BOA Blog

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:...

June is Pride Month, a welcome celebration to increase visibility, acceptance and share in the resilience of the queer community. We’ve compiled a selection of BOA books by queer authors that showcase the varied experiences of the queer community. These authors exist at different intersections of identities, whether that’s being a person of color, an immigrant, a single mother, or having a disability, and all share in the universal community of being queer. True vulnerability exists within these pages, as these wonderful authors celebrate, negotiate, and trouble what Pride means. Queerness comes in many forms; no matter how you identify,...

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo's Cenzontle is one of a handful of poetry titles recommended on NPR's annual Book Concierge Guide to 2018's Great Reads.NPR poetry critic Tess Taylor praises Castillo's lyric verses and poems that confound easy boundaries: "These poem shapes linger in the mind long after the book is shut."The librarians at the New York Public Library also included Cenzontle on their annual list of The New York Public Library's 2018 Best Books for Adults. When selecting Cenzontle for NBC Latino's Summer Reading List earlier this year, Rigoberto Gonzales wrote that "Cenzontle is a book that speaks with striking language about an experience that’s being presented in public...

Poulin Prize-winning author Chen Chen is featured in the September issue of The Atlantic as part of a long-form article on "How Came to Matter Again." The article by Jesse Lichtenstein explores the changing face of American poetry and the growing surge in poetry readership among Millennials and Generation Z. Lichenstein writes: The face of poetry in the United States looks very different today than it did even a decade ago, and far more like the demographics of Millennial America. If anything, the current crop of emerging poets anticipates the face of young America 30 years from now. The article notes how emerging poets use social...