Rochester, N.Y. — BOA Editions is thrilled to announce that Holy Moly Carry Me by Erika Meitner won the 2018 National Jewish Book Award for Poetry. Jewish Book council announced the winners of the sixty-eight annual National Jewish Book Awards on their website this morning, January 9, 2019.

Holy Moly Carry Me, Meitner's fifth poetry collection, plumbs human resilience and grit in the face of disaster, loss, and uncertainty. Her narrative poems take readers into the heart of southern Appalachia—its highways and strip malls, its fragility and danger—as the speaker wrestles with racial tensions, religious identity, gun violence, raising children, and the anxieties of life in the 21st century. With a refusal to settle for easy answers, Meitner’s poems embrace life in an increasingly fractured society, and they never stop asking what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves.

The National Jewish Book Awards is the longest-running awards program of its kind and were established by the Jewish Book Council in 1950 in order to recognize outstanding works of Jewish literature. The award for the poetry category, officially known as the Berru Award for Poetry, is given to a single book of poetry per calendar year in memory of Ruth and Bernie Weinflash, who were respected arts critics and leaders in their Northern New Jersey community for over fifty years. More information about the National Jewish Book Awards can be found on the Jewish Book Council website.

The winners of the 2018 National Jewish Book Awards will be honored on March 5, 2019 at a gala awards dinner and ceremony to be held at the Bohemian National Hall in Manhattan, hosted by Stephanie Butnick of Tablet Magazine’s Unorthodox podcast. Tickets are available for purchase on Eventbrite.

Congratulations, Erika!