BOA Blog

In a new "Part and Parcel" interview for Huffington Post," BOA poet Nin Andrews speaks with Hannah Stephenson about her new book Why God Is a Woman. Discussing how she came up with the concept for the magical island depicted in her book, as well as her fascinating characters, Andrews also addresses gender roles, philosophy, and a splash of religion. According to Stephenson, "Nin Andrews brilliantly subverts our notions about gender, identity, appearance, and value. She invents a utopian island where women are known for being biologically wired to be hard-working and in positions of power (while looking like Angelina Jolie);...

The Colorado Review is calling Robin McLean's new book Reptile House "sharp and concise and tinged with a poetic flare." Reviewer Jeremy Griffin explores the complex web McLean weaves with character depth, "ensuring that each paragraph resounds with meaning and metaphor." "To call Robin McLean a storyteller is technically correct but misses the point of her work; McLean doesn’t write stories so much as she writes about them ... she wants her readers to actively engage with the characters instead of being passive consumers of narrative. The result is a dazzling debut that signals the arrival of one of fiction’s...

Danny Caine of the Los Angeles Review offers an exciting new review of Nickole Brown's Fanny Says. "The back cover of Nickole Brown’s Fanny Says calls the book an 'unleashed love song to a Kentucky grandmother,' begins the review. "One would expect such a project to have a certain degree of nostalgia and folksy southern charm, and Fanny Says certainly delivers on both counts ... But Fanny, we soon learn, is far too strange to fit into a conventional story about the good-ole-days and how people talk funny back home." "Like Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish or Sarah Blake’s Mr. West, this book draws its energy from the...

The staff and board of BOA Editions mourn the passing of Mr. Robert D. Hursh. Mr. Hursh was a passionate advocate for the arts in Rochester, NY, and served as a board member for BOA Editions. We will all greatly miss his good humor and dedication to promoting poetry, literature, and the arts. Robert D. Hursh is the retired Chairman of Lawyers Cooperative Publishing, a part of the family of law publishers called collectively, Thomson West. Thomson West is a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Thomson Corporation which acquired Lawyers Cooperative in 1989. Mr. Hursh's career with Lawyer's Cooperative Publishing and...

In anticipation of his upcoming performance(s) at the Utah Arts Festival this weekend, Sean Thomas Dougherty has been featured extensively in multiple pieces by the Utah Review. "When reading Sean Thomas Dougherty’s work," says UR writer Les Roka, "one often realizes how easily a ‘Dougherty moment’ can pop up — that fleeting moment of a familiar connection, an unexpected yet relevant epiphany about a relationship, event, struggle, love, or pain. A prodigious poet with a vast complex of influences cultivated through an exceptionally voracious appetite for reading, experiences, music and ever-alert observation, he offers up a language rendered, as he...