BOA Blog

BOA is delighted to share the news that Jillian Weise has won a PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Award for Excellence. PEN Oakland announced the winners of the 2020 Josephine Miles Awards via a press release on October 22, 2020. The PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Awards, named for the late poet and Professor at The University of California at Berkeley, were created to provide recognition for outstanding literary achievement from the entire spectrum of America’s diverse literary community. Seven poets received Josephine Miles Awards in 2020. For more information about PEN Oakland and the PEN Oakland Josephine Miles Awards, visit the PEN Oakland...

BOA is honored to announce that the Lannan Foundation of Santa Fe, New Mexico, has generously awarded BOA a $35,000 grant in support of our Blessing the Boats Selections. Named in honor of poet Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) and her National Book Award-winning collection Blessing the Boats: New & Selected Poems 1988–2000 (BOA, 2000), Blessing the Boats Selections titles will celebrate works that continue Clifton’s legacy of writing to the experience of nonwhite women. Submission are 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,...

Rochester, NY — BOA Editions is excited to announce that Derrick Austin has been awarded the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award for his  collection Tenderness, which is forthcoming from BOA in fall 2021 within the American Poets Continuum Series. “I'm grateful to receive the Isabella Gardner Award and be among such fantastic company. I'm awed every time a reader finds some joy, a little something for themselves, in these poems of queer friendship,” said Austin. The Isabella Gardner Award carries an honorarium of $1,000 and is given biennially to a poet with a new book of exceptional merit. BOA Publisher Peter...

BOA Editions is delighted to share the news that Geffrey Davis has won the 2020 Porter Literary Fund Prize. The Porter Fund Literary Prize announced the news via a press release on September 25, 2020. "Several of my local heroes have received this award, so I was aware of the Porter Fund Literary Prize prior to this news. I am deeply and dearly honored to have my own voice added to such a prestigious legacy of Arkansas writers," said Davis. Geffrey Davis is the author of Night Angler (BOA, 2019), winner of the James Laughlin Award, and Revising the Storm (BOA Editions 2014), winner of the A. Poulin,...

Blessing the Boats Selections will honor new poetry books by women of color Rochester, New York –– BOA Editions, Ltd. has named Whiting Award-winning poet Aracelis Girmay as the Editor-at-Large for a new publishing line to spotlight new poetry books by women of color. Girmay will select and curate the Blessing the Boats Selections within BOA’s American Poets Continuum Series.  Named in honor of poet Lucille Clifton (1936–2010) and her National Book Award-winning collection Blessing the Boats: New & Selected Poems 1988–2000 (BOA, 2020), the Blessing the Boats Selections will celebrate works that continue Clifton’s legacy of writing to the...