As we approach 2022, it’s easy to want to leave 2021 behind. While this past year definitely had its challenges, our team at BOA is proud to step back and recognize all of the amazing things accomplished in 2021, including celebrating our 45th anniversary of publishing vital new voices in poetry and short fiction!
In the last year, BOA published eleven incredible titles, including:
- Welcome to Sonnetville, New Jersey by Craig Morgan Teicher
- I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers from the World by Kendra DeColo
- How to be Better by Being Worse by Justin Jannise
- The Naomi Letters by Rachel Mennies
- Alien Stories by E. C. Osondu
- Tenderness by Derrick Austin
- Ceive by B. K. Fisher
- Diamonds by Camille Guthrie
- A Cluster of Noisy Planets by Charles Rafferty
- Among Elms, In Ambush by Bruce Weigl
- How To Carry Water: Selected Poems of Lucille Clifton edited by Aracelis Girmay (in paperback)
- I Am Not Trying to Hide My Hungers From the World by Kendra Decolo
- When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities by Chen Chen
- The Tiny Journalist by Naomi Shihab Nye
- You and Yours by Naomi Shihab Nye
- Transfer by Naomi Shihab Nye
- Red Suitcase by Naomi Shihab Nye
- Fuel by Naomi Shihab Nye
We at BOA want to thank each and every person who supported us and contributed to such a great year. None of this would be possible without immense support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council for the Arts, the Lannan Foundation, Monroe County, LitTAP, and numerous generous foundations and individual donors. See BOA’s full list of supporters here, and consider becoming one of those supporters through an Annual Campaign donation here. Your support ensures that 2022 will be another year full of powerful and necessary literature.
Already the new year promises the fantastic work of Erika Meitner, Heather Sellers, Dustin Pearson, Danni Quintos, Renia White, Gabrielle Lucille Fuentes, Luther Hughes, Matt Donovan, and others. You can view or preorder the Spring 2022 titles here. We can't wait to share these new collections with you!
As we look towards the future, we leave you with the words of Chen Chen, whose first book, When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities, is forthcoming on audiobook, and second collection, Your Emergency Contact Has Experienced an Emergency, is forthcoming in Fall 2022:
"Elegy to Be Exhaled at Dusk"
I am an elegy to be exhaled at dusk. I am an elegy to be written on a late
October leaf. An elegy to be blown
from its tree by a late October wind. To be stomped on & through
by passersby old & young
& dead & unborn. To be crinkled & crushed into tiny brown-
orange pieces. & then
collected, painstakingly, no, painfully, piece by piece, & assembled like
a puzzle or collage or
Egyptian god, but always incomplete, always a few bits & limbs
missing. An elegy to be
misplaced, stuffed away in the attic’s memory, & only brought out again
once every occupant of the house has
ceased. Yes, I am an elegy properly architectured by ruin. An elegy that has experienced crows & lake effect
snow, an elegy that has seen Ukrainian snow falling on the forehead
of Paul Celan, Paul Celan’s mother,
the German tongue, the tangled tongues of all your literary
& literal ancestors—but more
than that, an elegy that has felt light, the early morning light falling
on your lovely someone’s
lovable bare feet as he walks across the wood floor to sit by the window,
by the plants, with a cup of jasmine
& a book he will barely open but love to hold the weight of
in his lap. I am,
my friend, an elegy that has taken into account, into heart & October wind,
the weight of someone’s soft
hair-covered head in someone else’s warm, welcoming lap.
Post written by Isabella Mihok, Fall 2021 BOA intern
