BOA Blog

We are thrilled to announce that Patricia Smith will judge the 18th annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize.  Smith is the author of eight books of poetry, including Incendiary Art; Shoulda Been Jimi Savannah, winner of the Lenore Marshall Prize from the Academy of American Poets; Blood Dazzler, a National Book Award finalist; and Gotta Go, Gotta Flow, a collaboration ion with award-winning Chicago photographer Michael Abramson.  Her other books include the poetry volumes Teahouse of the Almighty, Close to Death, Big Towns Big Talk, Life According to Motown; the children's book Janna and the Kings and the history Africans in America, a companion...

The Over the Rainbow committee of Gay, Lesbian, Bisexual, and Transgender Round Table (GLBTRT) of the American Library Association announced last week that Chen Chen's When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities has been selected as a top twelve title in their annual Over the Rainbow List for 2018. The Over the Rainbow List includes the committee's top recommendations of books by GLBT authors. George Martinez writes on behalf of the committee: "After much reading and deliberation, we chose 39 titles in the category of literature and 42 in non-fiction to be included in the complete 2018...

Greetings, dear readers! BOA Editions is proud to celebrate the vibrant and vital works of America's black poets. From W. E. B. Du Bois to Langston Hughes to our own beloved Lucille Clifton, America's black poets have enriched the American literary community with their words and voices for generations. Last week, the Academy of American Poets published a list of 12 poems to read for black history month selected by twelve contemporary black poets, including Safiya Sinclair's recommendation to read " “won’t you celebrate with me” by Lucille Clifton—one of our favorite poems from The Collected Poems of Lucille Clifton 1965-2010.  won't you...

Tara Wanda Merrigan wrote an in-depth portrait of Poulin Prize-winning poet Marcelo Hernandez Castillo in an article published at the Paris Review this week. The article, "A DACA Poet Speaks Out," describes Castillo's experience living as an undocumented immigrant brought to the United States when he was five years old: "Castillo was excluded from the mundane privileges that documented Americans take for granted. When the local public library began requiring Social Security numbers, Castillo could no longer borrow books. When driving, Castillo strictly adhered to speeding laws. He would drive his brown Ford Taurus sedan, chosen for its discreteness, at exactly sixty-seven miles...