Nin Andrews

Son of a Bird is a memoir in the tradition of Dorothy Allison and Flannery O’Connor. Surrounded by farm hands and wild, lush isolation due to constant eye surgeries, the youngest of six children, Nin Andrews observes the world at a tilt. In this collection of prose poems, haunted by death and the brutalities of farm life, Andrews begins to connect the small black dots of her upbringing – her father’s relationships with men, her mother’s autism, and the burdens of childhood awakenings – ultimately cracking through the shadows that haunt her.

The Last Orgasm continues the journey of Nin Andrew's first collection, The Book of Orgasms, which became a cult classic that has been translated into Turkish, performed in Prague and has readers around the globe. In both books the orgasm is an ethereal presence, puzzled by humanity in general and Nin in particular.

Why God Is a Woman is a collection of poems written about a magical island where women rule and men are the second sex. It is also the story of a boy who, exiled from the island because he could not abide by its sexist laws, looks back with both nostalgia and bitterness and wonders: Why does God have to be a woman? Celebrated prose poet Nin Andrews creates a world both fantastic and familiar where all the myths, logic, and institutions support the dominance of women. Nin Andrews's books include The Book of Orgasms and Sleeping with Houdini.

Nin Andrews is arguably the leading female voice in American prose poetry. In a 2005 feature on Andrews in Moby Lives, Denise Duhamel wrote, "Nin Andrews is a complete original. Gender-bending and genre-blurring, Andrews is a fabulous fabulist... Her work is always surprising, sharp and wild." In Sleeping with Houdini, Andrews speaks as a little girl who wishes she could vanish at will, just as Houdini did. As she grows, Houdini becomes a personal icon, a magical being, a muse, an ultimate lover, and a metaphor for longing. Nin Andrews is author of the highly acclaimed The Book of Orgasms and other collections.

"Nin Andrews explodes the iconography of our childhoods as she creates a new series of Dick and Jane readers--this time earmarked for adults who desperately need a vocabulary for a different time. With edgy humor and deep understanding of the shadows we all cast, she gives us a Dick and Jane we can't resist. The bizarre nature of the world she creates is what initially draws us in, but what keeps us there is our growing knowledge that it's our world too." -- Joyce Dyer