Philip Levine Prize
Winner, 2011 Philip Levine Prize in 
Poetry
Ariana Nadia Nash, Instructions for Preparing Your Skin
Ariana Nadia Nash is the winner of the 2011 Philip Levine Prize in Poetry for her manuscript, Instructions for Preparing Your Skin.
Denise Duhamel was the final judge. Four finalists were chosen as well:
Raphael Dagold, Bastard Heart; Kyle McCord, Sympathy for the Devil; Laura Davies Foley, The Glass Tree; Michael Miller, Inside the Storm.
Ariana Nadia Nash completed her MFA in creating writing at the University of North Carolina, Wilmington. She spent the fall of 2011 in residence at The MacDowell Colony. Her poetry has recently been published in The Café Review, Rock & Sling, Main Street Rag, and 2River View.
Denise Duhamel's praise for The Book of Lamenting:
Nash's Instructions for Preparing Your Skin is a startling book in which so much is at stake. Love poems morph into hate poems into indifference poems then back again into deeper love poems. Nash's stark raw material is transformed into verse as honest and clear as the mirrors in which we recognize ourselves. There is no way to prepare for these striking poems that strike against any temporary assuredness we may have about our bodies and each other. Instructions for Preparing Your Skin is candid, revelatory, and uncompromising in its vision.
--Denise Duhamel
Prize History
The Philip Levine Prize in Poetry is an annual book contest proudly sponsored by the M.F.A. Program at California State University, Fresno. This contest, open to all poets (except current or former students or faculty of Fresno State), offers a $2000 prize, publication and distribution by Anhinga Press (a Florida-based press that has been publishing poetry for more than 25 years), and 25 free author copies of the winning book.
Through participation in our "Literary Editing and Publishing" course, M.F.A. students are given an opportunity to serve as manuscript readers for the Prize, as well as to learn about other facets of contest administration, book publishing and promotions.
The contest is named for poet Philip Levine who was the final judge in 2001, 2002, 2005. Philip Levine taught at California State University, Fresno for many years and is one of the best known and most highly-honored American poets. He has published 16 books of poems, as well as several volumes of translations and two collections of essays. His list of honors includes two National Book Awards, two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the American Book Award, the Ruth Lily Poetry Prize for Distinguished Poetic Achievement, and the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. Philip Levine has also been appointed Poet Laureate to the Library of Congress as of 2011.