ANNUAL NBCC MEMBERSHIP MEETING
May 29, 1:30pm
Center for Fiction, 17 East 47th Street

The 2013 annual meeting of the National Book Critics Circle will take place the day before Book Expo begins in New York City. Our host will be the Center for Fiction at 17 East 47th Street,  New York, NY 10017.

We'll kick off at 1:30 p.m. with our membership meeting, then will hold two stellar panels and will finish up with time to mingle at a wine reception.

Annual Membership Meeting 
1:30pm: At this year's annual meeting, we'll be discussing the organization of our awards, including the possibility of creating a new prize that would be awarded by a direct vote of the membership. Please try to attend!

Panel: New Literary Journals
3:00pm
In recent years many traditional print book-review outlets have cut back on space -- or, worse, disappeared entirely. But the same period has also been marked by the rise of upstart publications that have taken advantage of both the roominess of the web and the tactile pleasures of print to reinvent the literary journal for a new generation. How have these publications changed the way we think about who writes criticism, where it appears, and what shape it takes? Does social media alter what a critic says, and what qualifies as fair game for criticism? And do these new publications signal a growth in opportunities for reviewers after years of decline? We'll explore these questions with editors at four leading literary journals that are recent arrivals on the scene.

Panelists
Mark Athitakis (moderator) is an NBCC board member whose reviews and essays have appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times Book Review, Washington City Paper, the New Republic, the Barnes & Noble Review, and numerous other publications. He has been a featured guest on book-related topics on Minnesota Public Radio and the Diane Rehm Show, and is founder of the literary blog American Fiction Notes. He lives outside Washington, D.C.

Uzoamaka Maduka is the editor-in-chief and co-founder of "The American Reader." In 2013, she was named as one of Forbes' "30 Under 30" for media. She is the former online managing editor of Interview Magazine, and has also held positions with Verso, the London-based publishing house and affiliate of The New Left Review, and Slate.

Alex Shephard is a founding editor of Full Stop. He lives in Brooklyn.

Tom Lutz is the founding editor of the Los Angeles Review of Books, and the author of Doing Nothing, Crying, Cosmopolitan Vistas, American Nervousness 1903, and other works. He has taught at several universities and now is in Creative Writing at UC Riverside.

Emily Cooke is an editor at the New Inquiry and a freelance writer. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in the London Review of Books, the New York Times Book Review, the Times Literary Supplement, and n+1, among other publications. She lives in Brooklyn.

Panel: The VIDA Count and Gender Bias in Book Reviewing 
4:00pm
For the past three years, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts has been conducting a count of how many of the books reviewed by prominent publications were written by women and by men, and how many of the book reviews were assigned to female and male reviewers. The lopsided results have helped begin a conversation about gender bias in the literary world. How can we as book critics and editors address this issue?

Panelists 

Laurie Muchnick (moderator) is the book editor at Bloomberg News and president of the NBCC. She has previously been book editor at Newsday and an editor at the Voice Literary Supplement.

 Erin Belieu is the author of four poetry collections, all from Copper Canyon Press, including Slant Six, forthcoming in fall of 2014. Belieu's work has appeared or is forthcoming in places such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Atlantic, Slate and Best American Poetry. Belieu is, with Cate Marvin, the co founder of VIDA: Women In Literary Arts. She teaches in the writing program at Florida State University and is Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Writers Conference.
 

Pamela Paul was named editor of The New York Times Book Review in April, having served as features editor and children's book editor. She is the author of three books, The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony, Pornified, and Parenting, Inc. She has written for the Atlantic, The Economist, Vogue, Time, The Washington Post and writes widely for other sections at the Times.

 Kathryn Schulz is the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error and the book critic for New York Magazine. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, TIME Magazine, the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times Book Review, among other publications. In 2012, she won the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Prize for Excellence in Reviewing. She was a 2004 recipient of the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism, and has reported from throughout Central and South America, Japan, and, most recently, the Middle East. 
 

Rob Spillman is editor and co-founder of Tin House, a fifteen-year-old bi-coastal (Brooklyn and Portland) literary magazine. He is also the executive editor of Tin House Books and co-founder of the Tin House Literary Festival. His writing has appeared in BookForum, the Boston Review, Connoisseur, Details, GQ, Nerve, the New York Times Book Review, Real Simple, Rolling Stone, Salon, Spin, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Worth, among other publications. He is also the editor of Gods and Soldiers: the Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing.

 
Meg Wolitzer's novels include, most recently, The Interestings, as well as The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife, among others. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize.  Wolitzer has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Columbia University, Barnard College and SUNY Stony Brook Southampton. In the fall, along with singer-songwriter Suzzy Roche, she will be a guest artist in the Princeton Atelier program at Princeton University. 

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And also...
NBCC PANEL AT BOOK EXPO

NBCC Presents: All’s Fair?: The Ethics of Book Reviewing*

Thursday, May 30 at 11:00 am
Book Expo America at the Javits Convention Center

Should book reviewers be required to follow a code of ethics, the way many other journalists do? The Society of Professional Journalists, for example, publishes a set of guidelines that are widely accepted in the newspaper industry, but book reviewers have no comparable code. Should there be one? If so, what should its rules be? How would it affect bloggers and moonlighting critics-novelists asked to write about fellow novelists, say, or experts asked to assess competitors in their field? Would such a code do anything to restrain the back-scratching and score-settling that can taint current reviews? The panelists will tackle these questions and others as part of an ongoing survey that the NBCC is conducting into ethics in 2013.
Panelists: Marcela Valdes (moderator), Maureen Corrigan (Fresh Air), Carlin Romano (Annenberg School for Communication), Parul Sehgal (New York Times Book Review), Eric Simonoff (William Morris Endeavor), and Lorin Stein (The Paris Review).
*This panel is not open to the public as it takes place within Book Expo, attendees must have a valid BEA badge to gain entry.

VIDEO: LBJ's penis and more: 2012 NBCC Biography Award winner Robert Caro gets the Colbert Report treatment.

"A Tale of Remorse that Creeps Under Your Skin": Maureen Corrigan on Gail Godwin's Flora. At NPR, Corrigan reviews Elanor Dymott's Every Contact Leaves a Trace.

And still more from the Rachel Shteir Chicago-themed books controversy: from the DePaulia; letters to the editor at the New York Times.

Julia M. Klein reviews Z and Beautiful Fools for the Boston Globe. In the Jewish Daily Forward, Klein reviews Vera Gran: The Accused.

Vladimir Alexandrov's The Black Russian (no, not the delicious drink), reviewed by Rayyan Al-Shawaf in the Brooklyn Rail.

In a Boston Globe review, NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari calls Helene Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni "a blend of historic fiction and fantasy with a dash of sci-fi and a sprinkling of philosophical discourse about faith and free will...a continuous delight."

"Farm Team Saga Hits It Out Of The Park": Heller McAlpin reviews Lucas Mann's Class A.

2012 NBCC General Nonfiction Award winner Andrew Solomon honored by the Fountain House.

Congratulations to all the new 2013 Guggenheim Fellows connected to the NBCC:

NBCC fiction winner Kiran Desai, NBCC nonfiction winner Maya Jasanoff, NBCC fiction finalist Adam Johnson, NBCC poetry finalist Major Jackson, NBCC poetry winner Troy Jollimore, NBCC biography winner Sylvia Nassar, former NBCC president Carlin Romano. NBCC poetry finalist Brenda Shaughnessy, & NBCC fiction finalist Colson Whitehead.

NBCC board member Carolyn Kellogg and others on the modern classics and the classics of the future.

Julia M. Klein on Claire Messud's well-received new novel, The Woman Upstairs. Klein also reviews Helga Weiss' Helga's Diary, Barbara Garson's Down the Up Escalator, and Fiona Maazel's Woke Up Lonely.

More on the Rachel Shteir kerfuffle: from the NY Daily News and from Rachel herself in the New York Observer. Also, the Chicago Tribune's Larry Bennett weighs in.

Irish novelist Edna O'Brien's memoir, Country Girl, reviewed by Heller McAlpin.

"A riveting if uneven tale," writes Rayyan Al-Shawaf in his review of Nadeem Aslam's The Blind Man's Garden. He also reviews Anthony Marra's debut novel, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena.

Nabokov revived: his play "The Tragedy of Mister Morn" reviewed in the San Francisco Chronicle by NBCC board member Steven G. Kellman.

And Camus! George Scialabba on the existentialist's Algerian Chronicles.

2012 NBCC Criticism Award winner Marina Warner in conversation at the 2013 NGC Bocas Lit Fest.

In the New Republic, Britt Peterson explores how the "novel of female ambition" is evolving, looking specifically at the latest novels from Meg Wolitzer and Claire Messud.

Maya Angelou's latest release, reviewed by Carmela Ciuraru.

The Billings Gazetta on Brad Tyer's Opportunity, Montana.

NBCC board member Mark Athitakis delves into David Sedaris' new collection.

Steve Weinberg reviews Karen Houppert's Chasing Gideon.

Here's grist for the National Book Critics Circle Panel: The VIDA Count and Gender Bias in Book Reviewing coming up May 29 at 4 pm at the annual membership meeting. (Details below).

From 2009-2013, more than half of the National Book Critics Circle awards went to women: three of eight in 2013; five of eight in 2012, six of eight in 2011, and six of eight in 2009.

2013 NBCC Awards (for books published in 201), three of the eight awards went to women:
Leeanne Shapton (autobiography)
Marina Warner (criticism)
Sandra Gilber & Susan Gubar (Sandrof lifetime achievement award)

2012 NBCC awards (for books published in 2011), five of eight awards went to women:
Edith Pearlman (fiction)
Maya Jasanoff (nonfiction)
Laura Kasishke (poetry)
Mira Bartok (autobiography)
Balakian award for excellence in reviewing, Kathryn Schulz.

2011 NBCC awards (for books published in 2010), six of eight awards went to women:
Jennifer Egan (fiction)
Isabel Wilkerson (nonfiction)
C.D. Wright (poetry),
Sarah Bakewell (biographhy)
Clare Cavanagh (criticism)
Parul Sehgal (Balakian).

2010 NBCC awards (for books published in 2009), six of eight awards went to women:
Hilary Mantell (fiction)
Rae Armantrout (poetry)
Eula Biss (criticism),
Diana Athill (autobiography)
Joan Acocella (Balakian)
Joyce Carol Oates (Sandrof award for lifetime achievement). -

National Book Critics Circle Membership Meeting, May 29, The Center for Fiction May 29 at the Center for Fiction, 17 East 47th Street, New York City

National Book Critics Circle Panel: The VIDA Count and Gender Bias in Book Reviewing
4:00pm
For the past three years, VIDA: Women in Literary Arts has been conducting a count of how many of the books reviewed by prominent publications were written by women and by men, and how many of the book reviews were assigned to female and male reviewers. The lopsided results have helped begin a conversation about gender bias in the literary world. How can we as book critics and editors address this issue?

Panelists

Laurie Muchnick (moderator) is the book editor at Bloomberg News and president of the NBCC. She has previously been book editor at Newsday and an editor at the Voice Literary Supplement.

Erin Belieu is the author of four poetry collections, all from Copper Canyon Press, including Slant Six, forthcoming in fall of 2014. Belieu's work has appeared or is forthcoming in places such as The New Yorker, Ploughshares, The Atlantic, Slate and Best American Poetry. Belieu is, with Cate Marvin, the co founder of VIDA: Women In Literary Arts. She teaches in the writing program at Florida State University and is Artistic Director of the Port Townsend Writers Conference.

Pamela Paul was named editor of The New York Times Book Review in April, having served as features editor and children's book editor. She is the author of three books, The Starter Marriage and the Future of Matrimony, Pornified, and Parenting, Inc. She has written for the Atlantic, The Economist, Vogue, Time, The Washington Post and writes widely for other sections at the Times.

Kathryn Schulz is the author of Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error and the book critic for New York Magazine. Her writing has also appeared in the New York Times Magazine, Rolling Stone, TIME Magazine, the Boston Globe, Foreign Policy, and the New York Times Book Review, among other publications. In 2012, she won the National Book Critics Circle's Nona Balakian Prize for Excellence in Reviewing. She was a 2004 recipient of the Pew Fellowship in International Journalism, and has reported from throughout Central and South America, Japan, and, most recently, the Middle East.

Rob Spillman is editor and co-founder of Tin House, a fifteen-year-old bi-coastal (Brooklyn and Portland) literary magazine. He is also the executive editor of Tin House Books and co-founder of the Tin House Literary Festival. His writing has appeared in BookForum, the Boston Review, Connoisseur, Details, GQ, Nerve, the New York Times Book Review, Real Simple, Rolling Stone, Salon, Spin, Sports Illustrated, Vanity Fair, Vogue, Worth, among other publications. He is also the editor of Gods and Soldiers: the Penguin Anthology of Contemporary African Writing.

Meg Wolitzer's novels include, most recently, The Interestings, as well as The Uncoupling, The Ten-Year Nap, The Position, and The Wife, among others. Her short fiction has appeared in The Best American Short Stories and The Pushcart Prize.  Wolitzer has taught at the Iowa Writers' Workshop, Columbia University, Barnard College and SUNY Stony Brook Southampton. In the fall, along with singer-songwriter Suzzy Roche, she will be a guest artist in the Princeton Atelier program at Princeton University.

2012 NBCC Criticism Award winner Marina Warner claims 2013 Truman Capote Award for Literary Criticism in Memory of Newton Arvin. The $30,000 award — the largest annual cash prize in English-language literary criticism — is administered for the Truman Capote Estate by the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop.

Ben Fountain, winner of the NBCC 2012 Fiction Award, named University Endowed Chair in Creative Writing at Texas State University.

In the Chicago Reader, Michael Miner critiques Rachel Shteir's recent controversial reviews of books about Chicago for the New York Times Book Review. Others have chimed in, including Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Northwestern University Professor Bill Savage, the Chicagoist, Chicago Tribune reporter Rex W. Huppke, Chicago Business Journal reporter Lewis Lazare, 

Lucia Perillo is the winner of the Shelley Memorial Award, given by the Poetry Society of America. She shares the award with poet Martín Espada.

VIDEOS: At the L.A. Times Festival of Books, NBCC board member Carolyn Kellogg talks to Molly Ringwald about book tours and L.A. writers. She also interviews Naomi Hirahara, Alex Espinoza, Amy Wientz And board member David Ulin in conversation with Margaret Atwood. 

More Anisfield-Wolf Awards discussion: Ron Charles in the Washington Post. Joanna Connors in the Cleveland Plain-Dealer.

Maureen Corrigan reviews Ken Kalfus' Equilateral.

At the Huffington Post, Doug Bradley takes a look at David Abrams' novel Fobbit.

Library Journal editor Barbara Hoffert presents "Thirty Essential Poetry Titles for Spring 2013."

Robert Birnbaum interviews David Shields for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari reviews Claire Messud's new novel for NPR: "brims with energy and ideas..." Messud's book was also reviewed in the Minneapolis Star-Tribune by Jim Carmin.

Why Does Anne Boleyn Obsess Us? Lauren Elkin explores for the Daily Beast.

Recommended paperbacks, from Meredith Maran.

In the New York Times Book Review, Sylvia Brownrigg reviews Elizabeth Strout's The Burgess Boys.

NBCC board member Steven G. Kellman peruses The Selected Letters of Willa Cather.

USA Today contributor Carmela Ciuraru gives 3.5 stars to Helen Wecker's The Golem and the Jinni.

"The Greatest English Poet You Haven't Heard of," by Adam Kirsch.

A Guardian interview with 2012 NBCC Autobiography Award winner Leanne Shapton.

2012 NBCC General Nonfiction Award winner Andrew Solomon has won the Anisfield-Wolf award for his book, Far from the Tree.

2012 NBCC Fiction Award winner Ben Fountain secures another major award, the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize. In the Biography category, Robert Caro took home the award for his The Passage of Power, which also won the Biography category at the 2012 NBCC Awards.

Julia M. Klein reviews The Athena Doctrine for USA Today. She also considers Andre Aciman's latest novel, Harvard Square, for the Chicago Tribune.

Meg Wolitzer's The Interestings reviewed in the Christian Science Monitor by Heller McAlpin. She also dives into David Sedaris' latest collection, Let's Discuss Diabetes with Owls.

An original poem by Nicky Beer in The Rumpus, in honor of National Poetry Month.

NBCC board member Anne Trubek takes on Aleksandar Hemon's memoir, The Book of My Lives.

In an interview for the Daily Beast, Wolitzer discusses her new novel with NBCC board member Jane Ciabattari.

Library Journal editor Barbara Hoffert looks at this year's Pulitzer winners.

2012 NBCC winners Andrew Solomon and Robert Caro collect more awards.

For the New York Times, Rachel Shteir reviews 3 books about Chicago.

"Can You Raise a Wife?" Mythili Rao considers in her review of Wendy Moore's How to Create the Perfect Wife.

David Haglund talks books and the publishing industry on his NY1 segment, "The Book Reader."

"What is a social novel?" NBCC board member David Ulin hashes it out with Rachel Kushner, Marisa Silver, and Jonathan Lethem.