19th Annual Levis Reading Prize

19th Annual Levis Reading Prize

The 19th Annual Levis Reading Prize was awarded to Rickey Laurentiis for Boy with Thorn (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2015). Laurentiis was celebrated at the Virginia Commonwealth University Cabell Library on October 11, 2016.

John Ulmschneider’s welcome includes a special thanks to the sponsors of the Levis Reading Prize.

Gregory Donovan’s essay, “Before It Gets Dark,” discusses “Elegy with a Darkening Trapeze Inside It,” the title poem of Levis’s posthumous collection, The Darkening Trapeze: Last Poems (Graywolf Press, 2016).

In his introduction to the reading, Donovan addresses the particular strengths of Rickey Laurentiis and his winning collection. Laurentiis’s reading from Boy with Thorn concludes the evening.