Her first volume of poetry, Hurricane Walk, was published under the name Diann Blakely Shoaf in 1992 and included among the St. Louis Post Dispatch's ten best verse collections of the year. Her second book, Farewell, My Lovelies, published in 2000 and influenced by ""noir"" shading, was listed as a Choice of the Academy of American Poets' Book Club. Her third volume, Cities of Flesh and the Dead, won Elixir Press's 7th annual publication prize after being distinguished by the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, given for a year's best manuscript-in-progress Anthologized in several volumes, including Best American Poetry 2003 and Pushcart Prize Anthologies XIX and XX. Her poetry appeared in Denver Quarterly, Harvard Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, Ploughshares, Shenandoah, Southern Humaniteis Review, Southern Review, Verse, and Pushcart. Diann Blakely (1957-2014) was a former poetry editor at the Antioch Review and New World Writing. Blakely was also the author of Cities of Flesh and the Dead, which won Elixir Press's seventh annual publication prize after being distinguished by the Poetry Society of America's Alice Fay di Castagnola Award, given for a year's best manuscript-in-progress.