BOA Editions

Results are in! Here are the Spring 2026 poetry collection's celebrity look-alikes (we just know you were wondering at the edge of your seats).

Selection & graphic design by summer 2026 intern Daisy Sheldon

LAST CHANCE to submit your manuscript for consideration to Boa’s Blessing the Boats Selections! Submit your work by June 15th for a chance to join other women poets of color in upholding Boa’s long tradition of celebrating astounding poetry.

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.

Web De Sol Review of Books describes Clifton’s work as “poems that tell the truth, poems that insist on residing within the reader, poems by a poet who seeks and achieves the ability to be a vehicle for those who may not otherwise speak.”

Submit your manuscript before the reading period closes on June 15th, and join Clifton in telling your truth through your poems.

This First Friday we're celebrating Pride Month! Stop by Suite 306 in the Anderson Arts Building between 6-9pm to explore our titles by LGBTQ+ authors. Want to create collaborative poetry with the community? Come build a poem in our First Friday "Shared Fragments" series. See you there! 🌈

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!

FINAL DAYS: Submit your manuscript for consideration to Boa’s Short Fiction Prize! Deadline: 11:59pm on May 31st. We look forward to reading your work!

Please visit www.boaeditions.org for rules & guidlines.

Women poets of color: submit your complete manuscript for consideration to Boa’s
Blessing the Boats Selections, 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.

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.

As the 2025-2026 Blessing the Boats Selections Editor-at-Large, Evie Shockley will read submissions and select the final manuscript for publication.

About Jordan E. Franklin's book make it to the end (of the movie), Blessing the Boats Selection 2025, Evie Shockley writes, “I was ultimately most drawn to Jordan E. Franklin’s moving, inventive, highly compelling collection… for how it deploys one of Lucille Clifton’s characteristic practices: reworking tropes from our shared culture(s), including pop culture, to make them speak anew to concerns both deeply personal and widely felt.”

Submit your manuscript today to show us what your poems can do!

🎧 Boa Executive Publisher Peter Conners discusses AI in the arts on WXXI’s “Connections with Evan Dawson"! Listen today wherever you get your podcasts- link in bio!

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!

🎙️ 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!