BOA Blog

We are thrilled to announce that Chen Chen is the winner of the Publishing Triangle’s Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry for his debut collection When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities (BOA Editions, 2017). Chen was announced as winner at a ceremony held at the New School in New York, NY, on Thursday, April 26, 2018. "I am honored and astounded to receive this award for a book that I wrote really because I needed it—poems that refuse to separate sexuality and race, that are political and restless and just, a whole lot of gaysian...

Hello readers! Welcome back to Exploring the Backlist, where we join our team of interns as they explore over 40+ years of our publication history and share their passion for some of their favorite titles from BOA Editions. Today's post from Ashley F. finds "the complexities hidden in plain sight" in Desire Lines by Lola Haskins. My name is Ashley, and I am an English Literature major from The College at Brockport. For the past few months I have been interning with BOA Editions. I was asked if I would contribute a review of one of our previously published works. While I was...

Hello readers! Today is the official publication of Rail by Kai Carlson-Wee, and Kai sent us a special playlist of songs that inspired his work.  Listen to the playlist on Spotify and read Kai's liner notes below. Enjoy! A note from Kai Carlson-Wee: Most of the poems in RAIL were started while I was traveling. They typically began as scraps of sound, lyrics I jotted down, images, impressions, which I then cobbled together later on. Obviously the poems I was reading would fuel the sound, but just as often the music I was listening to would influence the writing. The way I listen to music is sort...

BOA Editions is excited to partner with Backbone Press for this year's Lucille Clifton Prize! The Lucille Clifton annual poetry contest, held each spring, honors the prolific work of Lucille Clifton. Widely celebrated for her unpretentious and unapologetic poems, Clifton’s unique free verse was free of punctuation, taut, and always recognizably her.  Backbone Press will be accepting submissions of up to (3) unpublished poems via a submission form on their website. Submitted poems cannot be under consideration by any other publisher. Submission will be accepted April 15th-June 15th. Judge Camille Dungy will select one winner of this year's prize. The winner will receive...

Happy National Poetry Month! BOA Editions is excited to once again partner with WXXI—Rochester's very own public radio station—to celebrate National Poetry Month with a special series of "Poetry Moments" this April. These 2-3 minute segments will feature twelve of our favorite poems read by BOA's staff, board members, and friends. "Poetry Moments" will be broadcast throughout the week April 9–20 and will air at 12:20pm on Classical 91.5; at 2:38pm on AM 1370; and at 9:20am on WRUR Different Radio. You can also listen to the full list of recordings online anytime, anywhere. Here's a full list of poems being read on-air...