Kaveh Akbar’s Calling a Wolf a Wolf receives 2018 Levis Reading Prize

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Calling a Wolf a Wolf by Kaveh Akbar

FARMINGTON – Alice James Books is pleased to announce that Kaveh Akbar’s Calling a Wolf a Wolf is the recipient of the 2018 Levis Reading Prize from Virginia Commonwealth University. This book was published by Alice James Books in September 2017.

Awarded by the Department of English and its MFA in Creative Writing program at Virginia Commonwealth University, the Levis Reading Prize is given annually in the name of the late Larry Levis for the best first or second book of poetry published in the previous calendar year. The Levis Reading Prize is presented on behalf of VCU’s M.F.A. in Creative Writing Program. Sponsors include the VCU Department of English, the VCU Libraries, Barnes & Noble @ VCU and the VCU College of Humanities and Sciences, with additional funding provided by the family of Larry Levis. The prize honors the memory of poet Larry Levis who served on the creative writing faculty at VCU at the time of his death in 1996. The winner receives an honorarium of $5000 and are invited, expenses paid, to Richmond, Virginia to present a public reading in the following fall.

Kaveh Akbar’s poems appear in The New Yorker, Poetry, The New York Times, The Nation, Tin House, Best American Poetry 2018, The New Republic, The Guardian, Ploughshares, Georgia Review, PBS NewsHour, Harvard Review, American Poetry Review, Narrative, The Poetry Review, AGNI, New England Review, A Public Space, Prairie Schooner, Virginia Quarterly Review, Poetry International, Best New Poets 2016, Boston Review, and elsewhere. His debut full-length collection, Calling a Wolf a Wolf, is published by Alice James in the US and Penguin in the UK, and his chapbook, Portrait of the Alcoholic, was published by Sibling Rivalry Press. The recipient of a 2016 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Fellowship from the Poetry Foundation, a Pushcart Prize, and the Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, Kaveh was born in Tehran, Iran, and currently teaches at Purdue University and in the low-residency program at Randolph College.

Founded in 1973, Alice James Books is a leading independent press of national reputation dedicated to discovering and publishing exceptional poetry. The press continues to grow its list and is seen as an innovator in the field. AJB is committed to publishing a range of voices, supporting writers’ careers, and publishing women and other writers whose work may otherwise be marginalized. AJB also focuses on collaborating with writers in the publishing process, namely design and production. As they urgently engage with numerous pressing, public issues, many AJB books reach far beyond the “standard audience” for poetry. Since 1994, AJB has been a proud affiliate of the University of Maine at Farmington.

For more information about Alice James Books and our partnership with the University of Maine at Farmington, please visit: www.alicejamesbooks.org.

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1 Comment

  1. Many, many winners in this article:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_James_Books

    “The press is named for Alice James (sister of novelist Henry James and philosopher William James), whose fine journal and gift for writing were unrecognized within her lifetime. The mission of Alice James Books, a cooperative poetry press, is to seek out and publish the best contemporary poetry by both established and beginning poets, with particular emphasis on involving poets in the publishing process.

    “Since 1994, the press has been affiliated with the University of Maine at Farmington, and offers a publishing internship program for UMF students which offers the students work experience and education. The press has received funding from the Maine Arts Commission, as well as receiving funding from UMF and the National Endowment for the Arts, private foundations, and individuals.”

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