Chris Abani is a professor at the University of California, Riverside and the recipient of the PEN USA Freedom-to-Write Award, the Prince Claus Award, a Lannan Literary Fellowship, a California Book Award, a Hurston/Wright Legacy Award, a PEN Beyond the Margins Award, the PEN Hemingway Book Prize and a Guggenheim Award.
Kim Addonizio is the author of six collections of poetry, including three from BOA Editions: The Philosopher’s Club (1994); Jimmy & Rita (1997); and Tell Me (2000), a finalist for the National Book Award. In 1999, she collaborated with Dorianne Laux on The Poet’s Companion: A Guide to the Pleasures of Writing Poetry (W.W. Norton), and in 2009 published another poetry guide Ordinary Genius: A Guide for the Poet Within (W.W. Norton). Her honors include a Guggenheim Fellowship, two fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, and Pushcart Prizes for both poetry and essay. Addonizio offers private poetry workshops in Oakland, CA, and in New York City. For more information about Kim Addonizio, visit www.kimaddonizio.com.
Dan Albergotti is the author of two collections of poetry: Millennial Teeth (Southern Illinois University Press, 2014), selected by Rodney James as the winner of the 2013 Crab Orchard Series in Poetry Open Competition; and The Boatloads (BOA, 2008), which was selected by Edward Hirsch as the winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize. Albergotti has been a scholar at the Sewanee and Bread Loaf writers’ conferences and a fellow at the Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. He is professor and Chair of the English Department at Coastal Carolina University.
James Arthur’s poems have appeared in The New Yorker, The New Republic, Poetry, Ploughshares, Best New Poets 2010, and Best Canadian Poetry 2008. He was born in New Haven, Connecticut in 1974 and grew up in Toronto, Canada. He received a B.A. from Trinity College, University of Toronto in 1997, an MA from the University of New Brunswick in 2001, and an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Washington. He is married to the fiction writer Shannon Robinson.
Derrick Austin is the author of Trouble the Water, winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize (BOA 2016). A Cave Canem fellow, Pushcart Prize, and four-time Best New Poets nominee, he earned his MFA at the University of Michigan. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Best American Poetry 2015, New England Review, Image: A Journal of Arts and Religion, Callaloo, Crab Orchard Review, and other journals and anthologies. He is the Social Media Coordinator for The Offing. For more information on Derrick Austin, please visit http://themadscene.tumblr.com/poems.
Ellen Bass is the author of three books of poetry. Her collection Mules of Love (BOA, 2002) won the Lambada Literary Award. Among her other awards are a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Elliston Book Award for Poetry from the University of Cincinnati, Nimrod/Hardman’s Pablo Neruda Prize, the Missouri Review’s Larry Levis Award, a fellowship from the California Arts Council, and two Pushcart Prizes. Bass currently teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Pacific University. For more information about Ellen Bass, visit ellenbass.com.
Bruce Beasley is the author of seven collections of poetry, most recently Theophobia (BOA, 2012). Beasley is the recipient of the University of Georgia Press Contemporary Poetry Series Award for The Corpse Flower: New & Selected Poems (University of Washington Press, 2007), and the Colorado Prize for Poetry for Summer Mystagogia (University Press of Colorado, 1996). He has also been awarded three Pushcart Prizes, and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Artist Trust. He is a professor of English at Western Washington University. For more information about Bruce Beasley, visit brucebeasley.net.
Jeanne Marie Beaumont is the author of three books of poetry: Placebo Effects (W.W. Norton, 1997), selected by William Matthews as a winner in the National Poetry Series; Curious Contact (BOA, 2004); and Burning of the Three Fires (BOA, 2010). For seven years she was publisher and co-editor of the literary magazine American Letters & Commentary. She has also worked as a proofreader, medical editor, and advertising copywriter. Beaumont currently teaches at The Unterberg Poetry Center at the 92nd Street Y in Manhattan and in the Stonecoast MFA Program at the University of Southern Maine. For more information about Jeanne Marie Beaumont, visit www.jeannemariebeaumont.com.
Devin Becker is the digital initiatives and web services librarian at the University of Idaho Library, where he directs and maintains the library’s digital collections. In 2014 Becker was named a Library Journal Mover and Shaker, and his first collection of poetry Shame | Shame (BOA, 2015), was selected by David St. John as the winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. He is currently working on a Seed-Grant-funded project titled “CTRL-SHIFT”, which aims to document how established writers’ dealt with the transition from paper-based to digital writing practices due to the rise of personal computers. For more information about Devin Becker, visit devinbecker.org.
Erin Belieu was born and raised in Nebraska and educated at the University of Nebraska, Ohio State University, and Boston University. She is the author of Infanta, winner of the National Poetry Series in 1994, One Above & One Below, winner of the Midlands Poetry Prize and Ohioana Poetry Award, and Black Box, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, all of which were published by Copper Canyon. Her poems have appeared in places such as Best American Poetry, The New York Times, Atlantic Monthly, AGNI, Tin House, Yale Review, and The Virginia Quarterly Review. Belieu co-founded VIDA: Women in Literary Arts with poet Cate Marvin. She currently directs the Creative Writing Program at Florida State University and is the Artistic Director at Port Townsend Writers’ Conference.
Mark Bibbins is the author of Sky Lounge, which received a Lambda Literary Award, and They Don’t Kill You Because They’re Hungry, They Kill You Because They’re Full. He teaches in the graduate writing programs at Columbia University and The New School, where he co-founded LIT magazine. His poems have appeared in Poetry, The Paris Review, Boston Review, Tin House, The Best American Poetry, and Legitimate Dangers: American Poets of the New Century. He was a 2005 New York Foundation for the Arts poetry fellow.
Sherwin Bitsui is originally from White Cone, Arizona, on the Navajo Reservation. He is Diné of the Tódích’ii’nii (Bitter Water Clan), born for the Tlizílaaní (Many Goats Clan). He holds an AFA from the Institute of American Indian Arts Creative Writing Program and a BA from University of Arizona in Tucson. His recent honors include a 2011 Lannan Foundation Literary Fellowship and a 2011 Native Arts & Culture Foundation Arts Fellowship. He is also the recipient of 2010 PEN Open Book Award, an American Book Award and a Whiting Writers Award. Bitsui has published his poems in Narrative, Black Renaissance Noir, American Poet, The Iowa Review, LIT, and elsewhere.
A native of Belgium, Laure-Anne Bosselaar has lived and worked throughout Europe and the United States. She is the author of three collections of poetry in English: The Hour Between Dog & Wolf (BOA, 1997); Small Gods of Grief (BOA, 2001); and A New Hunger (Copper Canyon Press, 2007). Bosselaar was awarded a fellowship at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, and was a Writer in Residence at The Vermont Studio Center and at Hamilton College. She is currently translating American poetry into French and Flemish poetry into English, and teaches at the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. For more information about Laure-Anne Bosselaar, visit laureannebosselaar.com.
Fleda Brown is the author of eight collections of poetry including No Need of Sympathy published by BOA in 2013. She is also the author of a memoir, Driving With Dvorak (University of Nebraska Press, 2010), and with Sydney Lea, a book of essays, Growing Old in Poetry (Autumn House Press, 2013). She joined the faculty of the University of Delaware English Department in 1978, where she founded the Poets in the Schools Program, which she directed for more than twelve years. Brown served as poet laureate of Delaware from 2001-2007, and she currently teaches in the Rainier Writing Workshop, a low-residency MFA program at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, WA. For more information about Fleda Brown, visit fledabrown.com.
Jericho Brown worked as the speechwriter for the Mayor of New Orleans before earning his PhD in Creative Writing and Literature from the University of Houston. The recipient of the Whiting Writers Award and fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Radcliffe Institute at Harvard University, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, and the Krakow Poetry Seminar in Poland, Brown is an Assistant Professor at Emory University. His first book, PLEASE (New Issues), won the American Book Award. He lives in Atlanta.
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Nickole Brown’s books include: Fanny Says (BOA, 2015), a biography-in-poems about her late grandmother; Sister (Red Hen Press, 2007), a novel-in-stories; and an anthology, Air Fare (Sarabande, 2004), co-edited with Judith Taylor. For ten years, Brown was director of marketing and development at Sarabande Books, and was also the editorial assistant to the late Hunter S. Thompson. Currently she is the editor for the Marie Alexander Series in Prose Poetry at White Pine Press, and is on faculty every summer at the Sewanee Young Writer’s Conference and at the low-residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Murray State. For more information about Nickole Brown, visit nickolebrown.org.
Rick Bursky is the author of three collections of poetry: I’m No Longer Troubled By the Extravagance (BOA, 2015); Death Obscura (Sarabande, 2010); The Soup of Something Missing (Bear Star Press, 2004), winner of the Dorothy Brunsman Poetry Prize; and the chapbook, The Invention of Fiction (Hollyridge Press, 2005). He received his BFA from Art Center College of Design, and an MFA from Warren Wilson College. Bursky lives in Los Angeles where he works in advertising and teaches poetry in the UCLA Extension Writer’s Program. For more information about Rick Bursky visit, www.rickbursky.com
Wyn Cooper is the author of four collections of poetry, including two from BOA Editions, Postcards from the Interior (2005), and Chaos is the New Calm (2010). Cooper is also a storyteller, songwriter, and essayist. In 1993, the poem “Fun” from his first book, The Country of Here Below (Ahsahta Press, 1987) was turned into the Grammy-winning song “All I Wanna Do” by Sheryl Crow. Cooper currently works as an editor for both aspiring and established authors and helps run the Brattleboro Literary Festival in Vermont. For more information about Wyn Cooper, visit www.wyncooper.com.
Jim Daniels’ recent books include Birth Marks (BOA, 2013,) winner of the Milt Kessler Poetry Award from Binghamton University; the Midwest Award-winning short fiction collection, Trigger Man: More Tales from the Motor City (Michigan State University Press, 2011); and Having a Little Talk with Capital P Poetry (Carnegie Mellon University Press, 2011), which won the Poetry Gold Medal in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. In 2010 he wrote and produced the independent film “Mr. Pleasant”, his third produced screenplay. Daniels is the Thomas Stockham Baker Professor of English at Carnegie Mellon University.
Geffrey Davis’ debut collection of poems, Revising the Storm (BOA, 2014) won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Other honors include the Anne Halley Poetry Prize, the Dogwood First Prize in Poetry, the Wabash Prize for Poetry, the Leonard Steinberg Memorial/Academy of American Poets Prize, and fellowships from the Cave Canem Foundation and Penn State’s Institute for the Arts & Humanities. Davis teaches in the Program for Creative Writing & Translation at the University of Arkansas, and serves on the board of directors for the journal Toe Good Poetry. For more information about Geffrey Davis, visit www.geffreydavis.com.
Kwame Dawes was born in Ghana in 1962 and moved with his family to Jamaica at the age of ten. His first book of poetry Progeny of Air (Peepal Tree, 1994) won the Forward Poetry Prize for best first collection in the UK. The author of fifteen subsequent collections, Dawes has also published two novels, four anthologies, numerous essays, and seen over fifteen of his plays produced. Dawes actively maintains his Jamaican roots. In 2009 he was awarded an Emmy for his Pulitzer Center funded interactive website, LiveHopeLove.com entitled “Hope: Living and Loving with AIDS in Jamaica”. At the University of South Carolina he was the Distinguished Poet in Residence, Founder and executive Director of the South Carolina Poetry Initiative, and director of the University of South Carolina Arts Institute. Since 2011 he has taught at the University of Nebraska as a Chancellor’s Professor of English as well as the Glenna Luschei Editor of Prairie Schooner. He is a Cave Canem faculty member and teaches in the MFA program at Pacific University.
Marsha de la O’s first book of poetry, Black Hope (New Issues Press, 1997), won the New Issues Press Poetry Prize. Her latest collection, Antidote for Night (BOA, 2015), was awarded the Isabella Gardner Poetry Prize. Her work also appears in four anthologies, the latest of which, One for the Money: The Sentence as Poetic Form, is forthcoming from Lynx House Press in 2017. The recipient of the 2014 Morton Marcus Memorial Poetry Prize, the dA Poetry Prize, and the Ventura Poetry Prize, de la O is the publisher of the poetry journal, Askew.
Debra Kang Dean is the author of three collections of poetry, including one from BOA Editions, Precipitates (2003). Her work has appeared in many journals and anthologies, including The Best American Poetry 1999 (Scribner, 1999), The New American Poets: A Bread Loaf Anthology (Middlebury, 2000) and Urban Nature: Poems about Wildlife in the City (Milkweed Editions, 2000). She is on the faculty of the Spalding University brief-residency MFA Program, and is a contributing editor for Tar River Poetry. For more information about Debra Kang Dean, visit debrakangdean.com.
Natalie Diaz, a member of the Mojave and Pima Indian tribes, attended Old Dominion University on a full athletic scholarship. After playing professional basketball in Austria, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, and Turkey she returned to ODU for an MFA in writing. Her publications include Prairie Schooner, Iowa Review, Crab Orchard Review, among others. Her work was selected by Natasha Trethewey for Best New Poets and she has received the Nimrod/Hardman Pablo Neruda Prize for Poetry. She lives in Surprise, Arizona.
Winner of the 2010 James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets for his second collection Flies (Copper Canyon, 2011), Michael Dickman was born and raised in the Lents district of Portland, Oregon. His poems are regularly published in The New Yorker, and his work has appeared in many magazines and journals, including The American Poetry Review, Field, Tin House, and Narrative magazine. His first book, The End of the West, was published by Copper Canyon in 2009, and after publication he and his twin brother Matthew, also a poet, were profiled in The New Yorker and Poets & Writers. Dickman is currently serving as a Lecturer at Princeton University.
Sean Thomas Dougherty is the author of twelve books of poetry, including three from BOA Editions: Broken Hallelujahs (2007), Sasha Sings the Laundry on the Line (2010); and All You Ask For Is Longing: New & Selected Poems (2014). His awards include a Fulbright Lectureship in the Balkans and two Pennsylvania Council for the Arts Fellowships in Poetry. Dougherty received his MFA from Syracuse University and reads and conducts workshops around the country.
Russell Edson was a poet, novelist, writer and illustrator. Called the “godfather of the prose poem” Edson began publishing poetry in the 1960’s and is the author of thirteen collections, including The Rooster’s Wife (BOA, 2005). Edson received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He lived for many years in Stamford CT, and died in 2014.
Kerry James Evans served six years in the Army National Guard as a Combat Engineer, including one-year active duty at Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, during Operation Noble Eagle. He received his MFA in Creative Writing from Southern Illinois University-Carbondale, and will receive his PhD in English-Creative Writing from Florida State University. His poems have been published in Agni, Beloit Poetry Journal, Narrative, New England Review, North American Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner and many others. His first book Bangalore, was a finalist for the National Poetry Series, a Runner-up for Boa’s A. Poulin Jr. Prize, and a finalist for numerous other prizes. He is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets Prize, and a Kingsbury Fellowship at Florida State University. He lives with his wife in Tallahassee, Florida.
Richard Foerster is the author of six collections of poetry, three from BOA Editions: Trillium (1998); Double Going (2002), named a notable book by the National Book Critics Circle; and The Burning of Troy (2006), winner of the Poetry Category for the 2007 Maine Literary Awards. His other numerous awards include the Discovery/The Nation Award, the Bess Hokin Prize from Poetry Magazine, and residency fellowships from Yaddo and the National Endowment for the Arts. Foerster is also typesets all of BOA’s beautiful books.
John Gallaher’s most recent poetry collection, In A Landscape was published by BOA Editions in 2014. He is also the author, together with G.C. Waldrep, of Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (BOA, 2011), which was written in collaboration almost completely through email. His poetry collection, The Little Book of Guesses (Four Way Books, 2007), was the recipient of the Levis Poetry Prize. Gallaher is currently the co-editor of The Laurel Review and The Akron Series in Contemporary Poetics, and is an assistant professor of English at Northwest Missouri State University.
Richard Garcia is the author of six collections of poetry, including three from BOA Editions: Rancho Notorious (2001), The Persistence of Objects (2006), and The Chair (2014). Garcia is the recipient of numerous awards including the Pushcart Prize and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. For twelve years he was poet-in-residence at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, where he conducted workshops in art and poetry for hospitalized children. He teaches creative writing in the Antioch University Los Angeles MFA Program and at the College of Charleston. For more information about Richard Garcia, visit www.richardgarcia.info.
During her lifetime (1915-1981), Isabella Gardner published four distinguished books of poetry. The great-niece of Isabella Stewart Gardner and a cousin of Robert Lowell, Gardner was a professional actress for several years before moving to Chicago, where she served as an associate editor of Poetry magazine from 1952-1956. In 2000, BOA published Isabella Gardner: The Collected Poems as part of its American Poets Continuum Series, and established the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award. The award is presented biennially to a mid-career poet with a new book of exceptional merit.
Winner of a 2015 Whiting Award for Poetry, Aracelis Girmay is an assistant professor of poetry at Hampshire College. She is the author of two collections of poetry, Teeth (Curbstone Press, 2007), and Kingdom Animalia, winner of the 2011 Isabella Gardner Award from BOA Editions. Girmay is a Cave Canem Fellow and an Acentos board member. Her next book of poetry, the black maria is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2016.
Ray Gonzalez is the author of fifteen books of poetry, including six from BOA Editions: The Heat of Arrivals (1997), winner of the PEN/Oakland Josephine Miles Book Award; Cabato Sentora (2000), a Minnesota Book Award Finalist; The Hawk Temple at Tierra Grande (2003), winner of the 2003 Minnesota Book Award; Consideration of the Guitar: New & Selected Poems (2005); Cool Auditor: Prose Poems (2009); and Beautiful Wall (2015). Gonzalez is also the author of three collections of essays, two collections of short stories, and the editor of twelve anthologies. He has served as the poetry editor for the Bloomsbury Review for thirty-five years and in 1998, founded the poetry journal LUNA. Gonzales is a professor in the MFA Creative Writing Program at the University of Minnesota.
Janice N. Harrington writes poetry and children’s books. Her first book of poetry, Even the Hollow My Body Made is Gone (2007), won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry prize and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. Her second book of poetry, The Hands of Strangers: Poems from the Nursing Home was published by BOA in 2011, and her latest collection, Primitive is forthcoming from BOA in 2016. Harrington has worked as a public librarian and as a professional storyteller. She currently teaches in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Illinois. For more information about Janice N. Harrington, visit www.janiceharrington.com.
Laura Kasischke is the author of eight collections of poetry and seven novels. Her work has received many honors, including the Pushcart Prize, the Juniper Poetry Prize, and the Rilke Poetry Prize. Her most recent book of poems, Space in Chains, won the National Book Critics Circle Award. She lives in Chelsea, Michigan, with her son and teaches at the University of Michigan MFA program in Ann Arbor.
Meg Kearney is the author of two collections of poetry: Home By Now (Four Way Books, 2009), was the winner of the 2010 PEN New England LL Winship Award, and a finalist for the Patterson Poetry Prize; and An Unkindness of Ravens (BOA, 2001). She is also the author of three novels in verse for teens and a picture book for children, Trouper (the three-legged dog), (Scholastic, 2013). Kearney is founding director of the Solstice Low-Residency MFA in Creative Writing Program at Pine Manor College, and was associate director of the National Book Foundation for eleven years. She is a former poetry editor of Echoes, a quarterly literary journal, and a past president of the Hudson Valley Writers Association of upstate New York. For more information about Meg Kearney, visit www.megkearney.com.
Brigit Pegeen Kelley is the author of three collections of poetry: To the Place of Trumpets (Yale University Press, 1988), selected by James Merrill for the Yale Series of Younger Poets Prize; Song (BOA, 1995), winner of the Lamont Poetry Prize from the Academy of American Poets; and The Orchard (BOA, 2004), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize. Her many other accolades include a “Discovery”/ the Nation award, the Witter Bynner Prize from the Academy of Arts and Letters, the Cecil Hemley Award from the Poetry Society of America, and fellowships from the Academy of American Poets, the Whiting Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and the Illinois Arts Council.
Christopher Kennedy is the author of four collections of poetry, including two from BOA Editions: Ennui Prophet (2011); and Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death (2007) which received the Isabella Gardner Award from BOA. He is also co-translator of Light & Heavy Things: Selected Poems of Zeeshan Sahil (2013), published by BOA as part of The Lannan Translation Selections Series. He has received fellowships and grants from The National Endowment for the Arts, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and the Constance Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts. Kennedy is associate professor of English at Syracuse University where he directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing.
Carolyn Kizer won the Pulitzer Prize in 1985 for her poetry collection Yin (BOA, 1984). After graduating from Sarah Lawrence College she was a Fellow of the Chinese Government in Comparative Literature at Columbia University. In 1959 she co-founded the prestigious journal Poetry Northwest, which she edited from its inception until 1965. in 1964 – 65 she was a Specialist in Literature for the United States Department of State in Pakistan; and from 1966-1970 she served as the first Director of the Literature Program for the newly created National Endowment for the Arts. In 1995 Kizer was appointed to the post of Chancellor of the Academy of American Poets but resigned three years later to protest the absence of women and minorities on the governing board. Her numerous honors include the Frost Medal, the Theodore Roethke Memorial Poetry Award, and an Academy of Arts and Letters Award. Kizer died in 2014.
Jennifer Kronovet’s debut poetry collection, Awayward (BOA, 2007), was selected by Jean Valentine as the winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize. Kronovet received an MFA in Creative Writing from Washington University and an MA in Applied Linguistics from Columbia University Teachers College. She has lived in Beijing, Chicago, and New York where she was born and raised. She is a founding editor of CIRCUMFERENCE, the journal of poetry in translation, and currently is writer-in-residence at Washington University in St. Louis. For more information about Jennifer Kronovet, visit jenniferkronovet.com.
Keetje Kuipers has been a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University, the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College, a Bread Loaf Fellow, and the recipient of a Pushcart Prize. In 2007 she completed her tenure as the Margery Davis Boyden Wilderness Writing Resident, using her time there to complete work on her first book, Beautiful in the Mouth (BOA, 2010), which was awarded the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Her second book, The Keys to the Jail, was published by BOA in 2014. Kuipers is an assistant professor at Auburn University where she is Editor of Southern Humanities Review. For more information about Keetje Kuipers, visit www.keetjekuipers.com.
Adrie Kusserow is a cultural anthropologist who works with Sudanese refugees in trying to build schools in war-worn South Sudan. Currently an associate professor of Cultural Anthropology at St. Michael’s College in Vermont, Kusserow earned her PhD in Social Anthropology from Harvard University. She is the author of two collections of poetry, both published by BOA Editions, Hunting Down the Monk (2002), and Refuge (2013).
Dorianne Laux is the author of five collections of poetry, including three from BOA Editions: Awake (1990), selected by Philip Levine as a Winner of the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize; What We Carry (1994), a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and Smoke (2000). Her most recent collection, The Book of Men (W.W. Norton, 2012) was the winner of the Patterson Prize. Among her awards are two Best American Poetry Prizes, a Pushcart Prize, and two fellowships from The National Endowment for the Arts, and a Guggenheim Fellowship. For more information about Dorianne Laux, visit doriannelaux.net.
Katy Lederer is the author of two poetry collections: Winter Sex (Wave Books, 2004); and The Heaven-Sent Leaf (BOA, 2009); as well as the memoir, Poker Face: A Girlhood Among Gamblers (Broadway Books, 2004), which was a New York Times Book Review “Editor’s Choice”, and one of Esquire’s eight “Best Books of the Year.” Her honors include fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. For several years she worked at a quantitative hedge fund in midtown Manhattan. She also worked as a teacher, anthropological researcher, and semi-professional poker player. For more information about Katy Lederer, visit www.katylederer.com.
Li-Young Lee is the author of four collections of poetry, three from BOA Editions: Book of My Nights (2001), which won the 2002 William Carlos Williams Award; The City in Which I Love You (1990), which was the 1990 Lamont Poetry Selection; and Rose (1986) which won the Delmore Schwartz Memorial Poetry Award. His other work includes Breaking the Alabaster Jar: Conversations with Li-Young Lee (BOA, 2006), a collection of twelve interviews with Lee at various stages of his artistic development; and The Winged Seed: A Remembrance (Simon & Schuster, 1995), a memoir which received an American Book Award from the Before Columbus Foundation. A second edition of The Winged Seed: A Remembrance was published by BOA in 2013 which included a new forward by the author.
Sarah Lindsay was born in Cedar Rapids, Iowa; she graduated from St. Olaf College with a BA and a Paracollege major in English and Creative Writing, and also holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of North Carolina-Greensboro. She has published two chapbooks, Bodies of Water and Insomniac’s Lullaby, and two books in the Grove Press Poetry Series: Primate Behavior, a finalist for the National Book Award, and Mount Clutter. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, The Georgia Review, The Kenyon Review, The Paris Review, Parnassus, The Yale Review, and other magazines. She is also a recipient of the J. Howard and Barbara M.J. Wood Prize. She has recently been nominated for the 2010 PEN/Voelcker Award for Poetry.
Hugh Martin spent six years in the Army National Guard and eleven months in Iraq. His chapbook, So How Was the War? (Kent State UP, 2010) was published by the Wick Poetry Center, and his first full-length collection of poetry, The Stick Soldiers (BOA, 2013), was awarded the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. Martin is the recipient of a Wallace Stegner Fellowship and the Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award from the Iowa Review. A graduate of Muskingum University and Arizona State, he is currently the Emerging Writer Lecturer at Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania. For more information about Hugh Martin, visit www.hugh-martin.com, or hughmartin.blogspot.com.
Valzhyna Mort was born in Minsk, Belarus. Her first book of poetry, I’m as Thin as Your Eyelashes, was published in Belarus (2005). Factory of Tears (Copper Canyon Press, 2008) is her second book and was co-translated by Elizabeth Oehlkers Wright and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Franz Wright. It is the first Belarusian-English poetry book ever published in the United States and has been translated into German, Swedish, and Russian. Her English translations of Eastern-European poets are included in New European Poets (Graywolf Press, 2008). Her most recently published book is Collected Body (Copper Canyon Press, 2011). Mort currently teaches at the University of Baltimore and has the distinction of being the youngest person to ever be on the cover of Poets & Writers.
Kathryn Nuernberger is the author of two collections of poetry, Rag & Bone (Elxir Press, 2011), and The End of Pink, forthcoming from BOA in 2016. She is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at University of Central Missouri where she also serves as Poetry Editor for Pleiades.
Naomi Shihab Nye is the author and/or editor of more than thirty volumes including four collections of poetry from BOA Editions: Red Suitcase (1994), Fuel (1998), You & Yours (2005), and Transfer (2011). She has been a Lannan Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow and a Witter Bynner Fellow. Her numerous awards include a Lavan Award from the Academy of American Poets, the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award from BOA, the Lee Bennett Hopkins Poetry Award, the Patterson Poetry Prize, four Pushcart Prizes, the Robert Creeley Prize and the Betty Prize from Poets House for her service to poetry. In January 2010, Nye was elected to the Board of Chancellors of the Academy of American Poets. For more information about Naomi Shihab Nye, visit barclayagency.com/nye.
Lisa Olstein is the author of Radio Crackling, Radio Gone, Lost Alphabet, and Little Stranger. An album of songs based on her writing, Cold Satellite, was released by singer-songwriter Jeffrey Foucault in 2010. Olstein is the recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and Centrum. A contributing editor of jubilat, she co-founded and for ten years co-directed the Juniper Initiative for Literary Arts & Action at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She teaches in the New Writers Project, the MFA program based in the Department of English at UT Austin.
Alan Michael Parker is the author of eight collections of poetry, including three from BOA Editions: The Vandals (1999), Love Song with Motor Vehicles (2003) and Elephants & Butterflies (2008). The Douglas C. Houchens Professor of English at Davidson College, Parker also teaches at the University of Tampa Low-Residency MFA Program. For more information about Alan Michael Parker, visit Alanmichaelparker.com.
The founder of BOA, Editions, Ltd., A. Poulin, Jr. was the author of six collections of poetry. Poulin was also a major translator of the French and German poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke, and the co-editor, with Michael Waters, of Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton-Mifflin). Mentor to numerous contemporary poets and scholars, Poulin died in 1996.
Roger Reeves’ poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry, The American Poetry Review, Boston Review, Gulf Coast, and Tin House, among others. He has a BA in English from Morehouse College, an MA in English from Texas A&M University, and an MFA from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. Reeves earned a PhD from the University of Texas and is currently an assistant professor of poetry at the University of Illinois, Chicago. King Me is his debut collection.
Ira Sadoff is the author of eight collections of poetry, a novel, and a book of criticism. He is the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. In 1973 he was a fellow at the Squaw Valley Community of Writers, and in 1974 he was the Alan Collins Fellow in Poetry and Prose at the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. Co-founder of the Seneca Review, Sadoff currently teaches in the MFA program at Drew University and serves as the Arthur Jeremiah Roberts Professor of English at Colby College in Maine.
Brenda Shaughnessy was born in Okinawa, Japan and grew up in Southern California. She is the author of Our Andromeda (Copper Canyon Press, 2012), Human Dark with Sugar (Copper Canyon Press, 2008), winner of the James Laughlin Award and finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Interior with Sudden Joy (FSG, 1999). Shaughnessy’s poems have appeared in Best American Poetry, Harper’s, The Nation, The Rumpus, The New Yorker, and The Paris Review. She is an Assistant Professor of English at Rutgers University, Newark, and lives in Brooklyn with her husband, son and daughter.
Matthew Shenoda is the author of two collections of poetry: Somewhere Else (Coffee House Press, 2005), named one of 2005’s debut books of the year by Poets & Writers magazine, and winner of a 2006 American Book Award; and Seasons of Lotus, Seasons of Bone (BOA, 2009). His most recent work, An Anthology of Poets Responding to the Art of Romare Bearden, edited with Kwame Dawes is forthcoming from Northwestern University Press in 2016. He is an associate professor in the Department of Creative Writing at Columbia College, Chicago. For more information about Matthew Shenoda, visit www.matthewshenoda.com.
The author of seventeen books of poetry, Louis Simpson was the recipient of the 1964 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for his collection At the End of the Open Road (Wesleyan University Press, 1964). Other awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Rome Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Harold Morton Landon Translation Award for Modern Poets of France: A Bilingual Anthology (Story Line Press). His book The Owner of the House: New Collected Poems 1940-2001 (BOA, 2003), was a finalist for the National Book Award in Poetry and the Griffin Poetry Prize. Simpson died in 2012.
The author of nineteen collections of poetry, W.D. Snodgrass’ first collection of poems, Hearts Needle received the Pulitzer Prize in 1960. Often credited with being one of the founding members of the “confessional” school of poetry, he dismissed the term and never regarded his work as such. Snodgrass published four collections of poetry with BOA Editions: The Fuehrer Bunker: A Cycle of Poems in Progress (1977), revised edition titled The Fuehrer Bunker: The Complete Cycle: Poems (1995); Each in His Season (1993): Selected Translations (1998): and After-Images: Autobiographical Sketches (1999). Snodgrass died in 2009.
The only author to win the Minnesota Book Award in three different categories: poetry for The Book of Names: New and Selected Poems (BOA, 1993); fiction for My Father’s War and Other Stories (Viking Adult, 1991); and creative non-fiction for Cold Comfort: Life at the Top of the Map (University of Minnesota Press, 1998). Sutter has written for public radio and regularly performs as one half of The Sutter Brothers. In 2011 Barton Sutter retired from teaching at the University of Wisconsin, Superior and currently lives in Duluth with his wife Dorothea Diver, on a hillside overlooking Lake Superior. For more information about Barton Sutter, visit bartonsutter.com.
Craig Morgan Teicher is a poet, critic, and freelance writer. He is the author of two collections of poetry: Brenda Is In The Room And Other Poems (Center for Literary Publishing, 2007); and To Keep Love Blurry (BOA, 2012). His collection of short stories and fables, Cradle Book, was published by BOA in 2010. His next collection of poetry, The Trembling Answers is forthcoming from BOA in 2017. For more information about Craig Morgan Teicher, visit craigmorganteicher.com.
Michael Teig’s first collection of poetry Big Back Yard (BOA, 2004), was awarded the A. Poulin Jr. Poetry Prize. His most recent collection, There’s a Box in the Garage You Can Beat With a Stick was published by BOA in 2013. Teig is the co-founder of the literary magazine jubilat, and works as a freelance writer and editor in Northampton, MA.
Ryan Teitman’s first collection of poetry, Litany for the City (BOA, 2012) won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. He was a Wallace Stegner Fellow in Poetry at Stanford University, and also worked as a newspaper reporter in Philadelphia before receiving an MFA and MA from Indiana University. Teitman currently teaches at Gettysburg College.
Karen Volkman is the author of Nomina (BOA, 2008); Crash’s Law (Norton, 1996), a National Series Selection; and Spar (University of Iowa Press, 2002), which received the Iowa Poetry Prize and the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets. Her next collection of poetry, Whereso, is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2016. A recipient of awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Poetry Society of America, Akademie Schloss Solitude, and the Bogliasco Foundation, Volkman currently teaches in the English Department at the University of Montana.
G.C. Waldrep’s many books of poetry include: Testament (BOA, 2015); Your Father on the Train of Ghosts (BOA, 2011), a collaboration with John Gallaher; and Disclamor (BOA, 2007). Waldrep has received prizes from the Poetry Society of America and the Academy of American Poets, as well as the Colorado Prize, the Dorset Prize, the Campbell Corner Prize, two Pushcart Prizes, a Gertrude Stein Award for Innovative American Writing, and a 2007 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship in Literature. Waldrep teaches at Bucknell University, is Editor for the literary journal West Branch, and serves as Editor-at-Large for The Kenyon Review.
Michael Waters is the author of ten collections of poetry, including five from BOA Editions: Gospel Night (2011); Darling Vulgarity (2006), a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; Parthenopi: New and Selected Poems (2001); Green Ash, Red Maple, Black Gum (1997); and Not Just Any Death (1979). He is co-editor of Contemporary American Poetry (Houghton Mifflin, 2006), and editor of The Selected Poems of A. Poulin, Jr. (BOA, 2001). His honors include fellowships from the Fulbright Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, four Pushcart Prizes and three Individual Artist Awards from the Maryland State Arts Council. Waters is a professor of English at Monmouth University. His newest collection of poetry, Celestial Joyride is forthcoming from BOA Editions in 2016.
Jillian Weise is the author of two books of poetry: The Amputee’s Guide to Sex (Soft Skull Press, 2007); and The Book of Goodbyes (BOA, 2013), winner of the James Laughlin Award from the Academy of American Poets and the Isabella Gardner Award. She is also the author of the novel, The Colony (Counterpoint/Soft Skull Press, 2010). Weise traveled to Tierra del Fuego, Argentina on a Fulbright Fellowship, and spent two years as a fellow at the Fine Arts Work Centre in Provencetown. She teaches at Clemson University and co-directs the Annual Clemson Literary Festival. For more information about Jillian Weise, visit www.jillianweise.freeservers.com.
Cecilia Woloch is the author of six collections of poetry, including two from BOA Editions: Late (2004), for which she was named Georgia Author of the Year; and Carpathia (2009), a finalist for the Milton Kessler Poetry Award. A celebrated teacher, Woloch has conducted poetry workshops for thousands of children, young people, professional writers, and educators throughout the United States and around the world. She is also the founding director of Summer Poetry in Idyllwild and of the Paris Poetry Workshop. For more information about Cecilia Woloch, visit ceciliawoloch.squarespace.com.
C.D. Wright has published more than fifteen collections of poetry and prose. One With Others was a finalist for the National Book Award and won the 2011 National Book Critics Circle Award and the Leonore Marshal Prize. Reviewing Rising, Falling, Hovering (Copper Canyon, 2008), The New York Times noted: “C.D. Wright belongs to a school of exactly one.” Her collaboration with photographer Deborah Luster, One Big Self, focused on Louisiana prisoners, was honored with a Lange-Taylor Prize from the Center for Documentary Studies. She also received awards from the Lannan Foundation and Foundation for Contemporary Arts. In 2004 she was named a MacArthur Fellow; in 2005, she was the recipient of the Robert Creeley Award. Wright is from the Arkansas Ozarks. In the mid-nineties, with a fellowship from the Wallace Foundation, she curated “a walk-in book of Arkansas,” a touring exhibition. She developed two state literary maps, one of Arkansas, her native state and one of Rhode Island. Wright is on the faculty at Brown University, and lives outside of Providence, Rhode Island.
Dean Young has published fourteen books of poetry, including finalists for the Pulitzer Prize and Griffin Award. He has received fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the NEA, as well as an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He is the William Livingston Chair of Poetry at the University of Texas, Austin.
Matthew Zapruder is the author of four collections of poetry, American Linden, The Pajamaist, Come On All You Ghosts, and Sun Bear. The Pajamaist was selected as the winner of the William Carlos Williams Award from the Poetry Society of America, and was chosen by Library Journal as one of the top ten poetry volumes of 2006. Come On All You Ghosts was a New York Times Notable Book of the year, and was also selected as the 2010 Booklist Editors’ Choice for poetry, as well as the Northern California Independent Booksellers poetry book of the year. Zapruder has been a Lannan Literary Fellow in Marfa, Texas, and a recipient of a May Sarton Prize from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. The recipient of a 2011 Guggenheim Fellowship, Zapruder lives in San Francisco, where he is an editor at Wave Books.
