BOA Blog

Nickole Brown's new collection Fanny Says, has been bright in the recent spotlight, and for good reason. Receiving a starred review from Library Journal, Brown's second collection "tells the story, without sentimentality or cliché, of her grandmother Fanny," and does so "in a voice that is both authentic and colloquial." "At the heart of these lyric hybrids (epistolaries, monologs, and other poetic celebrations) is language, the language of communication, the language of shared heritage," says Library Journal.  "These are poems of survival—and sometimes advice. It’s rare to find a book of poems that reads like a well-plotted page-turner, each poem...

In a recent review on authors' first books, Poet Lore takes a close look at Robert Thomas' new fiction book Bridge. Although Thomas has published previous works of poetry, Bridge is his first published work of fiction. "First books offer the promise of freshness, innovation, and surprise ... It's a rite of passage, that debut, and for a reader it can be a delight," says reviewer Mary-Sherman Willis. "The speaker is Alice, in her early thirties, a legal secretary in a San Francisco law firm (as is Thomas), with an obsessive crush on a married co-worker, David, and a paranoid...

Renowned Israeli poet Erez Bitton is the 2015 recipient of the Israel Prize in Literature. Bitton, whose bilingual translation You Who Cross My Path is forthcoming from BOA Editions in fall 2015, is the first poet of Mizrahi descent to win this prestigious prize, known widely as the Israeli Nobel Prize. “The five books of poetry [Bitton] published... are the epitome of courageous dealings,” wrote the Israel Prize committee, “sensitive and deep with a wide range of personal and collective experiences centered around the pain of migration, planting roots in the country and the reestablishment of the Mizrahi identity as an...

Geffrey Davis' Revising the Storm (BOA, 2014) is a nominee for the 2015 HURSTON/WRIGHT LEGACY AWARD for Poetry, from the Hurston/Wright Foundation. “The Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards annually honor published works of fiction, nonfiction and poetry by Black writers published in the previous year. Recognized as a singular award from the Black writing community to its peers, the Legacy Awards each year recognizes members of the national and international Black writing community.” The winners of the 2015 Hurston/Wright Legacy Awards for Fiction, Nonfiction, and Poetry will be announced on October 23, 2015, in Washington, D.C. “By honoring these authors, [the foundation...

This National Poetry Month, BookPage is celebrating by "highlighting some of the best new collections," including Nickole Brown's Fanny Says. Brown was asked to write a piece for the magazine about the importance of reading poetry, and her top five reasons are worth sharing far and wide. "In her second collection of poetry, Fanny Says, Nickole Brown offers a probing lyrical biography of her maternal grandmother while also considering the power of memory and Southern society. In this guest blog post, she lists the reasons you should be reading poetry—during poetry month and every other month in between." Here's a taste...