B. A. Goodjohn

Bunny Goodjohn, English professor and Director of the Writing Program at Randolph College in Lynchburg, is published in both poetry and prose. Her work has appeared in a number of literary journals including Connecticut Review, Zone 3, The Texas Review, and The Cortland Review and has won several poetry prizes including The Edwin Markham Prize for Poetry in 2011 and The Liam Rector First Book Prize for Poetry in 2014. Her poetry collection Bone Song was published by Briery Creek Press in May 2015. She is also the author of two novels: Sticklebacks and Snow Globes (Permanent Press 2007) and The Beginning Things (Underground Voices 2015). The Beginning Things is due for publication in November. She blogs at www.bagoodjohn.com

On Goodjohn's first poetry collection, Bone Song:

"B.A. Goodjohn is a very grown-up poet, one who has been around numerous blocks and taken careful notes. At turns harrowing, droll, rueful, and tart, these poems are ever insightful and possess great freedom even as they trace difficult confines. There is also much art: the poet slaps word after dexterous word down on the gaming table of what we grandly call life. These words (and forms) add up to a deftly compassionate consideration of people including the narrator done in by their circumstances or busy arranging new and probably skewed ones. Brave and shrewd, these are poems to return to."

--Baron Wormser, Impenitent Notes

On Goodjohn's first novel, Sticklebacks and Snow Globes:

"This was one of my all-time favorite Stonecoastian pieces. This is my fourth residency and I've read enough to know a standout when I see one. This is one."

Suzanne Strempek-Shea, Songs from a Lead-Lined Room

"In this magical debut, working-class British council-estate life become a sort of quotidian wonderland starring children clever and strange and very real . . . A cozy, richly written delight."

Kirkus Reviews, August 2007