BRYAN BORLAND is the founder and publisher of Sibling Rivalry Press, an independent publishing house based in Little Rock, Arkansas, he runs with his husband, Seth Pennington.

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SINCE 2010, Sibling Rivalry Press has published Poets & Writers Top Debut Fiction, a Poets & Writers Magazine Top 12 Debut Poet, a Pushcart Prize winner, a Lambda Literary Award winner for Gay Poetry, a Lambda Literary Award winner for Lesbian Poetry, nine Lambda Literary Award finalists, three Publishing Triangle Award finalists, 30 American Library Association “Over the Rainbow” recommended LGBT titles, four American Library Association “Over the Rainbow” top 10 favorite picks, a Stonewall Honor Book in Literature, two books “all Georgians should read” as selected by the Georgia Center for the Book, one of Library Journal's “Best New Magazines,” one of Flavorwire's “50 books that define the last five years of literature,” and finalists for the Oklahoma Book of the Year, the Oregon Book of the Year, and the Georgia Book of the Year. Sibling Rivalry Press authors have gone on to win such prestigious prizes as the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, the MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship, Ruth Lilly Poetry Fellowship, the Whiting Award, and the T.S. Eliot Prize.

 

In 2015, the Library of Congress acquired all of Sibling Rivalry Press’s printed titles for its Rare Books and Special Collections Vault, “housed among history’s greatest writers for all of perpetuity.” 

 

AS A POET, Bryan’s first collection of poetry, My Life as Adam, is a potent cocktail of family life, religion, and sexuality. It was one of only five books of poetry selected by the American Library Association for its first annual “Over the Rainbow” list of recommended LGBT-themed publications. His second collection of poetry, Less Fortunate Pirates: Poems from the First Year Without My Father, was released in November 2012. Bryan was also the founding editor of Assaracus (which for six years was the world’s only print journal dedicated exclusively to the gay poet), the editor of Lady Business: A Celebration of Lesbian Poetry, published in August 2012 by Sibling Rivalry Press and included on 2013’s “Over the Rainbow” list, and the co-editor of Joy Exhaustible, an anthology highlighting the writing of gay publishers and editors, which was included on 2014’s “Over the Rainbow” list. He is a 2015 Lambda Literary Fellow in Poetry and winner of the 2016 Judith A. Markowitz Emerging Writer Award. In addition, his poetry was featured along California’s famed Sunset Boulevard as part of West Hollywood’s 2016 celebration of National Poetry Month, "Poetry in Lights." His third collection of poetry, DIG, was published in September 2016 by Stillhouse Press/George Mason University. DIG was named a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry, honored as a Stonewall Honor Book in Literature by the American Library Association, and included on the 2017 “Over the Rainbow” list. In 2018, he released a chapbook, Tourist, which chronicled his cross-country book tour for DIG during the 2016 presidential election. Bryan was selected as the first “Best Poet of Arkansas” by the readers of the Arkansas Times in its annual Best-of-Arkansas issue in July 2018 and has been named a finalist on two additional occasions for Best Writer and Best Poet. 

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In 2023, Bryan was awarded a Desert Rat Writing Residency Editor’s Prize for his poem, “The Talking Night.” In 2024, Poets House (NY) acquired his portrait (as taken by BA Van Sise for the book Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry) for its permanent collection. His current writing explores environmental and climate-conscious themes as well as spirituality. He is at work on his fourth full-length collection of poetry and a novel.  

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INDIVIDUAL POEMS AND ESSAYS have appeared in such publications as:

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The Advocate; Amsterdam Quarterly; Arkansas Times; Between: New Gay Poetry; Burning House Press; Children of Grass: A Portrait of American Poetry; Chiron Review; Court Green; Divining Divas: 100 Gay Poets on Their Muses; Foglifter; The Foliate Oak; Ganymede; The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide; gard (Turkey); Glass; The Good Men Project; Glitterwolf; Impossible Archetype; Lovejets: Queer Male Poets on 100 Years of Walt Whitman; The Nervous Breakdown; OCHO; Oxford American; Reading Queer: Poetry in a Time of Chaos; RHINO; Soloneba (Russia); Weave Magazine; What Things Cost: An Anthology for the People; WILDE Magazine; and other anthologies, literary magazines and websites, journals, and newspapers. Bryan also wrote the introduction to Michael Hathaway's Postmarked Home: New and Selected Poems 1979 - 2019.

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ADDITIONAL PRESS 

 

Arkansas Democrat-Gazette Story on the History of Sibling Rivalry Press

 

Arkansas Times Story on Sibling Rivalry Press in its Best of Arkansas 2015 Issue

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