Recent Blog Posts
Two BOA books reviewed by Pleiades
The latest issue of Pleiades includes fantastic new reviews of Nguyen Phan Que Mai’s The Secret of Hoa Sen and Sean Thomas Dougherty’s All You Ask for Is Longing.On The Secret of Hoa Sen: “The translating team of [Bruce] Weigl and Nguyen has produced a volume that embodies the tension between the United States and Vietnam, while maintaining sympathy for both sides of the conflict. . . . Happily, The Secret of Hoa Sen includes English and Vietnamese versions of the poems and the presence of both reinforces the collection’s recurring theme— that of two cultures pressed against each other....
THE BLACK MARIA shines in the spotlight
We are proud to announce that Aracelis Girmay has won the 2015 Annual Prairie Schooner Strousse Award for a group of poems from her new book, the black maria! The $500 Strousse Award is given in honor of Flora Strousse. Girmay's new collection continues to shine in the media spotlight, recently receiving numerous reviews and features from such places as O, The Oprah Magazine, Los Angeles Times, Late Night Library, and Iron Horse Review.Named an "Editor's Pick" for O Magazine’s list of "19 Books to Read in April," the black maria was also included on the "Rigoberto González list of...
TROUBLE THE WATER called ‘rich and rewarding’
Derrick Austin's new A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize-winning book Trouble the Water recently received a glowing review from Devil’s Lake. Calling the collection “rich and rewarding,” reviewer Jacques J. Rancourt says: "The debut poetry book has, since perhaps W.D. Snodgrass’s Heart’s Needle, become of its own a sub-genre: the art of declaring oneself, of revealing one’s influences as much as subverting those influences into a new and vibrant hybrid. In a year of truly stunning debuts, especially from other queer men (such as Ocean Vuong’s Night Sky with Exit Wounds, Rickey Laurentiis’ Boy with Thorn, Richie Hofmann’s Second Empire, and...
BEAUTIFUL WALL wins 2016 Minnesota Book Award for Poetry
Beautiful Wall (BOA Editions, 2015) by Ray Gonzalez is the 2016 Minnesota Book Award winner for Poetry. Announced at the Minnesota Book Awards gala on April 16, 2016, this marks Gonzalez’s third time winning the prestigious award.A total of 252 books were nominated for Minnesota Book Awards this year, and 32 books were chosen as finalists by a panel of judges across the state.Beautiful Wall takes readers on a profound journey through the desert Southwest where the ever-changing natural landscape and an aggressive border culture rewrite intolerance and ethnocentric thought into human history. Inextricably linked to his Mexican ancestry and...
BOA celebrates 40 years at AWP 2016
Derrick Austin, Jenna Fisher, and Melissa Hall at AWP. Photo courtesy of Publishers Weekly.BOA was thrilled to celebrate its 40th anniversary at AWP 2016 in Los Angeles! The whole conference was a whirlwind of excitement and literature, and was a fabulous way to mark our milestone year.Attended by hundreds of people, the BOA Editions 40th Anniversary Celebration premiered a documentary-style short film created by Steve Fisher of Fisher Media; a fabulous reading by BOA poets Michael Waters, Aracelis Girmay, Nikola Madzirov, Jillian Weise, and Li-Young Lee; and — to top it all off — a surprise onstage marriage proposal by BOA reader...