Fresno State’s Master of Fine Arts Program in creative writing announced Southern California author William Archila won the 2023 Philip Levine Prize for Poetry book contest, which includes a $2,000 award and publication of his poetry collection, “S is For.”

The creative writing program sponsors the national prize, which honors Levine, the late poet and Fresno State professor emeritus of English. Levine won the 1995 Pulitzer Prize in poetry, and he was the 2011 poet laureate of the United States.

Archila’s book will be the first to be published as part of the Levine Prize’s new partnership with Black Lawrence Press. A New York-based publisher of contemporary poetry, fiction and creative nonfiction, Black Lawrence Press was founded in 2004 and has been an independent company since 2014.

Levine Prize final judge Douglas Kearney — a widely published poet, essayist, opera composer and McKnight Presidential Fellow — chose Archila’s manuscript as the winner. There were 736 submissions. Kearney wrote of the winning entry:

“Searing — not merely how I’d describe William Archila’s gaze at the desperation and depredation attendant in power’s abuse, the violence dogging the migrant, the slayings of those who stay. No, also, searing in the sense of that which burns a mark into a surface, how the poet’s prosody scorches language into the line, into the throat, into the air. Heat, here, that makes light, signal visible even from exile, even to a distracted North who may not/may only notice that ‘Yesterday a cutthroat carved a copper / who carved a cutthroat, 224 wounds / for the smallest of spoils.’ Archila tallies these wounds and those that set fire to the heart. Here, S is for searing, for song, for sorrow. S is for sunlit, for shot, for shattered. S is for sublime. Stunning. Staggering.”

Kearney also noted four manuscripts as contest finalists:

  • “Bluff” by Michal ‘MJ’ Jones.
  • “Desahógate” by Gisselle Yepes.
  • “Within Sky Kissing God” by Ayesha Raees.
  • “Bodypolitic” by Aerik Francis.

Archila’s “The Gravedigger’s Archaeology” (2015) won the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Poetry Prize and “The Art of Exile” (Bilingual Review Press, 2009) won an International Latino Book Award. He was awarded the 2023 Jack Hazard fellowship and the Alan Collins Scholarship at the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference. He is a PEN Center USA West Emerging Voices fellow. He lives in Los Angeles, on Tongva land.

Archila has been published in Poetry Magazine, the American Poetry Review, AGNl, Copper Nickel, Southern Indiana Review, Los Angeles Review of Books, the Missouri Review, Pleiades, Prairie Schooner, and the anthologies “The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext,” “Theatre Under My Skin: Contemporary Salvadoran Poetry,” and “The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States.” He has work forthcoming in the Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Indiana Review, Salamander and Guesthouse.

Fresno State assistant professor Mai Der Vang said the creative writing program is thrilled to now collaborate with Black Lawrence Press, “whose partnership will allow us to sustain the Philip Levine Prize and Philip Levine’s legacy, while introducing our winners and students to new literary networks and communities.”

“As a respected small press with rich offerings in multiple genres, Black Lawrence Press continues to publish meaningful work that expands the landscape of American literature,” Vang said. “We look forward to working with them to publish the winning books and to share the work of our winners with new audiences.”

Black Lawrence Press was founded in upstate New York in the land between two rivers, the Black River and the St. Lawrence River, inspiring its name. Now located in the southern Hudson Valley, Black Lawrence Press publishes contemporary works by new, emerging and established authors.

In 2023, the Black Lawrence Press welcomed over 90% of the Nomadic Press list of authors after Nomadic ceased publication. Over the past two decades, the press has published more than 300 books, including chapbooks and anthologies. 

Executive Director Diane Goettel said as Black Lawrence Press enters its 20th year in business, it is delighted to become the publishing home of the esteemed Levine Prize.

“The goals and ethos of the Levine Prize’s founders and current stewards are closely in line with our goals and ethos at Black Lawrence Press — to offer a platform for important voices in American letters through collaborative and thoughtful editorial processes,” Goettel said. “We also enthusiastically look forward to working with the graduate students at Fresno State’s MFA program, offering them insights into small-press publishing.”

The Philip Levine Prize for Poetry is an annual national book contest open to all poets, except current or former students or faculty of Fresno State. Vang coordinates the contest as part of the university’s English 242 graduate course, “Literary Editing and Publishing,” which provides students with hands-on professional experience in the publishing field. The contest offers a $2,000 prize plus publication and distribution by Black Lawrence Press.

(By Angelina Leaños, MFA Creative Writing graduate student; Jefferson Beavers, communications specialist, contributed to this report.)