BOA Blog

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:...

Geffrey Davis' Revising the Storm recently received high praises from Fjords Review. Reviewer LynleyShimat Lys offers a thoughtful and meditative approach to the winner of the 2013 A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize. "What is most striking about the poems, individually and as a group, is their ability to maintain calm in the constant flux of the stormy weather they and their narrators inhabit. Davis takes us through the liminal spaces between experience and memory, compels us to listen as stories unfold, and reminds us to be mindful of silence and breath as landscapes spin out of control." The review continues,...

Two of BOA's newest poetry titles, Nickole Brown's Fanny Says and Devin Becker's Shame | Shame, recently received outstanding Booklist reviews. Calling Fanny Says "poignant, funny, and utterly real," Booklist says: "After the loss of a loved one, people have a tendency to narrow memory’s lens to focus solely on the person’s best qualities. It’s more rare to find someone both remembering and appreciating the whole of a person. . . . Fanny’s tone and inflection come alive through the series of poems based on her actual words. And through Brown’s vivid, honest, and surprisingly nonjudgmental reflections, we develop, page...

"Reading Nickole Brown’s new book of poems, Fanny Says, is like being introduced to someone you never want to let go, the kind of fierce, tender, acerbic, complicated woman who will snag you by your scruff and tell you what you don’t want to hear, and—in the next breath—what you need to hear," says a new Gwarlingo review. In these "searing, courageous" poems which are "part persona, part personal narrative . . . Brown writes a vivid portrait of a woman who never really learned to read or write— the two things to thumb through in Fanny’s house were the Bible...