Rochester, N.Y. — BOA Editions is excited to announce that Holy Moly Carry Me by Erika Meitner is a finalist for the 2018 National Book Critics Circle Award for Poetry. The National Book Critics Circle (NBCC) announced the thirty-one finalists for all six NBCC Awards categories on their website this morning, January 22, 2019.
“I'm thrilled that Holy Moly Carry Me was nominated for a National Book Critics Circle Award in poetry and am grateful to all the book critics on the Board,” said Meitner. “It's an amazing thing to know that a book that was born out of very specific personal circumstances and landscapes could resonate with people outside those experiences and places. It's lovely to have this book—which was hard for me to write, and involved wonder, but also a lot of grief and loss—seen and honored in this way. Thanks to everyone at BOA for all their hard work on my book's behalf!”
Holy Moly Carry Me, Meitner's fifth poetry collection, plumbs human resilience and grit in the face of disaster, loss, and uncertainty. With a refusal to settle for easy answers, Meitner’s poems embrace life in an increasingly fractured society, and they never stop asking what it means to love our neighbor as ourselves.
Erika Meitner is the author of five books of poems, including Ideal Cities (Harper Perennial, 2010), which was a 2009 National Poetry Series winner, Copia (BOA Editions, 2014), and Holy Moly Carry Me (BOA Editions, 2018). She is currently an associate professor of English at Virginia Tech, where she directs the MFA and undergraduate programs in Creative Writing.
The National Book Critics Circle was founded in 1974 at New York’s legendary Algonquin Hotel by a group of the most influential critics of the day. Comprising 750 working critics and book-review editors throughout the country, including student members and supporting Friends of the NBCC, the organization annually bestows its awards in six categories, honoring the best books published in the past year in the United States. It is considered one of the most prestigious awards in the publishing industry. The finalists for the NBCC awards are nominated, evaluated, and selected by the 24-member board of directors, which consists of editors and critics from the country’s leading print and online publications. For more information about the history and activities of the National Book Critics Circle, please visit bookcritics.org.
Winners of the National Book Critics Circle awards will be announced on Thursday, March 14, 2018 at 6:30 p.m. at the New School’s Tishman Auditorium, 66 W. 12th St, New York, NY. A finalists’ reading will be held on March 13 at 6:30 p.m. in the same location. Both events are free and open to the public. For additional information about the ceremony and the reading, please visit bookcritics.org.
Congratulations, Erika!
