCauley, Contributing Writer

The Levis Reading Prize has a spectacular history and recognizes many influential poets in the American literary scene, said Gregory Donovan, director of the Levis Reading Prize. 

Larry Levis was a poet with valuable work and a faculty member at VCU. When he died unexpectedly in 1996, his colleagues and family wanted to find a way to keep his work in public view, according to Donovan. 

Levis’s name must be associated with VCU because many students in VCU’s Masters of Fine Arts in creative writing program apply to the program because of him, according to Donovan. 

The first Levis Reading Prize was awarded in 1998 to a neonatal nurse named Belle Waring who wrote powerful poems about her career, Donovan said. 

The 2023 prize winner is Corey Van Landingham, recognized for her poetry collection “Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens,” according to Donovan. 

Individuals who have won the award early in their writing careers have gone on to remarkable achievements and teaching careers, according to Donovan.

“The students in our program who hope to become publishing authors and faculty members in creative writing programs get exposed to a broad range of work, which is very stimulating — it gives them more ideas about their own work,” Donovan said.

The VCU students in the MFA in creative writing program read over the submissions for the Levis Reading Prize, according to Donovan.

Submissions come in waves throughout the year and the students read nearly every submission, according to Thom Didato, graduate programs advisor at VCU.

“This is not just something the students get to judge — they are all part of the process — it is a year-long thing,” Didato said. 

 Each year there are about 150 to 250 submissions for the prize, according to Didato. 

The Levis fellow is a graduate teaching position assigned to a student in the MFA in creative writing program; this year’s fellow is Paul Brennan, according to Didato. 

The Levis Reading Prize is important for the MFA in creative writing students because they get a say in something that gets recognition beyond Richmond and VCU, Didato said. 

“The prize is to both honor Larry’s memory but also to celebrate a debut book of poetry or a second book of poetry that has been published in the previous year,” according to David Wojahn, one of the three Levis Reading Prize judges and VCU English professor. 

The whole process gets the students to make discernment about what makes a book good, Wojahn said.

Winner Van Landingham’s book fuses something that is personal as well as political, Wojahn said.

“Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens” is a meditation of violence and the tradition of violence as well as a negotiation through our contemporary world where everything is strange, according to Wojahn. 

“There are two frames going side by side in the book — one is about a long distance love affair and one is about drones and drone violence,” Wojahn said. 

“Love Letter to Who Owns the Heavens” focuses on distance through many different lenses such as political, aesthetic, emotional, temporal and geographical, according to Van Landingham.

Winning this prize has been a huge honor, Van Landingham said.

“It’s also quite meaningful to know that poets I admire so much — Gregory Donovan, Kathleen Graber, David Wojahn – read, and found some merit in my work,” Van Landingham said. 

Van Landingham feels the prize will drive her forward with more energy into her next book while allowing her to be kinder to her past poems and her past selves who wrote them, she said. 

“This prize is monumental in the poetry world, and so is Larry Levis,” Van Landingham said.Van Landingham will receive an award of $5,000 and will read from her work on Oct. 18 at 7 p.m. in the James Branch Cabell Library Lecture Hall, Room 303, according to VCU News.