BOA Blog

Story366's Michael Czyzniejewski details a fond connection between himself and James McManus, author of The Education of a Poker Player, in a wonderful new review."I was able to read a hefty story by James McManus from his collection The Education of a Poker Player, out from BOA Editions," he says. "I knew McManus by reputation, as he’s a bestselling author and a celebrity poker player . . . I found out that McManus was Catholic kid from the Chicago suburbs, just like me, and The Education of a Poker Player isn’t about learning poker (at least not early on), but about McManus...

A cozy Late Night Library interview with Dinah Cox offers fascinating new insights into the author's writing process, specifically regarding her BOA Short Fiction Prize-winning collection Remarkable.Noting the diversity among the collection's stories, interviewer Corinne Gould asks: "All the stories are set in Oklahoma and the surrounding areas. Were there any themes that you set out to focus on?"Cox replies: "I find myself returning to lonely characters, occasionally settings that mirror that loneliness, and characters in possession of a healthy sense of the absurd. I wrote these stories over a number of years—some of them a long time ago, some...

Continuing in the spotlight, Dinah Cox's book Remarkable recently received a glowing review from Michael Czyzniejewski at Story366. The fiction collection is the most recently published BOA Short Fiction Prize winner. According to the review, "BOA, of course, was known for poetry for a lot of years, but since BOA is cool and fiction is cool . . . it was only a matter of time before they came around and started publishing fiction and sponsoring a rad contest."Discussing the book's title story, Czyzniejewski notes how Cox juggles numerous plot points early on: "I love that, how many variables are...

Publishers Weekly is calling Dinah Cox's debut fiction collection Remarkable "daring and confidently written" in a new review. Winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize, Cox gives us stories that are "sharp and surprising, venturing fearlessly into unexpected territory."Set within the resilient Great Plains, these award-winning stories are marked by the region’s people and landscape, and the distinctive way it is both regressive in its politics yet also stumbling toward something better.According to the review, "The stories neither revere nor despise their Oklahoma setting, even as many of Cox's delightfully odd characters feel stuck there and dream of someday getting out.""Some...

In a new episode for Line Podcast, Jenny Chen speaks with BOA poet Christopher Kennedy about his poetry: how his poems begin and end, how he makes the leap to imaginative and surrealist themes in his poems, and how he incorporates rhythm in his poems.Chen and Kennedy discuss the differences between prose poetry and other types of poems, and early on in the podcast, Kennedy gives us a flavor of his work by reading his poem "Historical."Below is a list of timestamp highlights from the podcast:1:34 - Chris reads his poem “Historical.”4:50 - Chris talks about how the poem “Ghosts in the...