BOA Editions names Peter Conners publisher
BOA Editions, Ltd. on Wednesday promoted Peter Conners to the position of publisher. BOA is the award-winning, Rochester-based, independent, not-for-profit literary press founded by the legendary poet-publisher Al Poulin, Jr. (1938-1996). Conners has served as marketing director and associate editor of BOA since 2003, and in 2008 was named editor. He becomes just the third publisher in BOA's 34-year history.
In a news release, BOA Board Chair Bernadette Catalana wrote: “The Board of Directors voted unanimously to promote Peter to the Publisher position. He has exhibited outstanding leadership skills throughout his career at BOA and we place our confidence in him to guide the press into the future.”
Since 1976, BOA has published more than 230 books of American poetry, poetry in translation, fiction and other literature. Among the notable authors in the BOA catalogue are the late Lucille Clifton, Li-Young Lee, W.D. Snodgrass, Naomi Shihab Nye, Brigit Pegeen Kelly, G.C. Waldrep, Katy Lederer, Carolyn Kizer, Russell Edson, Karen Volkman, Sean Thomas Dougherty, Kazim Ali, Deena Linett, Michael Waters, Wyn Cooper and the late John Logan -- a poet-professor at the University of Buffalo in the 1960s and '70s who was an advisor to Poulin.
Past BOA titles have been the recipients of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry (Carolyn Kizer in 1985 for Yin) and the National Book Award (Buffalo native Lucille Clifton in 2000 for Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000), as well as awards from the Academy of American Poets, Poetry Society of Americaand the National Book Critics Circle. Over the years, BOA has received financial support from the Lannan Foundation, Ruth Lilly Poetry Foundation, the Guggenheim Foundation, the Literature Program of the New York State Council on the Arts, and the Literature Program of the National Endowment for the Arts.
“BOA Editions is one of America’s true artistic treasures." noted Conners in the news release on the occasion of his appointment. "I am proud of our distinguished 34-year history and eager to see BOA flourish for many decades to come. I see my role as steward of an enduring tradition of great literary publishing.”
Outside of his work at BOA, Conners is also known as the author of highly regarded memoir, Growing Up Dead: The Hallucinated Confessions of a Teenage Deadhead (Da Capo Press, 2009), the novella Emily Ate the Wind (Marick Press, 2007), and his debut collection of poems Of Whiskey & Winter (White Pine Press, 2008).
He also compiled and edited the much discussed anthology PP/FF, which explored the "territories in-between prose poetry and flash fiction" for the Buffalo-based indie publisher Starcherone Books in 2006.
Conners' upcoming biographical study White Hand Society: The Psychedelic Partnership of Timothy Leary & Allen Ginsberg will be published by City Lights Books in November, and his next poetry collection, The Crows Were Laughing in their Trees, will be published by White Pine Press in spring 2011.
--R.D. Pohl
