Rochester, NY — BOA Editions is excited to announce that Subhaga Crystal Bacon has been awarded the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award for her collection Transitory, which is forthcoming from BOA in fall 2023 within the American Poets Continuum Series.
“The joy of returning to the BOA Editions family has been crowned by their selection of Transitory for the Gardner Award! Following Derrick Austin’s Tenderness, is a special thrill, and all the past recipients are poets whose work I admire. I’m honored beyond words to be included in their ranks,” said Bacon.
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 Conners made the final selection for this award. The most recent winners of the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award are Derrick Austin for Tenderness, Bruce Weigl for On the Shores of Welcome Home, Christian Barter for Bye-Bye Land, Marsha de la O for Antidote for Night, Jillian Weise for The Book of Goodbyes, and Aracelis Girmay for Kingdom Animalia. Manuscripts are solicited; there is no formal submission process for the award.
Isabella Gardner (1915-1981) was a poet, actress, and associate editor of Poetry magazine who published five celebrated collections of poetry. She was the first recipient of the New York State Walt Whitman Citation of Merit for Poetry. During her lifetime, she championed the works of young and gifted poets, helping many of them find publication. The Isabella Gardner Award is named in her honor and is sponsored by the Gardner Charitable Trust.
Subhaga Crystal Bacon is the author of two previous collections of poetry, Elegy with a Glass of Whiskey (BOA, 2004), which was awarded the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize by Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Stephen Dunn, and Blue Hunger (Methow Press, 2020). She was a nominee for the 2021-23 Washington State Poet Laureateship and was nominated for both Pushcart and Best of the Web prizes in 2021. A Queer elder, she is a teacher of embodied awakening and poetry and the places where they intersect. She lives with her partner, Sugandhi Katharine Barnes, a painter, and their Labradoodle, Lola. Her third collection, Transitory, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2023.
BOA Editions, Ltd. is a Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award-winning not-for-profit publisher based in Rochester, New York. Founded in 1976 by the late poet, editor, and translator A. Poulin, Jr. to provide a venue for both new and established poets to be published, BOA has released more than 300 titles, including more than two dozen books of poetry-in-translation.
Written by Alayna Delice, Fall 2022 intern
