With the 16th annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize just around the corner, we are thrilled to announce that renowned poet Brenda Shaughnessy will judge this year’s contest. BOA will accept first-book poetry manuscripts for the prize from August 1 - November 30, 2016.

Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan, and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of So Much Synth (Copper Canyon, 2016); Our Andromeda (2012), a finalist for the international Griffin Poetry Prize; Human Dark with Sugar (2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award; and Interior with Sudden Joy (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999). The recipient of a 2013 Guggenheim award, her poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, McSweeney’s, The New Yorker, The Paris Review, The Yale Review, and elsewhere. She is currently Associate Professor of English, and teaches in the MFA Program, at Rutgers University-Newark.

An annual competition, the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize is awarded to honor a poet’s first book, while also honoring the late founder of BOA Editions. The winner for the 16th annual prize, to be announced in the spring of 2017, will receive a $1,500 honorarium and book publication by BOA Editions, Ltd. in spring 2018, within The A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America Series. A foreword for the winning book will also be written by Brenda Shaughnessy.

There’s never been a better to time to get involved with BOA. Keep an eye out for contest updates and results on the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize submissions page, the BOA Blog, and Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages.