Rochester, NY—BOA Editions, Ltd. is thrilled to announce that Danni Quintos of Lexington, KY is the winner of the 20th annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Her winning manuscript, Two Brown Dots, was selected by esteemed poet and essayist Aimee Nezhukumatathil from a pool of more than 900 original submissions. Two Brown Dots will be published by BOA Editions in April 2022 as part of the New Poets of America Series with a foreword by Aimee Nezhukumatathil. Quintos will also receive a $1,000 honorarium. 

“With a remarkable humor and candor, Danni Quintos blazes across these pages in a most magical debut. You'll be utterly charmed and entranced by her poems, which ignite questions of desire and justice rarely offered– unless one amalgamates folklore and childhood in such a brilliantly expansive, moving way. This is it. This is the one you were waiting for,” said Final Judge Aimee Nezhukumatathil.

In addition to the winning manuscript, Nezhukumatathil selected three finalists and five semi-finalists for the prize:

WINNER:

• Two Brown Dots by Danni Quintos

FINALISTS:

• Laws Governing Inheritance by Darius Atefat-Peckham
• You're Called by the Same Sound by Alicia Wright
• The Symmetry of Fish by Su Cho

SEMI-FINALISTS:

• Neither Kind of Body  by Abigail Goodhart
• until i too become an arrow by India Lena González
• Before the House Went Silent by Dana Alsamsam
• Dilemma by Jane Huffman
• Brown Girl Chromatography by Anuradha Bhowmik

Danni Quintos is a Kentuckian, a mom, an educator, and an Affrilachian Poet. She received her MFA in Poetry from Indiana University. Her work has appeared in Cream City Review, Best New Poets 2015, Salon, and elsewhere. Her knitting has appeared on the shoulders and heads of many writers and artists, who are also friends and teachers. Danni is the author of PYTHON (Argus House, 2017), an ekphrastic chapbook featuring photography by her sister, Shelli Quintos.

Aimee Nezhukumatathil is the author of four books of poetry, most recently, Oceanic (Copper Canyon Press, 2017), winner of the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Award. She is also the author of The New York Times bestselling illustrated collection of nature essays World of Wonders: In Praise of Fireflies, Whale Sharks & Other Astonishments (Milkweed Editions, 2020), which was selected as Barnes and Noble’s 2020 Book of the Year and was a finalist for the Kirkus Prize. Her most recent chapbook is LACE & PYRITE, a collaboration of epistolary garden poems with the poet Ross Gay. Her writing appears twice in the Best American Poetry Series, The New York Times Magazine, ESPN, Ploughshares, American Poetry Review, and Tin House. Her honors include a poetry fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Pushcart Prize, a Mississippi Arts Council grant, and being named a Guggenheim Fellow in poetry. In 2021, she became the first-ever poetry editor for SIERRA magazine, the story-telling arm of The Sierra Club. She is professor of English and Creative Writing in the University of Mississippi’s MFA program.

Established in 2000, the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize is awarded annually to honor a poet’s first full-length collection of poetry. The winner is selected each year by a nationally recognized poet from a competitive pool of manuscripts. Winning manuscripts are published within the A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America Series. Recent Poulin Prize winners have included Improvisation Without Accompaniment by Matt Morton, Documents by Jan-Henry Gray, Cenzontle by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo, and When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen. Other renowned debuts in the New Poets of America Series include Rose by Li-Young Lee, Awake by Dorianne Laux, and The Philosopher's Club by Kim Addonizio.

Submissions for the 21th annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize will be accepted August 1–November 30, 2021 with the winner announced in spring 2022. Eligibility requirements and submission guidelines for the Poulin Prize are available at boaeditions.org/poulin.