BOA is thrilled to share the news that Naomi Shihab Nye has won the prestigious Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. This is the highest honor given by the TIL, which was established in 1936 to recognize and celebrate Texas's literary artists.

In the Texas Institute of Letters's official press release, TIL President Carmen Tafolla calls Naomi Shihab Nye “a significant world voice, utilizing poetry to tie tightly the bonds of humanity.” 

Nye's forthcoming BOA collection, The Tiny Journalist (BOA, April 2019), continues to advocate for peaceful communication across all boundaries. Inspired by the story of Janna Tamimi, the “Youngest Journalist in Palestine,” who at age 7 began capturing videos of anti-occupation protests using her mother’s smartphone,  Nye’s poems in The Tiny Journalist put a human face on war and the violence that divides us from each other.

Naomi Shihab Nye has written or edited more than 30 books, including five from BOA Editions: Red Suitcase (1994), Fuel (1998), You & Yours (2005), Transfer (2011), and The Tiny Journalist (2019). She was elected to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets in 2010, is a laureate of the 2013 NSK Neustadt Award for Children’s Literature, and was presented the May Hill Arbuthnot Honor Lecture Award by the American Library Association in 2017. In addition, she has been Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, a Witter Bynner Fellow (Library of Congress), and has received a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Paterson Poetry Prize, the Robert Creeley Prize, "The Betty Prize" from Poets House for her service to poetry, and numerous honors for her children’s literature, including two Jane Addams Children’s Book Awards.

The Lon Tinkle Award will be presented to Nye in McAllen, Texas, at the Texas Institute of Letters's annual awards banquet on April 27, 2019.

Congratulations, Naomi!