Our Spring 2026 books are now available for pre-order! Why buy only one when you could have them all? Purchase our Spring Book Bundle for some extra saving and special goodies! Learn more on our website!
#bookbundle #Boabookbundle
At Boa we are feeling nostalgic. Next year(2026) marks our 50th Anniversary as a small nonprofit independent publisher of poetry and short fiction (and at one time poetry in translation). Since 1976 we have published more than 300 books, and many Boa authors have won prestigious prizes. Stay tuned for more walks down memory lane AND for exciting 50th anniversary events!
#50YearsofBOA
Boa is thrilled to announce that acclaimed poet Jennifer Chang will judge the 26th annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, which will open for submissions on August 1!
Jennifer Chang’s An Authentic Life received the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry. Her other books include Some Say the Lark and The History of Anonymity. She has received the William Carlos Williams Award, the Library of Virginia Award in Poetry, the Levinson Prize from Poetry, and fellowships from the Elizabeth Murray Artists Residency, MacDowell, and Yaddo. She teaches at the University of Texas in Austin.
Established in 2000, the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize is awarded annually to honor a poet’s first full-length collection of poetry. The winner is selected each year by a nationally recognized poet from a competitive pool of manuscripts. Winning manuscripts are published within the A. Poulin, Jr. New Poets of America Series. Recent Poulin Prize winners have included Splashed Things by Leigh Lucas, Second Nature by Chaun Ballard, and Beforelight by Matthew Gellman. Other renowned debuts in the New Poets of America Series include Rose by Li-Young Lee, Awake by Dorianne Laux, and The Philosopher's Club by Kim Addonizio.
Submissions for the 26th annual A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize will be accepted August 1– November 30, 2026, with the winner announced in spring 2027. Eligibility requirements and submission guidelines for the Poulin Prize are available here.
Submissions are open now through June 15th for Blessing the Boats Selections!
Women poets of color are invited to submit one complete manuscript for consideration.
Selections read by Editor-at-Large, Evie Shockley.
One Poet Receives: Book publication by Boa Editions in Fall 2028 and a $1,500 honorarium.
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. 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.
Submissions are invited through Submittable or by post mail. There is no submission fee associated with this reading period.
Visit boaeditions.org for a full list of eligibility requirements and submission guidelines.
Michelle Phuong Ho, whose book Bone Symphony (Boa, 2026) was selected for Blessing the Boats Selections 2024, said, “I’m overjoyed that my first poetry collection will enter the world as a Blessing the Boats Selection. It’s an honor for the book to be chosen by Aracelis Girmay, whose writing has been a guiding light for my own work, and to join the incredible lineage of poets BOA has supported over the last 50 years.”Swipe to see Bone Symphony and other previous Blessing the Boats Selections, and consider submitting your work today!
#boaeditions #poetry #poetrycompetition #blessingtheboats
🎙️ Positive Blatherings host Scott Fitzgerald interviews Boa Publisher and Executive Director, Peter Conners, in an episode entitled "The Deadhead Running the Poetry Press That Put Rochester on the Map". Peter discusses Boa's origins, his personal writing journey, 22 years working at Boa, digital poetry formats, and the future of independent literature.
Watch Positive Blatherings on ROC Vox's YouTube channel, link in bio!
Listen to Aracelis Girmay (@aracelisxgirmay ) read “flower” from her 2026 #GriffinPoetryPrize-shortlisted collection, 𝙂𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝘼𝙡𝙡 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙨 (@boaeditions ).
✨The international Griffin Poetry Prize winner will be announced at the Readings to be held at Koerner Hall (@theroyalconservatory ) in Toronto on Wednesday, June 3, and will be awarded $130,000. The other shortlisted finalists will each receive $10,000.
✨Tickets are now on sale and can be purchased at the box office of Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor Street West or online (link in bio).
#GriffinPoetryPrize #2026GriffinPoetryPrize #AracelisGirmay
We asked #GriffinPoetryPrize shortlisted poet Aracelis Girmay (@aracelisxgirmay ) what advice she has for other poets, and here’s what she shared:
“When I was first coming to a more serious writing practice, I had the profound fortune of studying with the brilliant Elizabeth Alexander and Kamau Brathwaite. Exposed to their rigorous, capacious study, I began to understand that the formal concerns and musics of a poem might come from anywhere, and that all of it carried the histories that I was written with and reaching toward. I began to take note of experiences and details that touched my head open. Any gesture, lilt, light, commitment can nourish and sharpen one’s dreaming and language.”
✨Girmay’s latest collection 𝙂𝙧𝙚𝙚𝙣 𝙤𝙛 𝘼𝙡𝙡 𝙃𝙚𝙖𝙙𝙨 (@boaeditions ) has been shortlisted for the 2026 Griffin Poetry Prize.
✨The international Griffin Poetry Prize winner will be announced at the Readings to be held at Koerner Hall in Toronto on Wednesday, June 3 at 7:00pm, and will be awarded $130,000. The other shortlisted finalists will each receive $10,000.
✨The evening will include readings by the 2026 shortlisted poets, the Lifetime Recognition Award recipient Raúl Zurita, and the Canadian First Book Prize winner (announced on May 20). The event will also feature a recitation by one of the 2026 Finalists of Poetry in Voice/Les voix de la poésie (@pivlvp ), a Canada-wide school recitation competition.
✨Tickets are now on sale and can be purchased at the box office of Koerner Hall, 273 Bloor Street West or online (link in bio).
🎟️ General Admission, inc. 2026 Anthology – $30.00
🎟️ Senior/Student, inc. 2026 Anthology – $25.00
✨Learn more about our shortlisted authors and their collections on our website!
#AracelisGirmay #2026GriffinPoetryPrize
🧵 Hear Derrick Austin discuss his writing process, the evolution of THIS ELEGANCE, and what's next for him in this self-interview!
THIS ELEGANCE is now available for purchase on the Boa online store 💫
📣 NEW RELEASE ALERT! 📣 Derrick Austin's new collection is out now and we are beaming! Happy pub day Derrick!
Interweaving the sacred and the erotic, This Elegance engages with visual arts through the concept of sacra conversazione (“sacred conversation”), a style of Renaissance painting that imagines divine communion across time and space. Here, artists, thinkers, and pop icons commune in a similar sacred dialogue—Kathleen Collins, André Leon Talley, Richmond Barthé, Lyle Ashton Harris, Juan de Pareja, Janelle Monáe, Symone, and others appear as guiding spirits and creative kin.
For a Black, queer person so often dislocated from time and place, pleasure becomes an act of resistance—a grounding in the now. This Elegance is a love song—an offering to Black artistry, a tribute to visionary lives, and a testament to the power of beauty in even our most precarious moments.
Visit our online store at boaeditions.org to purchase a copy!
#PubDay #NewBook #Poetry #ThisElegance #DerrickAustin
Blessing the Boats Selections spotlights poetry collections by women of color. There is no submission fee associated with this reading period. Don't miss out on this incredible chance to share your story! Open now through June 15th!
🌊 Selections read by Editor-at-Large, Evie Shockley.
🌊 One Poet Receives: Book publication by Boa Editions in Fall 2028 and a $1,500 honorarium.
ABOUT BOA'S BLESSING THE BOATS SELECTION:
Blessing the Boats Selections spotlights poetry collections by women of color. 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.
HOW TO SUBMIT:
Submissions are invited through Submittable or by post mail.
Visit boaeditions.org for a full list of eligibility requirements and submission guidelines.
