BOA Blog

Robin McLean, past winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize for her collection Reptile House, also won The Carolina Quarterly's "End is Nigh" contest for "Cold Snap," one of the stories in the new collection. In an insightful interview with Aisha Anwar, the author discusses the winning piece: "The story is about isolation," says McLean, "both physical and emotional." The story follows protagonist Lilibeth, who endures an "end-of-the-world" winter storm while managing the small problems of everyday life, and working toward the goal of self-improvement. "Isn’t this how things are?," says McLean. "The world is melting. We are bombing strangers with...

BOA is excited to be participating again this year at the AWP Conference and Bookfair in Minneapolis! This year, BOA will be at bookfair tables 830 and 832. Stop by, say hello to BOA staff and authors, and browse our wide selection of exceptional and essential books, including our newest Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 titles! BOA authors will be setting up at the BOA tables (830 and 832) to sign copies of their new Fall 2014 and Spring 2015 titles. Take this schedule with you to the Bookfair to meet BOA authors and have your favorite BOA books signed!...

This past weekend, BOA poet Nin Andrews was featured on-air for Prosody, a public radio show for NPR affiliate WESA 90.5 FM. In a fantastic interview, Andrews read from her forthcoming collection Why God Is a Woman. Set on a magical island where women rule and men are the second sex, Why God Is a Woman is the story of a boy who, exiled from the island because he could not abide by its sexist laws, looks back with both nostalgia and bitterness and wonders: Why does God have to be a woman? Celebrated prose poet Nin Andrews creates a...

In a fascinating Q&A with Please Excuse This Poem, BOA poet Erika Meitner discusses her "favorites," including the first and favorite books she's ever read. Included among the first poems she has ever read and loved are Lucille Clifton's “Admonitions” and “Roots," both from a copy of Contemporary American Poetry, edited by the late BOA founder A. Poulin, Jr., which she bought  at a library sale when she was 15 years old. Erika Meitner is most recently the author of Copia. This fourth book by Meitner grapples with the widespread implications of commercialism and over-consumption, particularly in exurban America. Documentary...

According to a new fiction review from Publishers Weekly, Robin McLean's May collection of short stories, Reptile House, "moves seamlessly from adultery to kidnapping, from assassination plots to extreme geothermal events, all in a voice that is spare and darkly poetic." The fascinating characters in these nine short stories abandon families, plot assassinations, nurse vendettas, tease, taunt, and terrorize. They retaliate for bad marriages, derail their lives with desires and delusions, and wait decades for lovers. How far will we go to escape to a better dream? What consequences must we face for hope and fantasy? Probing the dark underbelly of...