We are pleased to announce that BOA poet Aracelis Girmay (Kingdom Animalia) has just won a 2015 Whiting Award for poetry!
2015 marks the 30th anniversary of these prestigious $50,000 awards given each year to ten exceptional emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, drama and poetry. In the case of Aracelis Girmay, the published work the judges read was Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011). Santa Ana-born Girmay (who now splits her time between Amherst, Massachusetts, and New York) is one of the ten 2015 recipients, all of whom were honored on March 5, 2015 at a ceremony at the New York Historical Society in Manhattan with a keynote by award-winning author Andrew Solomon. Excerpts from the publications of each award recipient are available at The Paris Review.
A new collection by Girmay, The Black Maria, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in April 2016.
According to the Whiting Award judges: “[Girmay’s] project seems to be our deep and ongoing subjectivity, our vulnerability to history, to one another, to desire, and to the belief in something large and lasting that we might belong to. There’s empathy, play, and fearlessness here, and both formal and emotional range. The beauty of these poems is always married to a deep, implacable pang. Their consolation is always rooted in the unifying force of remembered loss.”
Aracelis Girmay holds a B.A. from Connecticut College and an M.F.A. from New York University. She is the author of? two poetry collections, Teeth (Curbstone, 2007) and Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011), for which she won the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her collection The Black Maria is forthcoming from BOA Editions in April 2016. In 2011 she ?was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Girmay has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Jerome Foundation, the Watson Foundation, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She currently teaches poetry as an assistant professor at Hampshire College. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she splits her time between New York and Amherst, Massachusetts.
Aracelis Girmay wins prestigious 2015 Whiting Award
We are pleased to announce that BOA poet Aracelis Girmay (Kingdom Animalia) has just won a 2015 Whiting Award for poetry!
2015 marks the 30th anniversary of these prestigious $50,000 awards given each year to ten exceptional emerging writers of fiction, nonfiction, drama and poetry. In the case of Aracelis Girmay, the published work the judges read was Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011). Santa Ana-born Girmay (who now splits her time between Amherst, Massachusetts, and New York) is one of the ten 2015 recipients, all of whom were honored on March 5, 2015 at a ceremony at the New York Historical Society in Manhattan with a keynote by award-winning author Andrew Solomon. Excerpts from the publications of each award recipient are available at The Paris Review.
A new collection by Girmay, The Black Maria, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in April 2016.
According to the Whiting Award judges: “[Girmay’s] project seems to be our deep and ongoing subjectivity, our vulnerability to history, to one another, to desire, and to the belief in something large and lasting that we might belong to. There’s empathy, play, and fearlessness here, and both formal and emotional range. The beauty of these poems is always married to a deep, implacable pang. Their consolation is always rooted in the unifying force of remembered loss.”
Aracelis Girmay holds a B.A. from Connecticut College and an M.F.A. from New York University. She is the author of? two poetry collections, Teeth (Curbstone, 2007) and Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011), for which she won the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her collection The Black Maria is forthcoming from BOA Editions in April 2016. In 2011 she ?was awarded a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship. Girmay has received fellowships from Cave Canem, The Jerome Foundation, the Watson Foundation, and the Civitella Ranieri Foundation. She currently teaches poetry as an assistant professor at Hampshire College. Originally from Santa Ana, California, she splits her time between New York and Amherst, Massachusetts.
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