BOA Editions Blog

Douglas Watson, the first-ever winner of BOA’s annual Short Fiction Contest, recently had his short-short story “Life on the Moon” chosen by Wigleaf as one of the best of 2012! Each summer, Wigleaf chooses 50 outstanding short fictions — uniquely all under 1,000 words — for its “Wigleaf Top 50 (Very) Short Fictions of the Year” list. As excitement builds for the spring 2013 release of Watson’s BOA fiction collection, The Era of Not Quite, we couldn’t be more thrilled for Watson and the spreading of his words into the world!

Here is the brilliant (very) short story, from Tin House:

“Life on the Moon” by Douglas Watson

Well, so there’s life on the moon. Little spiderlike things, they say—a marvelous discovery. Nine legs, not eight, but otherwise the classic spider look. Translucent whitish little buggers creeping about on the white-rock face of the moon. Who knew?

Already they have crawled into the vernacular, these “moon spiders.” Already, a week after the discovery, it is difficult to remember a time when, for us, there were no spiders—no life at all—upon the moon.

I may as well report (not that the thoughts of a lowly middle-school science teacher count for much) that I preferred the old, lifeless moon. Life has its corollary, after all. No longer may a troubled earthbound soul look out at the moon and think: There at least nothing dies.

But I suppose if I were on the moon and didn’t know any better, I would look at the earth and say to myself, There I wouldn’t be alone.

Please join us in welcoming Jenna Fuller to BOA Editions! Jenna recently graduated from Roberts Wesleyan College with degrees in English and Communication. She is originally from the Adirondacks in Upstate New York (lived next to a ski mountain but has never been skiing), and now lives in Rochester where she will be getting married this October. She likes to write short fiction and memoir in her spare time, but is even more committed to getting involved with and spreading the conversations of other authors. She also loves coffee, gardening, and her lunatic cat, Stuart.

Jenna’s official title is Director of Marketing and Production. Her email is: fuller@boaeditions.org. Jenna will be working primarily on publicity, advertising, and general marketing duties. She’s also got her eye on overhauling our social media programs, so please keep an eye on the BOA blog, Facebook, and Twitter accounts in upcoming months!

Welcome to the BOA family, Jenna!

Jenna Fuller. Director of Marketing and Production for BOA Editions.

The extensive collection, Your Father on The Train of Ghosts, evolved when two outstanding poets e-mailed one another for the period of a year. John Pursley III reviews this collection written by both G.C. Waldrep and John Gallaher in Diagram (12.2). Pursley explains the differences between Waldrep’s and Gallaher’s poetry and background. What is more interesting is that Pursley believes the poets lose their individual voices, and yet another distinct voice is created “which operates like the ghosts suggested by the title.” Pursley also says, “Many of the best poems in this collection slip effortlessly from moments of childlike inquisitiveness to moments of near spiritual exhaustion.”

Read more about Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (including how to purchase a copy from our secure BOA e-bookstore): here.

We’re thrilled to have four BOA titles noted in Library Journal’s May-Sept Poetry Round-Up!

The Reindeer Camps (9781934414842) “Barton Sutter uses mostly formal structure and quietly unadorned language to chronicle village life on the Canadian border and the culture of ancient Siberian reindeer herders in The Reindeer Camps”

To Keep Love Blurry (9781934414934) “Craig Morgan Teicher, a Colorado Prize for Poetry winner offers clear-eyed, blazing verse as he tracks a path from son (who lost a mother young) to husband and father in To Keep Love Blurry.”

The Folding Star: And Other Poems (9781934414880) “Polish poet Jacek Gutorow’s bilingual translated by Piotr Florczyk, captures our angst in sleek, chiseled verse (“Joy thinks I’m on its side/ when I run through a snowy field/ but death keeps its eyes open”).

The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965–2010 (9781934414903) Three individual collections stand out. Recently deceased, National Book Award and Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize winner Lucille Clifton will be honored with The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965–2010, essential for most poetry collections.

Congratulations to all our recognized authors, translator, and editors!

BOA publisher Peter Conners was in for a very pleasant surprise this morning when he hopped into a New York City taxicab and was greeted by a familiar sight. The poem “Noche de Lluvia, San Salvador” by  Aracelis Girmay from her latest collection Kingdom Animalia (BOA 2011), appeared on Taxi TV  as he was being whisked from JFK to his sales conference downtown. How cool is that?

Girmay’s poem, along with the poem ”Graduation” by Dorothea Tanning, is being used for the re-launch of the Poetry Society of America and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s Poetry in Motion program. Dormant for the past four years, the program re-named “Arts for Transit”, was re-launched in March 2012 and displays poems on “car cards’ in the New York City subway cars, on the reverse sides of  MetroCards, on touch-screen kiosks and now in the back of NYC taxis.

For more info on the Arts for Transit program visit the Poetry Society of America or the MTA website. And for more information on the wonderful and talented Aracelis Girmay, or to purchase Kingdom Animalia please visit the BOA Bookstore.

Poetry is celebrated every month in The Washington Independent Review! BOA’s publications True Faith by Ira Sadoff, The Folding Star by Jacek Gutorow, translated by Piotr Florczyk, and Litany for the City by Ryan Teitman are April Exemplars in The Washington Independent Review. Grace Cavalieri reviews each title and highlights the prose in each. Cavalieri, a poet and playwright, describes Teitman’s cities as holograms of places, colors, people and possibilities. She says that Gutorow, “is a lyrical poet who ponders the edges of what cannot be known. And Sadoff’s new book is an arsenal of wit and strong sensations.” The review can be read here, and find BOA’s postscripts on page seven.

Purchase the above titles in BOA’s bookstore, and happy reading!

Check out Mike Walker’s review of Ira Sadoff’s True Faith over at the Coal Hill Review. Walker sees Sadoff as a chronicler of American society, a guise through which he practices poetry and vice versa.  It is in this regard that Walker compares Sadoff’s vocation as a writer to I.B. Singer, in that he has a “near-scientific ability to record the topography of both place and emotion, but also the discerning nature to make something more of it than a narrow historiography.” Such topographies range  in physicality, describing the United States from Virginia to Texas, and of course depicting the psychological and emotional implications of such places as the mind encounters them. For more, check out the whole review on Coal Hill Review’s website. Ira Sadoff’s True Faith was released this April and can be found at the BOA Editions bookstore.

Ece Temelkuran is a fighter. She has spent the bulk of her career chronicling, and combating, governmental rot in the name of the common people for various news syndicates around the world, and it is with this in mind that Andrew Scoggins from Poetry International approaches her collection of poems Book of the Edge in his review. Scoggins attributes Temelkuran’s conciseness to her journalistic experiences, citing it among the collection’s strengths. “Compelling,” “empowering,” and “inspiring” are among the many words Scoggins uses to describe this collection. Head over to Poetry International’s blog to read the whole review.

Since 1976, the Pushcart Prize has recognized outstanding work from small presses, spanning across all literary genres, from fiction to poetry to the essay. The award is given yearly, and it is with great pleasure that we announce that Michael Waters and Deborah Brown have both been recognized with the Pushcart Prize this year. Michael Waters’s poem “Beloved,” from his collection Gospel Night, and Deborah Brown’s poem “Walking the Dog’s Shadow,” from her collection of the same name, will appear in this year’s Pushcart Prize anthology, edited by novelist Bill Henderson. The anthology will appear in stores in November. Once again, congratulations to Michael and Deborah on this tremendous honor!

The Writer’sAlmanac features a daily dose of verse, birthday announcements (Today we celebrate William Shakespeare’s 448th), and literary-driven news for your listening pleasure. Narrated by Garrison Keillor, the Writer’s Almanac also has a trove of recitations of works by BOA authors including Kim Addonizio, Mark Irwin, Barton Sutter, and Naomi Shihab Nye. Pop over to the Writers’ Almanac site to hear some really wonderful works. It won’t melt the snow, but it’ll feel like it does!