BOA Blog

Anne Germanacos, author of In the Time of Girls, is lighting up the blogosphere with her recent interview, featured on ph.d. in creative writing! The interview, in which Germanacos explores her own beginnings, maturation, and inspirations as a writer, received more than 10,000 hits soon after it was posted, and has more than one hundred commentators who empathize with Germanacos' intimate relationship with writing. The author and teacher reflects that writing offers "another body (in words) that could hold the many shifting parts, adding new ones when they [occur]." She says of past writing experiences: " It allowed me to...

Out of more than 200 published and thriving writers in the city of Chicago, Newcity Lit's "Lit 50" has been chosen, and on the list is BOA's own Adam McOmber! McOmber's first book, short fiction collection This New and Poisonous Air, was published by BOA just last year, in June 2011. Stories from it have already received nominations for 2012 Pushcart Prizes and Best American Fantasy. It's clear: this Chicago wordsmith is getting noticed! Newcity Lit, an extension of Chicago's weekly Newcity magazine, is devoted to "Chicago's legendary culture of writing," as well as the "growing literary abundance" of the...

Want to know what publishers like BOA are looking for in a manuscript? Dying to know more about your favorite independent press? In a fascinating (and humorous) interview, BOA's publisher Peter Conners discusses with Aspen Matis of the Brooklyn Rail about just what makes BOA, BOA. In addition to questions of funding, public support of the arts and humanities, and surviving in a less-than-thriving economy, the two discuss BOA's further promotion of little-known, necessary manuscripts through the release of e-books, and what "progress" in the digital landscape means for the fate of poetry and text. The balance between accessibility and...

More news for Naomi Shihab Nye's Transfer! The Arab American National Museum (AANM) will honor Nye with the 2012 Arab American Book Award's "Honorable Mention for Poetry" on Saturday, September 29th in Dearborn, Michigan. The AANM, an affiliate of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., is a non-profit human services and cultural organization committed to the preservation and presentation of Arab American history, culture, and contributions. Their unique national literary competition was created to draw attention to books "that preserve and advance the understanding, knowledge, and resources of the Arab American community by celebrating the thoughts and lives of Arab...

[caption id="" align="alignleft" width="200" caption="author photo courtesy of doriannelaux.com"][/caption] It's official! This year's A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize will be judged by Dorianne Laux, BOA poet and author of five widely-circulated collections. Over the course of her literary career, Laux has received two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, two Fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her work has been selected for a variety of anthologies including the Best of APR, the Norton Anthology of Contemporary Poetry, and the Best of the Net, and has been translated into nine languages. Laux has also...