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Kathleen Fraser (1935-2019)

February 26, 2019

Kathleen Fraser, beloved poet, essayist, and professor of writing at San Francisco State University, died on February 5, 2019, in Emeryville, California, of natural causes.

Known for her remarkable body of work—encompassing more than a dozen collections of poetry, seven collaborative artist’s books, a volume of essays, and her lan…

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Contests |
February 26, 2019

2018 Poetry Prize Winner!

Congratulations to Carlos Lara, 2018 Nightboat Poetry Prize Winner! Here is Kazim Ali's full editorial citation for Lara's Like Bismuth When I Enter:  Carlos Lara’s Like Bismuth When I Enter enters the space of ritual, incantation…

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Blog |
May 7, 2019

“Personal Volcano”: Laura Moriarty Shares From Her Travels

Ahead of the release of the beautiful and devastating Personal Volcano, a collection of ecopoetics that boils form into living igneous before cooling and ultimately erupting again, poet Laura Moriarty shared journal excerpts and photos with us from her sojourns to volcanic territories. The excerpts reveal a poetic topophilia and orogenic sounds of the collection we now hold.  -- July 21, 2013   Entering the High Desert Discover Scenic Byway Blue Mountain Cattle Dog Mountain Lane Ruh-Red Road Weaver Springs Lane Lake Malheur Jackass Mountains Diamond Road Lava Bed Road Diamond Craters 2 miles Riddle Mountain Hat Butte     Butte On the road   Isolating language in relation to love of a person, subject, or place or kind of…

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Blog |
May 1, 2019

“Action in the Orchards”: Fred Schmalz’s Ekphrasis of Proximity

On his new collection, Action in the Orchards, Fred Schmalz remarks, "...I have resisted the tag 'ekphrastic' to describe the poems in the book. Sure, encounters with artworks (sometimes overt, sometimes oblique) happen. But they serve more as catalysts for other connections than as conceits for the poems." In further flourishing and celebration of that quasi-ekphrasis so indelible to his new book, Fred considers the spaces and objects in which Action found its kinesis. --   Because the book focuses on encounters with art, art-making spaces or art-presenting spaces (the studio, the gallery, the museum, the performance space) seem readily available in the works.…

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Blog |
April 30, 2019

Chad Sweeney On “Little Million Doors”

Earlier this month, Publishers Weekly said of Chad Sweeney's stirring new book, Little Million Doors: "Sweeney masters the art of understatement in this book of forthright and delicate poems...What knowledge we gain, the poet hazards,…

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Blog |
April 30, 2019

jayy dodd’s “The Black Condition ft. Narcissus” Playlist

One of our favorite books this spring at Nightboat is jayy dodd's The Black Condition ft. Narcissus. By way of the classically fatal beauty Narcissus, jayy has fashioned a collection of poems that is at once biting and delicate, biblical and diurnal.  Parallel to her poetics, jayy works within the myriad mediums of performance art, often utilizing music and sound in those latitudes. jayy selected some poems from the book, and we chose some of our faves, to collect into this unofficial The Black Condition ft. Narcissus playlist. Take a listen and get your copy now! --   "I Know I've Been Changed"…

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Uncategorized |
April 22, 2019

Call for Submissions: Radical Trans Poetics Anthology

WHAT: Nightboat Books is excited to invite submissions for an anthology of Radical Trans Poetics, co-edited by Andrea Abi-Karam and Kay Gabriel. By “radical” we mean to suggest two overlapping aims, both political and aesthetic. Politically, we’re interested in assembling poetry and poetics united against capitalism, racism and empire, in a horizon of gender and sexual liberation. We’re excited by poetry that emerges from, travels alongside, encompasses or corresponds with collective struggle and movement. We believe that poems can think ambitiously about the heinous bullshit we fight and how we fight it, so we’re curious about writing that’s as ferocious, unrestrained,…

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Awards |
April 11, 2019

Samiya Bashir Wins Rome Prize!

Samiya Bashir, author of Field Theories Awarded prestigious 2019–20 Rome Prize! The American Academy in Rome has announced the winners of the 2019–20 Rome Prize and Italian Fellowships. These highly competitive fellowships support advanced independent work and research…

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Blog |
April 9, 2019

“Doomstead Days”: An Interview with Brian Teare

      Brian Teare's new collection Doomstead Days figures itself an oblong baritone shape, a cargo ship of poems and various other fuels barrelling towards us. Opening with the clamor of a container ship's collision into the San Francisco Bay Bridge and the subsequent fallout, the book is as much witness and chronicle as it is elegy. In anticipation of his poignant new collection, Brian and I cyber-chatted about the Anthropocene, ecofeminism, elastic syntax, astrology, and more. —June Shanahan     June Shanahan: In considering the cover art for Doomstead Days, I found myself thinking about the frog-- how the slimy, webbed,…

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Events |
April 7, 2019

Printed Matter’s LA Art Bookfair April 11-14!

  We're tabling at Printed Matter's LA Art Book Fair April 11th-14th! Come visit us at table H03! https://laabf2019.printedmatterartbookfairs.org Our reading is the closing Sunday event: Nightboat Books reading, with Tisa Bryant, Jos Charles, Carlos Lara, Eleni Sikelianos,…

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Reviews |
March 20, 2019

Invasive species by Marwa Helal reviewed in The New York Times!

We are so thrilled to share that Marwa Helal's fantastic debut, Invasive species was just reviewed by Stephanie Burt in The New York Times Book Review. Pick up a copy of the Sunday times this weekend to see it in print! "Marwa Helal has lived, not always by her own choice, both in Egypt and in America, belonging to both countries and to neither: “I have been missing home my entire life,” she writes. In the same way, Helal’s first and often stellar book belongs to many categories, and to none. It contains prose and verse; polemic and introspection; remixed pop lyrics…

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