BOA Blog

On October 11, the New York Times ran a review of The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010. While the review, by Dwight Garner, called out for a smaller edition of Lucille's poems (a missed opportunity to draw attention to Lucille's National Book Award-winning Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000), he also found much to praise in this new, landmark edition: "In an afterword, one of the book’s editors, the poet Kevin Young, notes that a few works were fished from a file that Clifton had titled “Unpublished Poems,” then retitled “Old Poems and Ones that May Not...

On Friday, September 14, the poetry community lost one of its most dedicated senior members: Louis Simpson. BOA was fortunate enough to publish Mr. Simpson's poetry over the years including, most recently, National Book Award finalist The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940-2001, and his final collection, Struggling Times (BOA, 2009). The BOA Editions family mourns the passing of Louis Simpson and sends condolences to all of his family and loved ones. Here is a link to Mr. Simpson's New York Times obituary: [Louis Simpson, Poet of Everyday Life, Dies at 89]. As BOA published Louis Simpson during...

Exhibits for Lucille Clifton's works are now open at Emory University, the same place that houses her literary and personal papers, her private library of  literary manuscripts (poems, short stories, essays, interviews, book reviews, translations of poems, speeches), correspondences, teaching files, files related to organizations with which she was associated, photographs, audiovisual material, and even the papers of Ms. Clifton's husband Fred Clifton.  According to Writing Without Paper, Ms. Clifton's "spirit writings" are of particular interest. These are her "written communications with the spirit world," including Ms. Clifton's "explanations and descriptions of her channelings and transcriptions of poems 'passed' to...

Lafayette College has proudly announced the big news that its own Lee Upton has won the 2nd Annual BOA Editions Short Fiction Prize! Upton's The Tao of Humiliation is a collection that impressed BOA Publisher and prize judge Peter Conners with its ability to expose the "complexity of human emotions buried in even our simplest interactions."  Conners says of the collection: "Upton tells a great story, yes, but she never bows to easy answers or pre-packaged characterizations...To write with such skill and sensitivity takes great life experience and the patience of a master writer." Upton has had the ability to...

"On our first raid in Iraq, I bounded up a long staircase, turned a corner and found myself face to face with a young Iraqi woman cradling an infant. I nearly knocked her over, and she leaned hard against the wall to let me pass. A black abaya covered her entire body, and a white scarf concealed her head, only revealing part of her face: shaking lips, small nose, her eyes wide and white in the dark. The infant, wrapped in a blue shawl, was asleep. After lowering my rifle, I backed away, and ran onto the roof where the...