BOA Blog

Library Journal's Barbara Hoffert recently gave Marsha de la O's Antidote for Night a stellar review, calling the new book a "vividly captured Southern California." "Just don’t expect sun, sand, and celebrity glam," says the review; "the poet’s hard-knocks world instead encompasses drive-by killings, hard labor ('thirty-eight years working the same loom'), and orange trees blackened by coking factories." Hoffert continues, "Splendidly incisive, de la O doesn’t so much observe landscapes as create them, just as her father 'conjured this city,/ my labyrinth, our treasure' while navigating the 'red snake/ traffic.' More significant is how she creates emotional landscape, suffusing her lines...

Jackpot UK recently reviewed The Education of a Poker Player by New York Times-bestselling author James McManus, calling it a "thoroughly refreshing read" and a "coming of age snapshot" for protagonist Vincent Killeen. Reviewer Sam Marsden notes how the book nods to the original poker classic by Herbert O. Yardley, which was - in its time - "a groundbreaking instruction manual for the burgeoning poker world on how they could win at the game . . . it is clearly a significant text in James McManus’ Education because these stories, molded into a novella, revolve around the pivotal moment when the...

MOCA Cleveland photo by Deidre McPherson BOA poet Sean Thomas Dougherty recently participated in a group performance, titled Rhythm and Resistance, in celebration of the power of the written and spoken word at the prestigious MOCA Cleveland (Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland). The reading was presented as part of the Mimeo Revolution: Artist Book + Zine Fair in connection with the summer exhibition How to Remain Human (on view through September 5). This 3-day event was inspired by poet and publisher d.a. levy and renowned comix creator and graphic novelist Derf Backderf, key figures in the exhibition. The spirit of levy's work (rebellious, ardent, and resolutely...

https://youtu.be/341KP2T4exY For tickets to this year's highly-anticipated Dine & Rhyme, contact Melissa Hall via telephone: 585.546.3410 ext. 11 or email: hall@boaeditions.org.

San Francisco Chronicle's Stephen Burt praises the depth of characterization in Nickole Brown's Fanny Says in his new poetry spotlight. Calling Fanny "a character in every sense of the word," Burt praises Brown's collection, which includes "plenty of Fanny’s speech, Fanny’s recipes, Fanny’s monologues about how to be a lady," all of which reveal "Fanny’s notions of dignity, along with the limits of her social world." "The prose poems, spoken entirely by Fanny, suggest oral histories like Studs Terkel’s, if Terkel were rewritten by Loretta Lynn and Lucille Ball. Brown’s verse — which makes up most of the volume — is...