BOA Blog

In a new review, Julie Marie Wade of The Rumpus makes the case for why Nickole Brown's Fanny Says should be considered a contemporary epic poem. "Epic poems are long," says Wade. "They have a narrative arc, which presumably includes a hero and some significant events. And before poems were printed and read from a page, epics epitomized the value of oral tradition: preserving a people’s history and collective identity through a shared text that was memorized and passed down from one generation to the next. . . . Nickole Brown has written an epic poem called Fanny Says." "[Fanny Says]...

Sean Thomas Dougherty's most recent collection of poetry, All You Ask for Is Longing: New and Selected Poems, has received high praise from reviewer David Starkey of the Santa Barbara Independent. "Sean Thomas Dougherty’s 'New and Selected Poems' are chockablock with men and women down on their luck," says the review, "and he embraces them all, detailing their miseries and the small joys that make life almost bearable. 'You come to me wearing the rain,' Dougherty writes in 'Invocation,' 'swaying like a broken swing.'" For more than 20 years, Sean Thomas Dougherty has negotiated between modernist and avant-garde writing and more...

In a recent review in the Omaha World-Herald, Guadalupe Mier of the Omaha Public Library calls The Secret of Hoa Sen one of her favorite poetry books of 2015. "Poetry speaks to me, and I believe that it offers something for everyone, from the sublime to the nonsensical," says Mier. "[Nguyen Phan Que Mai] writes eloquently about family, femaleness and the sensual beauty of her country. When she writes of place, I feel that I am walking past the rice shoots in a long ago world." Nguyen Phan Que Mai is among the most exciting writers to emerge from post-war...

Oxford American praises Nickole Brown's new collection Fanny Says for its realism and ability to "weave a double narrative that folds together both a granddaughter's recollections and a grandmother's persona." "We don’t choose our grandmothers, and they don’t choose us, either," says the review. "Fanny Says is a book of poems that speaks to these natural selections, the cross-generational connections that make us members of families and of nations." An "unleashed love song" to her late grandmother, Nickole Brown's collection brings her brassy, bawdy, tough-as-new-rope grandmother to life. With hair teased to Jesus, mile-long false eyelashes, and a white Cadillac...

Image courtesy of the Gates Public Library Currently on an extensive national book tour in celebration of her BOA Short Fiction Prize-winning book Reptile House, BOA author Robin McLean visited Rochester this week for a book reading and discussion at the Gates Public Library. Traveling to 30+ cities within more than 15 states over the next several months, Robin McLean is keeping a Book Tour Blog, "Fish Obituaries," to document her readings and travels. Below is her most recent post from her visit to Rochester. FISH OBITUARIES --- an anti-bloggers's blog TOUR BLOG POST #6: The Epicenter ROCHESTER, NY: Re:...