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BOA EDITIONS SELECTED AS AMAZON LITERARY PARTNERSHIP 2023 GRANT RECIPIENT

Grant to Be Earmarked for Future Publication of Blessing the Boats Selections

Rochester, New York (July 20, 2023) --- The Amazon Literary Partnership today announced that BOA Editions received a grant to support its program and operations. BOA Editions is among the list of 93 Amazon Literary Partnership Grant Recipients this year. In 2023, the Amazon Literary Partnership awarded nearly $1M in funding to literary nonprofit organizations. The Amazon Literary Partnership supports writers to help tell their stories and find their readers, empowering writers to create, publish, learn, teach, experiment and thrive. Since 2009, the Amazon Literary Partnership has been committed to uplifting and amplifying the voices of overlooked or marginalized writers by supporting the literary community through grants to writing programs and nonprofit literary organizations, including groups like BOA Editions whose mission is to foster readership and appreciation of contemporary literature. By identifying, cultivating, and publishing both new and established poets and selecting authors of unique literary talent, BOA brings high quality literature to the public.

Executive Director & Publisher Peter Conners says of this generous grant, “Blessing the Boats Selections has quickly become a central part of BOA’s publishing portfolio. We are incredibly grateful to Amazon Literary Partnership for recognizing the immense value that the program brings to the larger poetry world. The continued success – and growth – of BTB depends upon the generosity of benefactors like Amazon Literary Partnership. We are thrilled to join hands with them for the upcoming year of exciting BTB publications.”  

Blessing the Boats Selections spotlights poetry collections by women of color. As the 2021-2023 Blessing the Boats Selections Editor-at-Large, Aracelis Girmay will read submissions and select the final manuscript for publication. Blessing the Boats Selections is named after Lucille Clifton’s National Book Award-winning collection, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems (BOA, 2000), in honor and celebration of her enduring legacy. Lucille Clifton's writings of Black life and Black female life have shaped a sense of what is possible for so many. In the poem that begins "won't you celebrate with me," she writes: "born in babylon / both nonwhite and woman / what did i see to be except myself?" Blessing the Boats Selections titles walk behind and grow out of the poetry of those lines. Submissions are thus 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, regardless of citizenship and publication history. Our hope is that the Blessing the Boats Selections will further facilitate encounters between readers and writers of some of the most extraordinary texts of our time.

“It’s an honor to fund these vital institutions that support writers in all aspects of their writing career,” said Al Woodworth, Manager of the Amazon Literary Partnership. “At Amazon, we believe in the power of the written word to expand our thinking, advance our empathy, and change our world. We are grateful for the incredible work that these organizations do to champion writers and their stories, today and every day.”

About The Amazon Literary Partnership

Since 2009, the Amazon Literary Partnership has provided more than $16 million in grant funding to more than 160 literary organizations, assisting many thousands of writers. Among the organizations Amazon has supported over the years include the Asian American Writers Workshop, National Book Foundation, PEN America, Poets & Writers, Graywolf Press, Lambda Literary Foundation, Loft Literary Center, National Novel Writing Month, Words Without Borders, Yaddo, WriteGirl, and many more. Through Amazon’s annual grants, Amazon supports literary centers, writing workshops, residencies, fellowships, literary magazines, independent publishers, and poetry and translation programs. Writers supported by some of these organizations have gone on to become best-selling and award-winning authors.

To learn more about the Amazon Literary Partnership, please visit www.amazonliterarypartnership.com.