Ilya Kaminsky wins the LEVINSON PRIZE!

Congratulations to Professor Kaminsky!

With all the grumblings and angst raging through our furlough/budget-cut besmeared corridors, it brings great happiness to share that Ilya Kaminsky, Associate Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and Director, Spring 2010, of the MFA Program in Creative Writing, SDSU has won another award:

THE LEVINSON PRIZE, presented annually since 1914 through the generosity of the late Salmon O. Levinson and his family, for the sum of $500, is awarded to Ilya Kaminsky for his poems in the May 2009 issue. Kaminsky was born in Odessa, in the former USSR, and came to the United States in 1993, when his family received asylum from the American government. He is the author of Dancing in Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) and currently teaches poetry and comparative literature at San Diego State University.

literature.sdsu.edu's ILYA KAMINSKY @ Harvard

This very Thursday evening, that little "community college" that could, Harvard University, is hosting our very own Ilya Kaminsky for a reading/discussion with Russian poet, Paulina Barskova. A nice, recent "bio-pic feature" on Kaminsky appears here.

Lannan Recipient Kaminsky

Ilya Kaminsky, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature, and a key member of our Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing faculty is the recipient of a $100,000 Lannan Foundation 2008 Literary Foundation Fellowship in Poetry.

The awards recognize writers who have made significant contributions to English-language literature. The fellowships recognize writers of distinctive literary merit who demonstrate potential for continued outstanding work.

Congratulations Ilya!

McSweeney's Believes in Ilya Kaminsky

Dave Eggers, indie publishing guru, writer, and editor of Timothy McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, just became a few degrees cooler when including two new poems by SDSU's Ilya Kaminsky in the May edition of his monthly magazine, The Believer. Kaminsky's poems rest alongside interviews with

David Cross, Richard Price and Julie Hecht, columns by Nick Hornby and Amy Sedaris, an essay by Alexander Provan, stories by Sarah Manguso and Per Petterson, and poetry by Mary Ruefle and Dean Young.

Kaminsky garnered critical acclaim with the publication of his Dancing In Odessa (Tupelo Press, 2004) which won the Whiting Writer's Award, the American Academy of Arts and Letters' Metcalf Award, the Dorset Prize, the Ruth Lilly Fellowship given annually by Poetry magazine. Dancing In Odessa was also named 2004 Best Poetry Book of the Year by ForeWord Magazine.

Read Kaminsky's two new poems, Old Mosquito and Mother's Piano's, both appearing below, but keep in mind that they read way better with the magazine in hand. The Believer may be bought online, or (as I prefer), at any number of local book stores such as Bluestocking Books in Hillcrest.

Kaminsky received a fellowship to join other top notch writers and artists this August at Vermont Studio Center.