[caption id="attachment_960" align="alignleft" width="295" caption="Aracelis Girmay. BOA Poet. Winner of the Isabella Gardner Award. "][/caption] We are thrilled to announce that Aracelis Girmay has been awarded the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award for her new collection, Kingdom Animalia. Her book will be published by BOA Editions in fall 2011. This award is given biennially to a poet with a new book of exceptional merit. Manuscripts are solicited and there is no formal submission process for this award. Poet, actress, and associate editor of Poetry magazine, Isabella Gardner (1915-1981) published five celebrated collections of poetry and was the first recipient of the New York State Walt Whitman Citation of Merit for Poetry. She championed the work of young and gifted poets, helping many of them find publication. This award carries an honorarium of $1000 and is sponsored by the Gardner Charitable Trust. Poets Laure-Anne Bosselaar and Michael Blumenthal (both former recipients of the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award) assisted in judging the award with the final selection being made by BOA Editions.   Aracelis Girmay writes poetry, fiction, and essays. Her poetry collection, Teeth (Curbstone Press, 2007), was awarded the GLCA New Writers Award. A Cave Canem Fellow, she has received grants from the Jerome Foundation and the Watson Foundation. Girmay teaches community writing workshops in her native California and in New York City. She is on the faculty of both Drew University’s low-residency Poetry MFA program and Hampshire College’s School of Interdisciplinary Arts. Girmay grew up in Santa Ana, CA and currently lives in Brooklyn, New York.