BOA Blog

At BOA, we're celebrating Black History Month by highlighting the work of our Black authors! We asked each of our interns to write a short piece and select a poem from a recent or backlist BOA author. To start off the series, spring intern Kathryn writes about Renia White's Casual Conversation, Geffrey Davis' Revising the Storm, and Janice Harrington's Even the Hollow My Body Made is Gone. Casual Conversation by Renia White  The poems of Renia White’s debut collection Casual Conversation immediately bring us front and center to the conventions of speech, conversation, and what remains tucked behind the tongue. This...

  Rochester, NY—BOA Editions, Ltd. is pleased to announce it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to receive a Grants for Arts Projects award of $20,000. This grant will support the publication and promotion of eight new books of contemporary poetry. This grant is one of 1,251 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling nearly $28.8 million that were announced by the NEA as part of its first round of fiscal year 2023 grants. “The National Endowment for the Arts is proud to support arts projects in communities nationwide,” said NEA Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “Projects such as...

Here at BOA Editions we are celebrating another successful year of poetry and short fiction! As 2022 comes to an end, we’ve stopped to reflect on all the note-worthy titles released. Here are the top eleven books we think have been the best this year—though we might be a bit biased… Read on and don’t forget to browse these titles in the BOA Bookstore! Useful Junk by Erika Meitner (April 5th, 2022)  In Orion Magazine, Marcela Sulak listed Useful Junk as one of the “28 Recommended Collections for National Poetry Month.” Sulak says, “Here, as in her previous books, I’m...

Rochester, NY—BOA Editions is pleased to announce that India Lena González's fox woman get out! is the next Blessing the Boats Selections title. Ms. González will receive a $5,000 honorarium and her manuscript will be published in September 2023 as part of the New Poets of America Series. fox woman get out! was selected by Blessing the Boats Selections Editor-at-Large Aracelis Girmay from a pool of ninety-six submissions.  “This season, we received an extraordinary number of brilliant submissions for the Blessing the Boats Selections,” said Girmay. “The selection process was exceptionally difficult and I feel very honored and moved to have...

Matt Donovan is the author of The Dug-Up Gun Museum, which was published by BOA Editions on November 8, 2022. Donovan's documentary poems examine the paradox of a country plagued by gun violence yet consumed with protecting the right to bear arms. Read on to learn more about Matt and his new poetry collection through this self-interview!   What inspired you to write a book focused on guns in America? Simply put, the earliest iterations of this project grew out of a deep concern about gun violence in America. I wanted to try to understand our ongoing obsession with firearms, as well as...