BOA Blog

 India Lena González is a poet, editor, and artist. She graduated magna cum laude from Columbia University (BA) and received her MFA from NYU’s Creative Writing program. While at NYU she served as a writing instructor for undergraduates and received a Writers in the Public Schools fellowship enabling her to teach literature to middle school students via Teachers & Writers Collaborative. Her work is published in American Chordata, The Brooklyn Review, Lampblack, PANK, Pigeon Pages, and Poets & Writers Magazine, among others. A three-time National Poetry Series finalist, India is also a professionally trained dancer, choreographer, and actor. fox woman get out! is her debut poetry collection. She lives in...

Rochester, NY—BOA Editions is pleased to announce that India Lena González's fox woman get out! is the next Blessing the Boats Selections title. Ms. González will receive a $5,000 honorarium and her manuscript will be published in September 2023 as part of the New Poets of America Series. fox woman get out! was selected by Blessing the Boats Selections Editor-at-Large Aracelis Girmay from a pool of ninety-six submissions.  “This season, we received an extraordinary number of brilliant submissions for the Blessing the Boats Selections,” said Girmay. “The selection process was exceptionally difficult and I feel very honored and moved to have...

Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of A Tinderbox in Three Acts, which was published by BOA Editions on October 11, 2022 as a Blessing the Boats Selection, chosen by Aracelis Girmay. In her fourth poetry collection, Oka performs a lyric accounting of the anti-Communist genocide of 1965, which, led by the Indonesian military and with American assistance, erased and devastated millions of lives in Indonesia. Learn more about Cynthia's new book through this interview with BOA Fall '22 intern, Briar-Rose. Briar Rose: A Tinderbox in Three Acts contains poems, notes, interviews, "textual samplings'' from archival collections, and even drawings. What inspired you to...

 Rochester, NY— BOA Editions, Ltd. will publish A Tinderbox in Three Acts by Cynthia Dewi Oka as the next Blessing the Boats Selections title. Oka will receive a $5,000 honorarium, and her manuscript will be published in September 2022 as part of the American Poets Continuum Series. A Tinderbox in Three Acts is the second selection by Blessing the Boats Selections Editor-at-Large Aracelis Girmay. Girmay said of the collection: “I cannot say enough how critical this work is for its history, specificity, and devotion. At its center churn insurmountable, incomprehensible brutalities. These are the facts. But Oka and her fellow organizers, researchers, artists,...

As Black History Month comes to a close, this is your friendly reminder to read the work of Black authors year-round! Finish February or start March by snagging one of our recent or forthcoming titles below, recommended by BOA's fantastic spring 2022 intern staff!  Alien Stories by E. C. Osondu Alien Stories is a dynamic interplay between the two meanings of the word alien: a person from a foreign country or a being from a foreign planet. Each story confronts some aspect of the “alien” experience—reception, culture shock, identity, stereotypes—from a diverse set of individual and historical perspectives. Osondu’s work...