BOA Blog

The Texas Institute of Letters has named the finalists for their annual awards. We're pleased to say that Transfer by Naomi Shihab Nye is a finalist for the Helen C. Smith Memorial Award for Poetry! Dallas News Reports: "The Texas Institute of Letters has been promoting the state's best writers since 1936... The competition is limited to authors who have lived in the state for at least two years or have entries pertaining to Texas subjects. Not surprisingly. some of the best-known writers in the state -- such as Stephen Harrigan, C.W. Smith and Naomi Shihab Nye -- are among...

As hardcore book fans know, the winners of the National Book Critics Circle Award will be announced tonight. No matter the results, we are so proud that Aracelis Girmay's astounding new collection Kingdom Animalia is among the finalists. The book was published in fall 2011 as winner of BOA's biennial Isabella Gardner Award and was immediately honored as a Rumpus Poetry Book Club selection. In the few months since publication, Kingdom Animalia has garnered rave reviews and many, many fans. We count ourselves among those fans. On behalf of everyone at BOA, we wish Aracelis Girmay good luck tonight and...

Peter Conners', Publisher of BOA Editions, 'Waiting to Hear from Lucille' on the City Lights Booksellers and Publishers Blog is expressive and details an incredible journey of signs and poetry. At a reception that followed the Furious Flower reading, Peter Conners spoke with Lucille's daughters, Lexi and Sidney, about publishing The Collected Works of Lucille Clifton. This conversation led to beginning the manuscript, and along the way Peter experienced his own series of signs and spirituality. Peter emphasizes how in the "body of Lucille's poetry, you'll see a poet moving fluidly between the natural and the spirit(ual) world, never clearly...

The AWP Annual  Conference & Bookfair is but a week away! Catch BOA authors, staff, and books throughout the weekend at the following times: Thursday, March 1: 9:00 A.M.-10:15 A.M. R102. On Being a Jewish Poet: Writing and Identity (Patty Seyburn, Jacqueline Osherow, Emily Warn, Yehoshua November) Astoria, Hilton Chicago, 3rd Floor In the 21st century, what does it mean to be a Jewish poet? What is a Jewish poem? Some Jewish poets resist a fixed Jewish identity. Jewishness for C. Bernstein is “a practice of dialogue... an openness to the unfolding performance of the everyday.” Others write poetry rooted...

Stephany Prodromides’ review of BOA’s publication, Nomina written by Karen Volkman for "Poetry International #17," highlights Volkman’s abstract wordplay in her poems. “There is no question that these are athletic poems; they open their fullest flower to those with a strong vocabulary.” Prodromide also states that within Volkman’s poems there is a certainty of truth, even mathematical truth, which are both essentially beyond understanding. Prodromide believes Nomina is fine work where meaning is both exponential and multidirectional within the book. “The heavy consonance, end rhymes, internal rhymes, and the repeated ‘none’ and mathematical concepts create a musical meaning over and...