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Anne Boyer

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Anne Boyer
Portrait of Boyer smiling and standing in front of a wall of horizontal wood beams, wearing a white blouse and black trousers
Boyer in 2023
Born1973 (age 50–51)
Topeka, Kansas
Education
Genres
Notable awards

Anne Boyer (born 1973) is an American poet and essayist. She is the author of The Romance of Happy Workers (2008),[1] The 2000s (2009),[2] My Common Heart (2011),[3] Garments Against Women (2015),[4] and The Handbook of Disappointed Fate (2018).[5] In 2016, she was a featured blogger at the Poetry Foundation, where she wrote an ongoing series of posts about her diagnosis and treatment for a highly aggressive form of breast cancer, as well as the lives and near deaths of poets.[6] Her essays about illness have appeared in Guernica, The New Inquiry, Fullstop, and more. Boyer teaches at the Kansas City Art Institute with the poets Cyrus Console and Jordan Stempleman.[7] Her poetry has been translated into numerous languages including Icelandic, Spanish, Persian, and Swedish. With Guillermo Parra and Cassandra Gillig, she has translated the work of 20th century Venezuelan poets Victor Valera Mora, Miguel James, and Miyo Vestrini.

In 2020, Boyer was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for her book The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care.[8]

Life and career

Anne Boyer was born in Topeka, Kansas in 1973 and grew up in Salina, Kansas where she was educated in public schools.[9] She earned a BA in English literature from Kansas State University in 1996 and an MFA in creative writing from Wichita State University in 1997.[10] She has been a professor at the Kansas City Art Institute since 2011. Her diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer has become the subject of her current work, examining the intersection of social class and medical care.[11]

Boyer is the winner of the 2018 Cy Twombly Award in Poetry from the Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and her book Garments Against Women won the 2016 Community of Literary Magazines and Presses Firecracker Award in poetry. She was also named "The Best Writer in Kansas City" by The Pitch.[7] In 2018, she also won the Whiting Award in Nonfiction/Poetry.[12]

In March 2020, Boyer was awarded the Windham-Campbell Literature Prize.[13]

She resigned from her role as the poetry editor of The New York Times Magazine in November 2023, in protest at the newspaper's coverage of the 2023 Israel-Hamas war. In her resignation letter, she wrote "the Israeli state’s U.S.-backed war against the people of Gaza is not a war for anyone" and that she "won’t write about poetry amid the ‘reasonable’ tones of those who aim to acclimatize us to this unreasonable suffering. No more ghoulish euphemisms. No more verbally sanitized hellscapes. No more warmongering lies.".[14]

Critical reception

Boyer's 2015 book Garments Against Women spent six months at the top of the Small Press Distribution's best seller list in poetry.[15] The New York Times called it "a sad, beautiful, passionate book that registers the political economy of life and literature itself."[16]

Chris Stroffolino at The Rumpus described it as "widening the boundaries of poetry and memoir."[17]

Garments Against Women was described by Publishers Weekly as a book that "faces the material and philosophical problems of writing—and by extension, living—in the contemporary world. Boyer attempts to abandon literature in the same moments that she forms it, turning to sources as diverse as Jean-Jacques Rousseau, the acts of sewing and garment production, and a book on happiness that she finds in a thrift store. Her book, then, becomes filled with other books, imagined and resisted."[18]

The Undying: Pain, Vulnerability, Mortality, Medicine, Art, Time, Dreams, Data, Exhaustion, Cancer, and Care tied for winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction.[19]

Works

  • Anne Boyer's Good Apocalypse. Effing Press, 2006.
  • Selected Dreams with a note on Phrenology. Dusie, 2007.
  • The Romance of Happy Workers. Minneapolis, Minnesota: Coffee House Press, 2008. ISBN 9781566892148
  • Art is War. Lawrence, Kansas: Mitzvah Chaps, 2008.
  • The 2000s: A history of the future in advance of itself. 2009.
  • My Common Heart. Spooky Girlfriend Press, 2011
  • A Form of Sabotage. 2013.
  • Garments Against Women. Boise, Idaho: Ahsahta Press, 2015. ISBN 9781934103593
  • A Handbook of Disappointed Fate. Brooklyn, New York: Ugly Duckling Presse, 2018. ISBN 9781937027926
  • The Undying: Pain, vulnerability, mortality, medicine, art, time, dreams, data, exhaustion, cancer, and care. New York, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2019. ISBN 9780374279349

References

  1. ^ Boyer, Anne, 1973- (2008). The romance of happy workers : poetry. Minneapolis: Coffee House Press. ISBN 9781566892148. OCLC 181730502.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  2. ^ "anneboyerthetwothousands | Poetry". Scribd. Retrieved 2019-06-10.
  3. ^ Boyer, Anne. My Common Heart (PDF).
  4. ^ "Anne Boyer : The Poetry Foundation". www.poetryfoundation.org. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  5. ^ Boyer, Anne, 1973- (2018). A handbook of disappointed fate (First ed.). Brooklyn, NY. ISBN 978-1937027926. OCLC 1024158306.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link)
  6. ^ Foundation, Poetry. "Tender Theory". Harriet: The Blog. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  7. ^ a b "About". Anne Boyer. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  8. ^ "The Pulitzer Prizes".
  9. ^ "Elective Affinities: Anne Boyer". Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  10. ^ "Faculty: Anne Boyer, M.F.A." Kansas City Art Institute. Archived from the original on 2023-06-03. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
  11. ^ "Current Project: On Care". Anne Boyer. Archived from the original on 2016-03-04. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  12. ^ "Anne Boyer". www.whiting.org. Retrieved 2018-03-23.
  13. ^ Flood, Alison (2020-03-19). "Eight authors share $1m prize as writers face coronavirus uncertainty". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2020-03-20.
  14. ^ "Read Anne Boyer's extraordinary New York Times resignation letter". Literary Hub. 2023-11-16. Retrieved 2023-11-16.
  15. ^ "Anne Boyer". Anne Boyer. Archived from the original on 2016-02-18. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  16. ^ Mclane, Maureen N. (2015-12-24). "Anne Boyer's 'Garments Against Women'". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  17. ^ Foundation, Poetry. "'Literature is against us': In Conversation with Anne Boyer". Harriet: The Blog. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  18. ^ "Garments Against Women". Publishers Weekly. Archived from the original on 2016-03-15. Retrieved 2016-02-26.
  19. ^ "The Undying". Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2020-03-17.
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