Join us for an exclusive Rumpus Poetry Book Club conversation with author Lynne Thompson, BOA Editions Executive Director & Publisher Peter Conners, and Rumpus Poetry Editor, Brian Spears. They’ll discuss Lynne Thompson’s Blue on a Blue Palette and share how it fits into BOA Editions's editorial vision.

About the April Poetry Book Club selection:

Lynne Thompson's Blue on a Blue Palette reflects on the condition of women--their joys despite their histories, and their insistence on survival as issues of race, culture, pandemic, and climate threaten their livelihoods. The documentation of these personal odysseys--which vary stylistically from abecedarians to free verse to centos--replicate the many ways women travel through the stages of their lives, all negotiated on a palette encompassing various shades of blue. These poems demand your attention, your voice: "Say history. Claim. Say wild."

Lynne Thompson was Los Angeles’ 2021-22 Poet Laureate and is a Poet Laureate Fellow of the Academy of American Poets. She is the author of three collections of poetry, Beg No Pardon, winner of the Perugia Press and Great Lakes Colleges New Writers Award; Start With A Small Guitar; and most recently, Fretwork, winner of the 2019 Marsh Hawk Poetry Prize selected by Jane Hirshfield. A Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominee, Thompson is the recipient of multiple awards including an Individual Artist Fellowship from the City of Los Angeles, the Tucson Literary Festival Poetry Prize, and the Steven Dunn Poetry Prize as well as fellowships from the Summer Literary Series to study in Kenya and the Vermont Studio Center. An attorney by training, Thompson sits on the Boards of The Poetry Foundation, Cave Canem, and the Los Angeles Review of Books. In June of 2022, she completed her four-year service as Chair of the Board of Trustees at Scripps College, her alma mater. Thompson’s recent work can be found or is forthcoming in the literary journals Best American Poetry 2020, Kenyon Review, The Common, The Massachusetts Review, and  Copper Nickel, and the anthology Beat No Beat, among others. Thompson’s website can be found at  www.lynnethompson.us.

Peter Conners is Executive Director and Publisher of the award-winning literary press, BOA Editions, where has worked for the past 20 years. He is also author of 10 published books of nonfiction, poetry, and fiction.

Brian Spears is Senior Poetry Editor at The Rumpus and author of A Witness in Exile (Louisiana Literature Press 2011). He lives in Des Moines.

BOA Editions, Ltd., a not-for-profit publisher of poetry and other literary works, fosters readership and appreciation of contemporary literature. By identifying, cultivating, and publishing both new and established poets and selecting authors of unique literary talent, BOA brings high quality literature to the public. Support for this effort comes from the sale of its publications, grant funding, and private donations.

Rumpus Poetry Book Club presents Lynne Thompson, author of Blue on a Blue Palette X Peter Conners, Executive Director & Publisher at BOA Editions