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BoysGirls
A host of characters emerge from a madwoman’s dreams, populating a world as strange and magnificent as a painting by Hieronymous Bosch. A boy with one wing seeks the secret to flight. A girl with a mirror for a face, adored by all, longs to simply eat. A pregnant girl reflects on the effects of metamorphoses. The stories of boysgirls are modern myths: tales that exist within our present time but also outside it, in a place as eternal as Shangri-La or Middle Earth. An unforgettable book of Ovidian imagination, BoysGirls testifies that Katie Farris is one of the most talented prose stylists of a new generation.
76 pages, Kindle Edition
First published May 1, 2011
4 people are currently reading
419 people want to read
About the author
Katie Farris
14 books43 followersKatie Farris is the author of boysgirls, (Marick Press, 2011), a hybrid form text. The book has been lauded as “truly innovative,” (Prague Post), “a tour de force” (Robert Coover), and “a book with gigantic scope. At some points it reads like the book of Genesis; at others, like a dream-turned-nightmare. From the opening lines the author grabs you by the throat.” (Louisville Courier-Journal).
Katie Farris’s poetry, fictions, and translations have appeared in various journals, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Western Humanities Review, Verse, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, Gulf Coast, and Hayden’s Ferry Review.
Farris is also the co-translator of several books from the Russian, French, and Chinese. Her co-translation of Polina Barskova’s This Lamentable City (Tupelo Press, 2010), was reviewed by The New York Times “words flicker — strange, elegant — a Russian evanescence. Heat lightning pulses between her lines.” Morning Ploughs the Winter, a book of prose poems by Acadian poet Guy Jean, was published by Marick Press in 2013 and nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Farris won the 2012 DJS Translation Award from Poetry East/West for her co-translations in New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, 1990-2012. Her translations have also been widely anthologized in texts such as New European Poets (Graywolf Press) and Penguin Book of Classical Russian Poetry (Penguin).
With Ilya Kaminsky and Valzhyna Mort, Farris co-edited Gossip and Metaphysics: Prose by Russian Modernist Poets, forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2015.
She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Brown University, and is currently an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at San Diego State University, where she won an Innovation in Teaching Award in 2013. She also teaches at New England College‘s low-residency MFA program.
Katie Farris’s poetry, fictions, and translations have appeared in various journals, including Virginia Quarterly Review, Western Humanities Review, Verse, Indiana Review, Mid-American Review, Gulf Coast, and Hayden’s Ferry Review.
Farris is also the co-translator of several books from the Russian, French, and Chinese. Her co-translation of Polina Barskova’s This Lamentable City (Tupelo Press, 2010), was reviewed by The New York Times “words flicker — strange, elegant — a Russian evanescence. Heat lightning pulses between her lines.” Morning Ploughs the Winter, a book of prose poems by Acadian poet Guy Jean, was published by Marick Press in 2013 and nominated for the Griffin Poetry Prize. Farris won the 2012 DJS Translation Award from Poetry East/West for her co-translations in New Cathay: Contemporary Chinese Poetry, 1990-2012. Her translations have also been widely anthologized in texts such as New European Poets (Graywolf Press) and Penguin Book of Classical Russian Poetry (Penguin).
With Ilya Kaminsky and Valzhyna Mort, Farris co-edited Gossip and Metaphysics: Prose by Russian Modernist Poets, forthcoming from Tupelo Press in 2015.
She holds degrees from UC Berkeley and Brown University, and is currently an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at San Diego State University, where she won an Innovation in Teaching Award in 2013. She also teaches at New England College‘s low-residency MFA program.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews
January 3, 2015
A fairy tale fever dream of gorgeous language, shocking weirdness and a celebration of life. Highly recommended. Unlike anything I've ever read.
November 26, 2012
Gorgeous writing. A quick read that will make you want to start at the beginning again
August 10, 2012
"What is it you hope to accomplish by reading this
book? You were hoping to escape unscathed?"
proclaims the first speaker in BoysGirls, a collection of genre-bending stories by Katie Farris.
"You're used to sitting back and eavesdropping,
playing the voyeur on the lives of others. But between
these covers you will participate, whether you desire it
or not."
This is a difficult promise to keep, and yet I find myself quickly put under the enchantment of Farris's prose. Each story has an increasingly cumulative gyroscopic effect on my senses where I find myself unhinged and awakened in her collection; a universe inhabited with the horrible power and beauty of her girls and boys,
"She let go a laugh
that haunted children into the arms of their
mothers, and the mothers into the arms of their
fathers, and fathers into the arms of the churches."
Farris also illuminates the power and beauty of her characters in their more delicate forms,
"He stumbles out from behind the gravestone,
looks down at her. She looks up. They are very
still. Above them, somewhere, a meteor shower.
Bright streaks of light. He goes down to his knees
and sloshes over to her, one knee before the other,
holding his wing up out of the mud. She watches
the feathers tremble in the breeze, settles herself
more firmly into the earth."
Farris accomplishes the rare feat of having each story speak implicitly with the others. They appear to be different branches from the same vine. In that subtle conversation, they are somehow made anew upon rereading.
Ultimately, Farris delivers on her original promise to grab her readers by their throats and thrust them into her collection. Did we escape unscathed? No, but such are the ways of metamorphosis; of transubstantiation.
"Eat from it and live."
book? You were hoping to escape unscathed?"
proclaims the first speaker in BoysGirls, a collection of genre-bending stories by Katie Farris.
"You're used to sitting back and eavesdropping,
playing the voyeur on the lives of others. But between
these covers you will participate, whether you desire it
or not."
This is a difficult promise to keep, and yet I find myself quickly put under the enchantment of Farris's prose. Each story has an increasingly cumulative gyroscopic effect on my senses where I find myself unhinged and awakened in her collection; a universe inhabited with the horrible power and beauty of her girls and boys,
"She let go a laugh
that haunted children into the arms of their
mothers, and the mothers into the arms of their
fathers, and fathers into the arms of the churches."
Farris also illuminates the power and beauty of her characters in their more delicate forms,
"He stumbles out from behind the gravestone,
looks down at her. She looks up. They are very
still. Above them, somewhere, a meteor shower.
Bright streaks of light. He goes down to his knees
and sloshes over to her, one knee before the other,
holding his wing up out of the mud. She watches
the feathers tremble in the breeze, settles herself
more firmly into the earth."
Farris accomplishes the rare feat of having each story speak implicitly with the others. They appear to be different branches from the same vine. In that subtle conversation, they are somehow made anew upon rereading.
Ultimately, Farris delivers on her original promise to grab her readers by their throats and thrust them into her collection. Did we escape unscathed? No, but such are the ways of metamorphosis; of transubstantiation.
"Eat from it and live."
April 14, 2016
dark, dreamy, one of a kind
found this gem (the only copy!) at the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur ~ super magical. seems a bit like divine intervention, too good to be true. whether the cosmos intentionally planted this book into my realm or not, it's a beaut. thank you universe, thank you Katie
found this gem (the only copy!) at the Henry Miller Memorial Library in Big Sur ~ super magical. seems a bit like divine intervention, too good to be true. whether the cosmos intentionally planted this book into my realm or not, it's a beaut. thank you universe, thank you Katie
July 6, 2011
The language inside is immediately recognizable to a poet (say, me) as poetry – careful, sonically graceful, and the sharp impact of the short piece. However, the pieces could also be described as little fictions – fables, fairy tales turned on their heads. The devil shows up and a girl grows to twenty stories. Sample sentences from “The Invention of Love:” “The Boy with One Wing sits in a waiting room, watching people enter, leave, examine the waitlist, attempt appointments. They carry their most precious, destroyed things.” Great stuff! This is a kind of writing that resisted easy definition – was it poetry or fiction? Intelligent, playful and whimsical.
March 8, 2015
boysgirls is a conglomeration of the fantastic and the terrifying. Transcending any views you may of had of gender, these words will "grab you by the throat" and make you question everything you thought you knew. Vanity, sexuality, pain, loss, love, and creation are just some of the themes Katie Farris beautifully weaves into this masterpiece, and anyone who has not gotten their hands on it yet is certainly still searching for their other half.
January 23, 2015
Blurbed by the likes of Robert Coover and Rikki Ducornet, Katie Ferris' slender collection of fabulous vignettes relates the many sorrows and brief joys of a cast of delicate grotesques: a girl who won't stop growing, a one-winged boy who finds solace having sex in the mud, the inventor of invented things, the human worm and her nostalgia for the salad days of freak shows, a girl and her grandmother who happens to be a machete, another girl who has to help with the scatological orgy required to make the devil orgasm, and a lion that likes to make out with pretty ladies. These dreamy micro-stories start and stop at a surreal beat too soon for my taste, but still Ferris has a promising way with words and toothsome imagery. I hope to see more from her in the years to come. Also love that androgynous title and Lavinia Hanachiuc's sexy, spirally drawings throughout.
November 21, 2016
Reread my favorite story from the collection, The Devil's Face, just now. Don't miss it-- the deliciously wicked prose, the weird plots, the amazing illustrations are all worth it.
April 16, 2017
I loved reading Katie Farris's work and the themes of mythology, coming of age, death, love, etc... matched the stories. And I got the riddle after reading it 4 times. It was a great read.
July 28, 2019
Beautiful. Unsettling.
August 10, 2012
Please see my review on Amazon.com. This collection is a MUST READ, I loved every page.
October 12, 2020
Very strange and very beautiful, in the best way.
January 28, 2020
I wanted to love this, but I only loved the one about the girl shitting on the devil’s face, and maybe that says more about me than this book.
November 9, 2023
Loves this. It was so weird and interesting and beautiful.
September 1, 2015
Beautiful language.
It's like a surreal, long-form poem? Prosetry?
I don't think I read it slow enough. I think I will probably reread the whole thing shortly.
It's really beautiful. It has very short sections that jab quickly at a thought and/or an emotion and then leave you to think about it.
Also the Inventor of Things is a hilarious character who takes several months off a project to reinvent his youth, which is great. <3
It's like a surreal, long-form poem? Prosetry?
I don't think I read it slow enough. I think I will probably reread the whole thing shortly.
It's really beautiful. It has very short sections that jab quickly at a thought and/or an emotion and then leave you to think about it.
Also the Inventor of Things is a hilarious character who takes several months off a project to reinvent his youth, which is great. <3
July 1, 2023
I really tried to like this book more, but the beginning falls short for me. It feels all over the place compared to the last half of the book where each little story connects together. Overall though, I loved the beautiful style Farris brought on the pages!
My favorite story has to be the girl shitting on the devil’s face. (Don’t knock it until you read it!)
My favorite story has to be the girl shitting on the devil’s face. (Don’t knock it until you read it!)
December 27, 2023
Such rich prose and imagery. Savor this book. Read every page several times over before moving on to the next. This is the type of book you're never finished reading. You just have to keep returning to it. It is so wonderfully strange.
November 25, 2025
thought-provoking and insightful, boysgirls features vivid imagery that makes one question what it means to be human, dismooring us from our most basic (and taken for granted) functions to make us consider what it means to connect with others and discover ourselves in the process
December 28, 2018
2.5-3
January 22, 2020
Quality spooky aesthetic, and beautiful writing in general. Content about medical doctors turned me away toward the end.
April 10, 2022
The Boy with One Wing. That's all you need to know.
April 9, 2023
I just now read the mention of Hieronymous Bosch in the description of this book, and YES, that is exactly the mood. Such incredible, surprising images here!
February 8, 2024
oh to invent a boy so beautiful…. anyway this was a quick read but i really recommend this for fairytale vibes! if you like your fairytales to be about gender
April 21, 2024
weird. i love.
December 15, 2024
Microfables, surrealist vignettes, compact fairy tales, and grotesque snapshots. A short and sweet little book, one that can comfortably fit in your back pocket.
June 7, 2025
this is about girls and boys, not genderqueers, despite what you may hope. however, the boy with one wing could be read as trans allegory…
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April 3, 202430 March 2024
Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find herself transformed in his bed into a little book of poetry.
Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from uneasy dreams to find herself transformed in his bed into a little book of poetry.
October 5, 2021
this book confused me but it is too good to read and entertain
October 14, 2011
Into the mouth of madness. Well in this case into the mind of madness. I have read some pretty strange things in my years as a book worm and reviewer. But I can honestly say that Boysgirls is one of the most interesting books I have ever read.
I cannot say that it is a bad book, nor can I really say that it is a good book. It is definitely different. The first sections of the book were ragged, and rather disjointed. The later sections seemed to have a little more cohesion and flow though it was still choppy.
I can honestly say that this is one of the most unique books I have ever read. It is different enough to merit being given a chance but be prepared to go through and read if two or three times before you start to gleen anything from it really. As the widow of a schizophrenic and the step mother of a bipolar the feel of the book is certainly one of madness. But it is certainly an interesting madness.
http://hampton-networks.com/book-revi...
I cannot say that it is a bad book, nor can I really say that it is a good book. It is definitely different. The first sections of the book were ragged, and rather disjointed. The later sections seemed to have a little more cohesion and flow though it was still choppy.
I can honestly say that this is one of the most unique books I have ever read. It is different enough to merit being given a chance but be prepared to go through and read if two or three times before you start to gleen anything from it really. As the widow of a schizophrenic and the step mother of a bipolar the feel of the book is certainly one of madness. But it is certainly an interesting madness.
http://hampton-networks.com/book-revi...
November 1, 2021
Magical, but punches you in the gut!
Displaying 1 - 30 of 30 reviews