BOA Blog

As Black History Month comes to a close, this is your friendly reminder to read the work of Black authors year-round! Finish February or start March by snagging one of our recent or forthcoming titles below, recommended by BOA's fantastic spring 2022 intern staff!  Alien Stories by E. C. Osondu Alien Stories is a dynamic interplay between the two meanings of the word alien: a person from a foreign country or a being from a foreign planet. Each story confronts some aspect of the “alien” experience—reception, culture shock, identity, stereotypes—from a diverse set of individual and historical perspectives. Osondu’s work...

June is a prodigious month to celebrate Lucille Clifton’s life and work. Born on this day, June 27, in 1936, her singular poetry spans over fifty years. Clifton’s posthumous collection, How To Carry Water: Selected Poems Of Lucille Clifton, edited by Aracelis Girmay (BOA, 2020) releases in paperback this Fall 2021. Lucille Clifton’s many accolades and awards include the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Frost Medal, and an Emmy Award. BOA Editions published nine books by Lucille Clifton, including Quilting, Mercy, Voices, and the following extraordinary collections. Blessing The Boats won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2000. Next:...

We are excited to share the news that Letters to a Young Brown Girl by Barbara Jane Reyes has been named a finalist for the 2021 California Book Award for Poetry! The Commonwealth Club of California announced the finalists in a press release on May 18, 2021. “The California Book Awards has been honoring California books and authors for nine decades,” commented Award Jury Chair, Peter Fish. “We think this year’s finalists are especially timely, innovative, and thought-provoking.” Barbara Jane Reyes's Letters to a Young Brown Girl is a Blessing the Boats Selection that answers the questions of Filipino American girls and young women...

Rochester, NY— BOA Editions will publish Casual Conversation by Renia White as the next Blessing the Boats Selections title. Ms. White will receive a $5,000 honorarium, and her manuscript will be published in April 2022 as part of the New Poets of America Series. Casual Conversation marks the debut selection by inaugural Blessing the Boats Selections Editor-at-Large Aracelis Girmay.  Girmay said of the collection: “I have read Casual Conversation several times now, and still the encounter is new, charged. Renia White writes: ‘some people get to want and need / and be met in it. // some just the mouth, / just the teeth // some eat...

BOA is honored to announce that the Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe, New Mexico, has generously awarded BOA a $35,000 grant in support of our Blessing the Boats Selections. Named in honor of poet Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) and her National Book Award-winning collection Blessing the Boats: New & Selected Poems 1988–2000 (BOA, 2000), Blessing the Boats Selections titles will celebrate works that continue Clifton’s legacy of writing to the experience of nonwhite women. Submission are open to all women poets of color in the U.S., including poets who identify as cis, trans, and non-binary people who are comfortable in a space that centers on women’s experiences,...