BOA Blog

According to a new review from the Common, Robin McLean’s story collection, Reptile House, "opens at an end—when a freeze of apocalyptic proportions devastates the town of Easter, (“Cold Snap”)—and ends at a beginning—when an unhappy man’s wife gives birth to another baby (the title story)." The review continues, "this sort of upset runs rampant throughout McLean’s debut work. McLean’s surreal tales about ordinary characters deliver emotional truth in poetic language. Concrete and surreal, they spill beyond the conventional short story forms." "A book for lovers of language, Reptile House won the 2015 BOA Short Story Fiction Prize, sponsored by...

When you think of BOA its age may be the last thing you consider. The late poet, editor, and translator A. Poulin, Jr. founded BOA on July 4, 1976, which means that on July 4, 2016, BOA will mark 40 years as a publisher of poetry and literary fiction. In those 40 years, BOA has earned an esteemed reputation as an award-winning not-for-profit publishing house. This has been achieved by a staff and board with a strong sense of mission to bring high quality literature to the public. The fact of “40 years as an independent publisher” is remarkable and deserves celebration.  The terrain for publishing poetry and literary fiction is fraught with all kinds of challenges; hardly the least of these is the marketplace itself. As...

In a new "Part and Parcel" interview for Huffington Post," BOA poet Nin Andrews speaks with Hannah Stephenson about her new book Why God Is a Woman. Discussing how she came up with the concept for the magical island depicted in her book, as well as her fascinating characters, Andrews also addresses gender roles, philosophy, and a splash of religion. According to Stephenson, "Nin Andrews brilliantly subverts our notions about gender, identity, appearance, and value. She invents a utopian island where women are known for being biologically wired to be hard-working and in positions of power (while looking like Angelina Jolie);...

The Colorado Review is calling Robin McLean's new book Reptile House "sharp and concise and tinged with a poetic flare." Reviewer Jeremy Griffin explores the complex web McLean weaves with character depth, "ensuring that each paragraph resounds with meaning and metaphor." "To call Robin McLean a storyteller is technically correct but misses the point of her work; McLean doesn’t write stories so much as she writes about them ... she wants her readers to actively engage with the characters instead of being passive consumers of narrative. The result is a dazzling debut that signals the arrival of one of fiction’s...

Danny Caine of the Los Angeles Review offers an exciting new review of Nickole Brown's Fanny Says. "The back cover of Nickole Brown’s Fanny Says calls the book an 'unleashed love song to a Kentucky grandmother,' begins the review. "One would expect such a project to have a certain degree of nostalgia and folksy southern charm, and Fanny Says certainly delivers on both counts ... But Fanny, we soon learn, is far too strange to fit into a conventional story about the good-ole-days and how people talk funny back home." "Like Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish or Sarah Blake’s Mr. West, this book draws its energy from the...