By Priyanka Ray | In 2021, Beacon expanded our poetry program, adding both new and established poets to sit alongside the classic masters—including James Baldwin, Mary Oliver, and Sonia Sanchez—who have long been an essential part of our catalog. The series, Raised Voices, serves the overarching goals of raising marginalized voices and perspectives, publishing poems that affirm progressive values and are accessible to a wide readership, and celebrating poetry’s ability to access truth in a way no other form can. Read more →

Look how fast holiday season crept up on us. Where did 2022 go? Well, now’s the time to hunt for gifts for the loved ones in your life. Save 30% on everything at beacon.org through December 31 using code SPARKJOY30! Scroll down and you’ll see some selections to give you ideas. Read more →

A Q&A with Aaron Caycedo-Kimura | My manuscript was originally named “What’s Kept Alive,” after one of the poems in the second section. This poem compares the keeping of a Japanese maple shrub alive to keeping my family’s history alive. The title captured the overall essence of the manuscript but lacked a certain punch. My amazing editor, Catherine Tung, suggested “Common Grace”—the title of one of the poems in the third section. Read more →

Still kicking two years in, COVID brought out the worst from the nation’s populace: racist brutality against marginalized communities. This year’s Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month commemorates the victims of the 2021 spa shootings as well as all other Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders lost to anti-Asian violence during the pandemic and throughout history. This violence is a form of erasure. As historian Catherine Ceniza Choy writes in her forthcoming addition to Beacon Press’s ReVisioning History series, “This positioning of Asians in opposition to American identity and experience is perhaps most powerfully expressed through the erasure of their long-standing presence in the United States and their contributions to its various industries.” Read more →