How to Be Better by Being Worse

By Justin Jannise and Ricard Blanco

First printing: 2,000 copies.

Justin Jannise is the winner of the 2019 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize, selected by Richard Blanco. This is his debut collection of poems.

This title is part of BOA’s New Poets of America Series, which have seen strong sales in recent seasons by such authors as Chen Chen and Marcello Hernandez Castillo. Previous Poulin winners in this series have seen outstanding attention from The New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Library Journal, The Rumpus, Forward Reviews, etc.

Richard Blanco has written a Foreword to the collection and his name will appear on the book cover. Blanco is the fifth presidential inaugural poet in U.S. history—the youngest, first Latino, immigrant, and gay person to serve in such a role. His latest book is How to Love a Country (Beacon Press, 2019).

Jannise is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of Houston’s Literature and Creative Writing Program and an M.F.A. graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. He earned a B.A. in Creative Writing from Yale University.

Jannise is currently serving his second year of a two-year term as editor at Gulf Coast. He has previously worked as a marketing assistant for Grackle & Grackle Writing Workshops and as a poetry judge for Houston Poetry Fest, the Glass Mountain Robertson Prize for Undergraduate Writing, the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, and the University of Iowa’s National Poetry Contest.

Jannise’s poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2019 (selected by Cate Marvin), New Ohio Review, Copper Nickel, Electric Lit, Split Lip Magazine, Columbia Journal, New Haven Review, The Awl, Yale Review, The Good Men Project, Boston Literary Magazine, and elsewhere. His essays, book and film reviews, and interviews have appeared in Out Magazine, Gulf Coast, and Yale Daily News.

Strong regional appeal in Texas, Midwestern cities, New York City, San Francisco, San Diego, Denver, Durham, Iowa City, and Portland, OR. Author has strong connections in these cities and is planning to visit them during his book tour.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BOA Editions Ltd.
• Release date: Apr 13, 2021
• ISBN: 9781950774241

Justin Jannise

Justin Jannise grew up in rural southeast Texas. As a first-generation college student, he attended Yale University, where he won the 2009 Albert Stanburrough Cook Prize for Poetry. He worked as a freelance pop culture writer in New York City before moving to Iowa to attend the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. The University of Iowa awarded him a Teaching-Writing Fellowship in 2013 and named him the Provost’s Visiting Writer in Poetry in 2014. Now finishing his Ph.D. in Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Houston, Justin served a two-year term as Editor-in-Chief of Gulf Coast. He frequently teaches community writing workshops at Inprint, Grackle & Grackle, and Writespace. As part of Writers in the Schools, he has led classrooms at Field Elementary School, the High School for Law and Justice, and M.D. Anderson Cancer Hospital. He is the recipient of both the Inprint Marion Barthelme Prize and the Inprint Verlaine Prize in Poetry. In 2019, his poems appeared in both Best New Poets and Best of the Net, and Copper Nickel nominated his poem “Leather Jacket” for a Pushcart Prize. His writing has also been published by Hobart, Electric Lit, Lana Turner, Yale Review, New Ohio Review, and Split Lip Magazine.

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