BOA Blog

Hello readers! Every week, BOA's staff and interns share one of our favorite poems from our over 300 collections of poetry. This week's poem is from The Smoke of Horses by Charles Rafferty, which was recently named as a finalist for the 2018 Connecticut Book Awards. Reflection I followed a creek’s quarter mile of crashing over rocks and algae andthe blurred darting of minnows, until it paused at a pool so well-stoppedit looked more like air than water: a sky of contrails, clod-shaped hunksof cumulus. I stepped in and saw the presence of my body disrupt theheavens at my feet. I couldn’t find the...

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...

Rochester, N.Y. — BOA Editions is thrilled to announce that two BOA titles have won prestigious awards from the Academy of American Poets. In a release distributed by AP News this morning, the Academy of American Poets announced that The Trembling Answers by Craig Morgan Teicher won the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize and that Night Angler by Geffrey Davis won the James Laughlin Award. BOA Publisher Peter Conners says, “I couldn’t be happier to see two BOA titles win awards from the Academy of American Poets this year. Geffrey and Craig are both outstanding poets, and their newest collections are...

BOA Editions is thrilled to announce that Jeanne Foster and Alan Williamson’s translation of The Living Theatre by Bianca Tarozzi has won the 2018 Northern California Book Award for Poetry in Translation. This award recognizes the top work by a northern California translator published in 2017. The Northern California Book Award was started in 1981 by the Northern California Book Reviewers, to honor northern California writers and to draw attention to exceptional services in the field of literature. It recognizes works in Fiction, Non-Fiction, Poetry, Translation, and Children’s Literature. Winners were announced at the 37th Annual Northern California Book Awards ceremony...

We are thrilled to announce that Chen Chen is the winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry for his debut collection When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017). Chen was announced as winner at a ceremony held at the New School in New York, NY, on Thursday, April 26, 2018. "I am honored and astounded to receive this award for a book that I wrote really because I needed it—poems that refuse to separate sexuality and race, that are political and restless and just, a whole lot of gaysian...