BOA Blog

Image courtesy of BUST Magazine In a recent BUST Magazine "Feminizzle" interview by Amy Carlberg, award-winning poet Jillian Weise discusses "new words, cyborgs, and burning patriarchy to the ground." The poet offers her take on stereotypes within the writers' circle, and on the assumptions readers, reviewers, and other writers often make about speakers in her poems. Weise handles such topics as disability and discrimination, as experienced in her life and in her poetry, with the spunk and pluck of a true modern feminist, a girl defending her right to bear arms "at the shooting range, practicing [her] shot." "Moments after...

In a recent NPR interview by Bathsheba Monk of WDIY, Lehigh Valley, author Lee Upton talks on-air about her new fiction collection The Tao of Humiliation, and how she is able to juggle writing, publishing, and teaching at Lafayette College. According to novelist Monk, "Lee Upton's stories in The Tao of Humiliation are startlingly original, emotionally compelling, and delicately crafted, making them that most satisfying of finds: a great read." Click here to listen to the full interview with Lee Upton. The Tao of Humiliation is now available at the BOA Bookstore.

Marked by its portrayals of the "post-industrial wastelands of Detroit and Pittsburgh," the Mid-American Review describes Birth Marks as a navigation through the "loss of innocence, loss of life, loss of direction." "A family history of alcoholism, a dying city's fevered baseball dreams, and an adolescence only half-remembered through a blur of narcotics, are woven together with masochistic wit, as Daniels plunges readers into a world where there is 'Nothing to do but put it all out for the trash and start over.'" Divided into four sections, Daniels' new collection ultimately warns readers about the "balancing act" that life becomes. "Whether...

In a 32 Poems review of Bruce Beasley's Theophobia, Luke Hankins taste-tests several poems both analytically and artistically, highlighting the theological, philosophical, and spiritual connotations of the collection. The reviewer suggests that Beasley's poems "repeatedly raise the moral considerations inherent in the idea of a creator who is dreadful as well as glorious" and that such considerations are examined through the "lens of scientific learning." Though seemingly fascinated by the intellectual content of Beasley's work, Hankins notes that the subject matter of his poems does not detract from the artfulness of Beasley's writing, but rather reinforces the idea that "art convinces...

Winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize, Douglas Watson's fiction collection The Era of Not Quite is unique in its "sublimely serious play and playful seriousness," says Heavy Feather review. "When I read Douglas Watson’s debut story collection, The Era of Not Quite," says the reviewer, "I was awash with a rare and nourishing feeling: that what I was reading was exactly what I needed to be reading at that time exactly. Each of his stories deals a dark and witty blow. The collection is alive with a searing sense of humor, with wild formal play. It cranked me up...