BOA Blog

June is Pride Month, and BOA Editions is proud to celebrate the many diverse voices of the LGBT community! Here are six poetry collections plus one short story collection by some of our favorite gay, lesbian, bisexual, and queer authors. Beautiful in the Mouth by Keetje Kuipers In her prize-winning debut collection, queer poet Keetje Kuipers blends eroticism, longing, memory, and the wilderness of the Rocky Mountains into a sensual, unforgettable landscape. Kuipers' poems are inhabited by the echoes of those she has loved: their presence read in tea leaves, found under the stairwells of Brooklyn brownstones, reconstructed in verse as though molded from clay. When...

The poems in Sky Country have resonated with readers of all backgrounds. Drawing on both the real and imagined experiences of her own family, Christine Kitano fills a gap in America's history by giving a voice to immigrant women whose stories have been forgotten by time.

Hello readers! Join our team of interns as they explore over 40 years of our publication history and share their passion for some of their favorite titles from BOA Editions. In today's post, Lauren H. studies the subtle intricacies of Lucille Clifton's connection to history. Using Scraps to Tell a Story: Lucille Clifton’s Quilting Hello, and welcome! I’m Lauren, one of BOA’s summer interns. This fall, I will be a senior at Bucknell University, where I study Creative Writing and French. I am currently working on my own collection of poems that I will present as a thesis in the...

Hello readers! BOA Editions presents a new occasional series for our blog. Join our team of interns as they explore over 40 years of our publication history and share their passion for some of their favorite titles from BOA Editions. In today's post, Rachel B. delves into the quiet, profound ideas of poet Keetje Kuipers. Evocative, Rich, and Inevitable: Keetje Kuipers’s The Keys to The Jail Well, hello! I’m glad you stopped by for some poetry! My name is Rachel, and I’m one of the interns at BOA this summer. I’m heading into my last year at SUNY Geneseo this fall as...

Reviewer Madeleine Kruhley offers high praise for The Secret of Hoa Sen, written by Nguyen Phan Que Mai and translated by the author and Bruce Weigl, in a recent review by the Los Angeles Review of Books. Kruhley endorses Mai's ability to maintain a sense of confidence among the shadow of situation: "While there are dark, gritty elements at play, Que Mai’s work does not lose itself to despair. She crafts subtleties in sentiment without being overly sentimental." This collection of poems is riddled with honest moments, illustrating the intimacy associated with cultural elements of Vietnam, whose "secrets are intrinsic to...