BOA Blog

Adam McOmber, BOA poet NewPages Book Reviews had high words for Adam McOmber's most recent short story collection, This New and Poisonous Air, which blends historical fiction with fantasy and the macabre. NewPages critic, Patricia Contino praises McOmber's eye for detail as well as his sense of storytelling, stating that "every page has a paragraph or more worth savoring." However, "McOmber's gift for detail never infringes on the narrative." Stories such as "Fall, Orpheum" - in which "a small town movie palace becomes the temple for an entire town’s devotion and sacrifice" - not only exemplify McOmber's sense of narrative...

[caption id="attachment_1015" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Your Father on the Train of Ghosts. Poems by G.C. Waldrep and John Gallaher."][/caption] Your Father on the Train of Ghosts is the culmination of a year-long exchange of poems between the poets John Gallaher and G.C. Waldrep.  Over the past few weeks, the poets discussed the process of this collaborative endeavor. The conversations have tread a wide range of territory, and now, in the final of those exchanges between Your Father on the Train of Ghosts authors  the pair revisit their haunting experience at The International Circus Hall of Fame, providing personal stories that helped...

Adam McOmber admits he's been an ardent fan of the macabre and horror genre since high school. His own writing reflects the exquisitely unhiemlich, "the fantastic moments when the strange breaks through our daily grind." In a recent interview with the New School's LIT writer Mike Gillis, McOmber talks about his passion for the mythology and the fiction like his This New and Poisonous Air and the upcoming Empyrean. "I think that these type of stories- stories of the fantastic- reach back to mythology. Because that's what myths are," he said in a phone interview. "I think humans in general...

[caption id="attachment_1206" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Your Father on the Train of Ghosts, poems by G.C. Waldrep & John Gallaher"][/caption] Your Father on the Train of Ghosts is one of the most extensive collaborations in American poetry. Over the course of a year, acclaimed poets G.C. Waldrep and John Gallaher wrote poems back and forth, sometimes once or twice a week, sometimes five or six a day. As the collaboration deepened, a third “voice” emerged that neither poet can claim as solely their own.  In Part 5 of John Gallaher and G.C. Waldrep’s engaging discussion about the ircollaborative process, the pair continue...

[caption id="attachment_1015" align="aligncenter" width="200" caption="Your Father on the Train of Ghosts. Poems by G.C. Waldrep and John Gallaher."][/caption] John Gallaher and G.C. Waldrep continue their candid and insightful discussion about the process of writing the poems for their collaborative book Your Father on the Train of Ghosts.  Written over a year, John Gallaher and G.C. Waldrep exchanged emails almost exclusively in the form of poems.  In this next part of the conversation, the two discuss the nature of address found in the poem, the use of the "You,"  the role of community in poetry, and the mysterious, haunting nature of...