Books :: BOA Short Fiction Prize Winner

Robin McLean’s first short story collection, Reptile House, will be published May, 2015 by BOA Editions, Ltd. A finalist for the Flannery O’Connor Short Story Prize in 2011 and 2012, Reptile House is the winner of the BOA Short Fiction Prize.

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 human nature and want, Robin McClean’s stories are strange, often disturbing and funny, and as full of foolishness and ugliness as they are of the wisdom and beauty around us.

Living in Alaskan woods for 15 years as a potter and lawyer, McLean, in an interview with BOA, reveals how Alaska has affected her writing, “Alaska is wild, dangerous, beauitiful, and makes you feel tiny. Living there made me want to write with wild dangerous beauty, to be small, and also big . . . . Alaska made me think about scale, grandeur, and audacity.”

More information on Reptile House can be found on the publisher’s website.