Blessing the Boats Selections

Open for Submissions: June 1- July 14, 2025 (opening soon).

One Poet Receives: 

• Book publication by BOA Editions, Ltd. in Fall 2027
• $2,500 honorarium

2025-2026 Editor-at-Large: Evie Shockley 

Evie Shockley is the author of Renegade Poetics: Black Aesthetics and Formal Innovation in African American Poetry (U Iowa P, 2011) and six collections of poetry, most recently suddenly we (Wesleyan UP, 2023).  Among her earlier books, the new black (Wesleyan UP, 2011) received the 2012 Hurston/Wright Legacy Award; semiautomatic (Wesleyan UP, 2017) received the same award in 2018, and was also a finalist that year for the LA Times Book Review Prize and the Pulitzer Prize.

Shockley's intellectual and creative work takes a variety of forms.  Her current research on "Black Graphics" concerns the strategies Black poets and other artists (literary and visual) have employed during the recent period characterized by the dominance of "colorblindness" ideology.  Articles related to this project have appeared in New Literary History, The Black Scholar, and Contemporary Literature.  Other scholarly and teaching interests include 20th and 21st century African American and African Diaspora literatures, Black feminist thought, and contemporary poetry and poetics in the US and beyond.  She has placed numerous essays on these subjects in academic journals, edited volumes, and broader audience publications, such as How We Do It: Black Writers on Craft, Practice, and Skill; Furious Flower: Seeding the Future; The New Emily Dickinson Studies; Harriet; The Fate of Difficulty in the Poetry of Our Time; LARB; Literary Hub; The Cambridge Companion to Modern American Poetry; Jacket2; and Boston Review, among others.  Since 2021, she has served as Editor for Poetry (scholarship) at Contemporary Literature.  Her poetry has appeared nationally — in publications like Kenyon Review, Obsidian, Poem-a-Day, The 1619 Project, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Adi, Lana Turner, Ploughshares, The Best American Poetry, The Paris Review, Torch Literary Arts, and Poetry Daily  — and internationally, with pieces translated into French, Spanish, Polish, and Slovenian.  Honors for the body of her poetry include the Poetry Society of America's Shelley Memorial Award, the Lannan Literary Award for Poetry, the Stephen Henderson Award, and the Holmes National Poetry Prize.

(Bio source: https://wh.rutgers.edu/people/faculty/faculty-category/381-evie-shockley)

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Blessing the Boats Selections spotlights poetry collections by women of color. As the 2021-2023 Blessing the Boats Selections Editor-at-Large, Aracelis Girmay will read submissions and select the final manuscript for publication. Blessing the Boats Selections is named after Lucille Clifton’s National Book Award-winning collection, Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems (BOA, 2000), in honor and celebration of her enduring legacy. Lucille Clifton's writings of Black life and Black female life have shaped a sense of what is possible for so many. In the poem that begins "won't you celebrate with me," she writes: "born in babylon / both nonwhite and woman / what did i see to be except myself?" Blessing the Boats Selections titles walk behind and grow out of the poetry of those lines. Submissions are thus open to all women poets of color in the U.S., including poets who identify as cis, trans, and non-binary people who are comfortable in a space that centers on women’s experiences, regardless of citizenship and publication history. Our hope is that the Blessing the Boats Selections will further facilitate encounters between readers and writers of some of the most extraordinary texts of our time.

Please see the guidelines below for details.

Submission Guidelines:

We accept submissions via Submittable or by mail.

• There is no submission fee associated with this reading period.
• Submit only one book-length, complete manuscript at a time. If two manuscripts are sent, both will be removed from consideration.
• Minimum of 65 pages of poetry (not including Table of Contents, Acknowledgments, etc.), and maximum of 120 pages of poetry.
• Manuscript text should be at least 12 pt. font. Manuscript pages should be one-sided.
• Include a cover letter. Do not include a résumé or vitae.
• Please include your phone number and/or email address on the cover letter.
• Simultaneous submissions are okay. Note simultaneous submissions in your cover letter and notify BOA immediately should your submission be accepted elsewhere.
• Include title, publisher, and publication year of previous full-length poetry collections you have published, if any. Feel free to include an acknowledgments page for any previously published poems in your manuscript. 
• Family members, or any students who have studied poetry or fiction or literature with Aracelis Girmay in the past four years, whether that be through a university, a community setting or a tutorial are prohibited from consideration.
• No AI-assisted submissions.

Additional Guidelines for Print submissions:

• Send the manuscript ATTN: BLESSING THE BOATS SELECTIONS.
• Include a self-addressed, stamped envelope (SASE) with sufficient return postage.
• Please note that manuscripts will be recycled, not returned.
• Submissions may be mailed to:

BOA Editions, Ltd.
ATTN: Blessing the Boats Selections
250 North Goodman Street, Suite 306
Rochester, NY 14607

Answers to FAQs:

• The winner will be announced in Fall 2026.
• The winning manuscript will be published in Fall 2027, in an original paperback edition and an e-book edition of the American Poets Continuum Series, with a standard royalties package.
• The winner will retain full copyright of their work.
• The paper from all manuscripts will be recycled after the winner is announced.
• BOA Editions assumes no responsibility for loss of manuscripts.
• As this is an open reading period rather than a contest, submissions are not read blind.

The Blessing the Boats Selections are generously supported by the Lannan Foundation.

 

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