BOA Blog

Congratulations to Aimee Parkison, author of The Innocent Party (BOA, 2012), on receiving a North Carolina Arts Council Fellowship Award for Literature. Parkison is among 15 from across the state to receive the 2013–2014 award in the categories of songwriting, composing and writing. "Joseph Dewey, in The Review of Contemporary Fiction (Fall 2012) wrote, 'Parkison is a storyteller, conjuring characters who harbor festering secrets, lurid urgencies, and violent compulsions. Like Joyce Carol Oates, Parkison deftly works the caricatures of Southern Gothicism into terrifying clarity.'" According to the North Carolina Arts Council, "artists receive a fellowship to support creative development and...

The Georgia Review reviewer Judith Kitchen praises Bruce Beasley's "verbal pyrotechnics," as displayed in his recent collection Theophobia (BOA, 2012). "Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, [Beasley] breaks the line on 'humility,' thus placing it on the fulcrum between the all-powerful and the unassuming, the immortal and the mortal. Then, by situating genetic engineering alongside evolution, by suggesting a God made in the human image, by reducing the language of origination to nonsense, he fashions an equivalence between supplicant and creator; However, in doing so, he has almost unwittingly exposed his doubt to the same open questions." Kitchen notes Beasley's ability to question and analyze...

We are thrilled to announce that Lucille Clifton has won the 2013 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award (Poetry) for The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010. The award was announced and presented at the Hurston/Wright Foundation's "Legacy Gala" on Friday, October 25, in Washington, D.C. The Washington Post also announced the award winners on October 25: "The award for poetry went posthumously to Lucille Clifton for The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010. The collection by the former poet laureate of Maryland 'secured her place in American letters,' the judges said." The Hurston/Wright Legacy Award is the first national award presented to...

Rattle reviewer Thomas Sanfilip praises Marosa di Giorgio's recent collection Diadem (BOA, 2012), translated from the Spanish by Adam Giannelli. "Uruguayan poet Marosa di Giorgio succeeds beyond expectation as rendered in this first extended English translation of her work chosen to represent the full range of her poetic expressionism. A sensitive and poetically vibrant translation by Adam Giannelli provides a compelling context to experience the rich tapestry of her work as it extends over a lifetime of writing in her distinct poetic idiom." Marosa di Giorgio has one of the most distinct and recognizable voices in Latin American poetry. Her...

Students, faculty, and staff from the University of Maryland gathered October 14, to hear author Douglas Watson read from his recently published collection The Era of Not Quite (BOA, 2013), according to an article in the independent student newspaper The Diamondback. Watson discussed his lifelong love for reading, having started in childhood, and how that led to his writing career: "'I guess I was grateful without thinking about it, to those authors who wrote those books,' Watson said. 'By the time I started really writing at age 30, it was like coming home to my first love.'" Students noted their...