Boa Classic Book Bundle

Lucille Clifton (1936 - 2010) was an award winning poet, fiction writer, and author of children’s books. Her poetry collection, Blessing the Boats: New & Selected Poems 1988-2000 (BOA, 2000), won the National Book Award for Poetry. In 1988 she became the only author to have two collections selected in the same year as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir (BOA, 1987), and Next: New Poems (BOA, 1987). In 1996, her collection The Terrible Stories (BOA, 1996), was a finalist for the National Book Award. Among her many other awards and accolades are the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Frost Medal, and an Emmy Award. In 2013, her posthumously published collection The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010 (BOA, 2012), was awarded the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award for Poetry.

Aracelis Girmay is the author of four books of poems: GREEN OF ALL HEADS (BOA Editions, 2025); the black maria (BOA Editions, 2016); Teeth (Curbstone Press, 2007), winner of the GLCA New Writers Award; and Kingdom Animalia (BOA Editions, 2011), winner of the 2011 Isabella Gardner Poetry Award and a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Hurston/Wright Legacy Award. She is also the author/illustrator of the collage-based picture book changing, changing.

For her work, Girmay was nominated for a Neustadt International Prize for Literature in 2018. For the last several years, Girmay was on the faculty of Hampshire College's School for Interdisciplinary Arts and before that taught community writing workshops with young people in New York and California. She has received grants, training, and fellowships in support of her work from the NEA, the Whiting Foundation, Civitella Ranieri, the Cave Canem Foundation, and the Community~Word Project, among other programs. From 2021-2025, Girmay served as the editor of BOA Editions' Blessing the Boats Selections and is on the editorial board of the African Poetry Book Fund.

She is the editor of How to Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton (BOA, 2020) and So We Can Know: Writers of Color on Pregnancy, Loss, Abortion, and Birth (Haymarket Books).

Chen Chen was born in Xiamen, China, and grew up in Massachusetts. His debut poetry collection, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize and was longlisted for the National Book Award. Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency (BOA, 2022) was a finalist for the Brooklyn Public Library Book Prize. His work has appeared in two chapbooks and in such publications as Poetry, Gulf Coast, Indiana Review, Best of the Net, and The Best American Poetry. He is the recipient of fellowships from Kundiman, the Saltonstall Foundation, and Lambda Literary. Other honors include the Thom Gunn Award, three Pushcart Prizes, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and United States Artists. He earned his BA at Hampshire College his MFA at Syracuse University, and a PhD in English and Creative Writing at Texas Tech University. Chen Chen lives in Rochester, NY with his partner and their pug, Mr. Rupert Giles. For more about Chen Chen, visit www.chenchenwrites.com.

Li-Young Lee is the author of four collections of poetry, three from BOA Editions: Book of My Nights (2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; The City in Which I Love You (1990), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Rose (1986) which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. His other work includes Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (BOA, 2006), a collection of twelve interviews with Lee at various stages of his artistic development; and The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon & Schuster, 1995), a memoir which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. A second edition of The Winged Seed: A Remembrance was published by BOA in 2013 which included a new forward by the author.

Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty volumes including six collections of poetry from BOA Editions: Sidekick (2026), Red Suitcase (1994), Fuel (1998), You & Yours (2005), Transfer (2011), and The Tiny Journalist (2019). She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Witter Bynner Fellow. Her numerous awards include a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award from BOA, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Patterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Prize the Betty Prize from Poets House for her service to poetry, and the Lon Tinkle Award for Lifetime Achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters. She served on the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets from 2010–2015, and in May 2019 she was named the 2019–2021 Young People's Poet Laureate by the Poetry Foundation.