Fanny Says

An “unleashed love song” to her late grandmother, Nickole Brown’s collection brings her brassy, bawdy, tough-as-new-rope grandmother to life. With hair teased to Jesus, mile-long false eyelashes, and a white Cadillac Eldorado with atomic-red leather seats, Fanny is not your typical granny rocking in a chair. Instead, think of a character that looks a lot like Eva Gabor in Green Acres, but darkened with a shadow of Flannery O’Connor. A cross-genre collection that reads like a novel, this book is both a collection of oral history and a lyrical and moving biography that wrestles with the complexities of the South, including poverty, racism, and domestic violence.   Nickole Brown’s books include: Fanny Says (BOA, 2015), a biography-in-poems about her late grandmother; Sister (Red Hen Press, 2007), a novel-in-stories; and an anthology, Air Fare (Sarabande, 2004), co-edited with Judith Taylor. For ten years, Brown was director of marketing and development at Sarabande Books, and was also the