BOA Blog

Writer Josephine Carr of CarrTalks sits down with Wendy Mnookin for an inspirational interview. Radiating humor and wisdom, Ms. Mnookin shares her interests and fears, which inevitably become inspiration for her own writing. When asked if she would describe writing to be her calling or her career, Ms. Mnookin responds: "I feel that writing is my calling and teaching is my career. I write because I have to: that's how I attend to my world, how I understand and organize experience. I love my teaching, more so as I get older and feel I have more to share with my...

Janice N. Harrington, author of Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone and The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home, shares her influences for The Hands of Strangers in a Ploughshares interview with Patricia Caspers. Caspers prefaces the interview with a description of the first spellbinding reading of the book she heard Harrington give: "I was struck by her ability to write about her subject - the lives of the elderly and those who tend to them - with frank graces." Caspers comments on Harrington's unique and masterful delivery and the way she asks for audience participation during...

An exclusive interview with "author of sad books" Craig Morgan Teicher is featured in this month's issue of The Brooklyn Rail,  with terrific insights into Teicher's perception of "sadness," the art of poetry, and his new collection To Keep Love Blurry. A personal and intimate writer, especially in his new book, Teicher gets personal in the interview about why and how he writes, and specifically why he calls himself the "author of sad books." "I think of humor as an expression of sadness," he says. "Performance is an expression of the need to be acknowledged, and I think of poetry...

“America made us heroines/not wives” An exclusive Publishers Weekly interview with Kevin Young and Michael S. Glaser, co-editors of The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010, was in the PW spotlight of Monday's issue. While Kevin Young discusses Lucille Clifton’s mentoring and literary influence, Michael Glaser talks about their enduring friendship. Ultimately, the co-editors and friends of Ms. Clifton tell about "the labor of love that this book represents." This new interview offers insight into the landmark volume The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 (BOA, 2012), spirit writing, the “lost poems” of Clifton, and the late poet’s literary legacy....

Congratulations to BOA Poet Sean Thomas Dougherty for being featured this month by The Bakery! Dougherty, who gave an amazing poetry reading at this year's BOA "Poetry is Jazz" event, is known for his "electrifying performances" given worldwide, and is the author of Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line (BOA, 2010), Broken Hallelujahs (BOA, 2007), and the forthcoming All I Ask for Is Longing: New and Selected Poems (BOA, 2014). More information on Dougherty is available on The Bakery website, in addition to samples of his poetry and this brief statement by the artist: "These poems show the range...