Department of English
Philip Levine Prize for Poetry
The Philip Levine Prize for Poetry is an annual book contest sponsored by the Creative Writing Program at California State University, Fresno. This contest -- open to any poet writing in English (except current or former students or faculty of Fresno State) -- offers a $2,000 prize and publication by Anhinga Press, a Florida-based press that has been publishing poetry for more than 45 years.
Current winner: Maya Pindyck
About the Contest
Through participation in our Engl 242 course, Literary Editing and Publishing, Master of Fine Arts graduate students are given an opportunity to serve as manuscript readers and staff for the Prize, as well as to learn about other facets of contest administration, book publishing and promotions.
Editorial Assistants for 2021: Hermelinda Hernandez Monjaras, Delaney R. Whitebird Olmo, Shelby Pinkham, sami h. tripp
The contest is named for the late poet Philip Levine, who served as the contest's final judge in 2001, 2002, 2005 and 2013.
Levine was one of the leading poetic voices of his generation, “a large, ironic Walt Whitman of the industrial heartland,” according to poet Edward Hirsch. He is one of the most highly honored and widely read American poets of the 20th Century. Among his many accomplishments:
- He served as poet laureate of the United States from 2011-2012;
- He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1995;
- He won two National Book Awards, in 1980 and 1991;
- He published 16 books of poems, as well as several volumes of translations and two collections of essays;
- He also won two National Book Critics Circle Awards, the American Book Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize for Distinguished Poetic Achievement, and the Wallace Stevens Award.
Levine and fellow poets and professors Peter Everwine and C. G. Hanzlicek established the Creative Writing Program at Fresno State. He taught here from 1958 to 1992, retiring as a Professor Emeritus of English.
He died Feb. 14, 2015 at the age of 87.
Even after his retirement, Levine remained deeply connected to the Fresno State MFA program for the rest of his life, visiting classes, attending and giving readings, and teaching mini-courses.
The annual Philip Levine Prize for Poetry honors promising new voices in poetry each year, and it actively engages 15-20 graduate students in literary publishing.
The Fresno State Winery produces a limited edition special wine blend called "Picaresque" to honor Levine, with the proceeds benefiting creative writing students through the Philip Levine Scholarship, which was established in 2012 by the College of Arts and Humanities.
The Philip Levine Reading Room inside the Henry Madden Library on campus was opened in May 2017.
Read tributes to Levine on the We Grow Writers blog.
Submit Your Manuscript
Contest opens: July 1, 2022
Deadline: September 30, 2022
Final judge: Juan Felipe Herrera
Award: $2,000 prize and publication by Anhinga Press
Submission Guidelines
Visit our Submittable page to submit your manuscript online.
Please read the complete guidelines before submitting your manuscript.
Juan Felipe Herrera is the 21st Poet Laureate of the United States (2015-2016) and
is the first Latino to hold the position. From 2012-2014, Herrera served as California
State Poet Laureate.
Herrera’s many collections of poetry include Every Day We Get More Illegal; Notes on the Assemblage; Senegal Taxi; Half of the World in Light: New and Selected Poems, a recipient of the PEN/Beyond Margins Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award; and 187 Reasons Mexicanos Can’t Cross The Border: Undocuments 1971-2007. He is also the author of Crashboomlove: A Novel in Verse, which received the Americas Award. His books of prose for children include: SkateFate, Calling The Doves, which won the Ezra Jack Keats Award; Upside Down Boy, which was adapted into a musical for young audiences in New York City; and Cinnamon Girl: Letters Found Inside a Cereal Box. His book Jabberwalking, a children’s book focused on turning your wonder at the world around you into weird, wild, incandescent poetry, came out in 2018.
Herrera is also a performance artist and activist on behalf of migrant and indigenous communities and at-risk youth.
The Philip Levine Prize for Poetry seeks previously unpublished, full-length poetry manuscripts and is open to any poet writing in English.
- Individual poems in a contest manuscript may have been previously published in magazines, journals, anthologies, or chapbooks, but the work as a whole must be unpublished.
- Translations are ineligible for this prize, as well as previously self-published books.
- Current and former faculty and students of California State University, Fresno are ineligible.
- Close friends and family members of the final judge are also ineligible.
- Please include a table of contents and number your pages.
- Manuscript should be 48-80 pages in length (not including title page, table of contents, etc.). Each poem should start on a new page.
- If needed, you may attach a ‘Notes’ page.
- Please do NOT include the following in your manuscript document: a cover letter; a dedication or thank-you page; an acknowledgements page; any biographical notes; your name or any identifying information.
If you are submitting online via Submittable:
- Within the document, please include a single title page with only the title of the manuscript so that your entry remains anonymous.
- Do NOT include your name or personal information in the file name or in the title of the manuscript.
- Within Submittable, for our administrative purposes, please include your contact information (author name, address, telephone number, and email address).
If you are submitting a paper manuscript:
- Please include two title pages. One title page should include the title of the manuscript only, so that your entry remains anonymous. The second title page, for our administrative purposes, should include the title of manuscript, author name, address, telephone number, and email address.
Simultaneous submissions to other publishers or contests are permitted, as long as you notify Levine Prize staff promptly if your manuscript is accepted elsewhere.
All entries must be certified by Submittable (online) or postmarked (hardcopy) by September 30, 2022.
Via Submittable online:
- An entry fee of $25 (U.S.) must accompany each online submission.
- Multiple submissions are accepted so long as a separate entry fee accompanies each submission.
Via postal mail:
- An entry fee of $22 (U.S.) must accompany each hardcopy submission.
- Multiple submissions are accepted so long as a separate entry fee accompanies each submission.
- Checks or money orders can be mailed to the address below, and they should be made payable to “Fresno State – Levine Prize.”
Via Submittable online:
- Be sure that your document is complete and formatted correctly before uploading.
- Reminder: Do NOT include contact information in the body of your manuscript, in the file name, or in the title of the manuscript.
- Include a title page with manuscript title only and enter your contact information separately into Submittable so that the manuscript remains anonymous.
Via postal mail:
- The Levine Prize encourages online submissions to save paper, but we still welcome mailed manuscripts.
- Be sure to include your check or money order. You can mail your submission to:
Fresno State, Levine Prize
Department of English
5245 N. Backer Ave., PB98
Fresno, CA 93740-8001
The Philip Levine Prize for Poetry endorses and abides by the Ethical Guidelines of the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses (CLMP):
CLMP’s community of independent literary publishers believes that ethical contests serve our shared goal: to connect writers and readers by publishing exceptional writing. We believe that intent to act ethically, clarity of guidelines, and transparency of process form the foundation of an ethical contest.
To that end, we agree to:
- Conduct our contests as ethically as possible and to address any unethical behavior on the part of our readers, judges, or editors;
- To provide clear and specific contest guidelines — defining conflict of interest for all parties involved; and
- To make the mechanics of our selection process available to the public.
This Code recognizes that different contest models produce different results, but that each model can be run ethically. We have adopted this Code to reinforce our integrity and dedication as a publishing community and to ensure that our contest contributes to a vibrant literary heritage.
Online submissions will receive automated notification of receipt. Please keep these for your records.
To confirm receipt of your paper manuscript, include a self-addressed stamped postcard. Please do not enclose a SASE for return of a manuscript. All paper manuscripts will be recycled at the conclusion of the competition.
Results will be announced in early February 2023. We notify all entrants in three ways:
- via email to those who included an email address with their paper or online manuscript;
- via postal mail to those who included a SASE with their paper manuscript; and
- online via our MFA program’s website, social media, and elsewhere.
To receive mailed notification of the winner and finalists, you may attach a SASE with your submission materials.
Mai Der Vang, contest coordinator:
maidervang@mail.fresnostate.edu
Levine Prize staff:
levineprize@mail.fresnostate.edu or 559.278.1569
Maya Pindyck
Pennsylvania author Maya Pindyck won the 2021 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry book contest, which includes a $2,000
award and publication of her book manuscript, Impossible Belonging, with Anhinga Press.
Pindyck is the author of the poetry collections Emoticoncert (Four Way Books, 2016) and Friend Among Stones (New Rivers Press, 2009), and co-author of the forthcoming book A Poetry Pedagogy for Teachers (Bloomsbury, 2022). A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, she has poems recently published or forthcoming in Pleiades, Granta Magazine’s Hebrew edition; Seneca Review; and Bennington Review.
Her visual, collaborative, and community-based work has been exhibited at the Milton Art Bank (Milton, Pennsylvania) and in New York City at the Art in Odd Places Public Festival, the Governors Island Art Fair and the Lewis H. Latimer House Museum. Pindyck lives in Philadelphia, where she is an assistant professor and director of writing at Moore College of Art & Design. She grew up in Boston and Tel Aviv, Israel.
Levine Prize final judge Carmen Giménez, an award-winning poet, publisher of Noemi Press and professor at Virginia Tech, chose Pindyck’s manuscript as the winner. There were 796 submissions. Giménez wrote of the winning entry:
“Maya Pindyck’s Impossible Belonging is a collection of elemental folklore and yearning. Diaspora is a site rooted in the Anthropocene, and in the urgencies behind the embodiments that tell the stories we sometimes shake off to seek out our own paths as mothers, Americans, as artists and sisters.”
Author photo by Ryan Collerd.
2021 Finalists
Giménez also noted three manuscripts as contest finalists:
- Theophanies by Sarah Ghazal Ali of Fremont;
- The Book of Redacted Paintings by Arthur Kayzakian of Burbank;
- White Ford Bronco by Michael Chang of Leonia, New Jersey.
Past Winners
Year | Winner | Book Title | Final Judge |
---|---|---|---|
2021 | Maya Pindyck | Impossible Belonging | Carmen Giménez |
Year | Winner | Book Title | Final Judge |
---|---|---|---|
2020 | E.C. Belli | A Sleep That Is Not Our Sleep | Cathy Park Hong |
2019 | Steven Kleinman | Life Cycle of a Bear | C. G. Hanzlicek |
2018 | Mark Irwin | Shimmer | C. G. Hanzlicek |
2017 | Tina Mozelle Braziel | Known by Salt | C. G. Hanzlicek |
2016 | Rachel Rinehart | The Church in the Plains | Peter Everwine |
2015 | Andrea Jurjević | Small Crimes | C. G. Hanzlicek |
2014 | Christine Poreba | Rough Knowledge | Peter Everwine |
2013 | Chelsea Wagenaar | Mercy Spurs the Bone | Philip Levine |
2012 | Barbara Brinson Curiel | Mexican Jenny and Other Poems | Cornelius Eady |
2011 | Ariana Nadia Nash | Instructions for Preparing Your Skin | Denise Duhamel |
Year | Winner | Book Title | Final Judge |
---|---|---|---|
2010 | Lory Bedikian | The Book of Lamenting | Brian Turner |
2009 | Sarah Wetzel | Bathsheba Transatlantic | Garrett Hongo |
2008 | Shane Seely | The Snowbound House | Dorianne Laux |
2007 | Neil Aitken | The Lost Country of Sight | C. G. Hanzlicek |
2006 | Lynn Aarti Chandhok | The View From Zero Bridge | Corrinne Clegg Hales |
2005 | Roxanne Beth Johnson | Jubilee | Philip Levine |
2004 | (contest suspended) | ||
2003 | (contest suspended) | ||
2002 | Steve Gehrke | The Pyramids of Malpighi | Philip Levine |
2001 | Fleda Brown | Breathing In, Breathing Out | Philip Levine |