Roundup

by Jane Ciabattari | Mar-20-2009

Dexter Filkins, whose “The Forever War” won the National Book Critics Circle award for nonfiction last week, has also won the Overseas Press Club‘s Cornelius Ryan award for best nonfiction book on international affairs, and is a nominee for a National Magazine Award for his “Right at the Edge,” in the New York Times magazine, reporting from Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Nominees for the Man Booker International Award, a lifetime achievement nod given the every two years since 2005, include former NBCC award winners E.L. Doctorow and Alice Munro, and multiple NBCC finalist Joyce Carol Oates. The chair of judges, Jane Smiley is also an NBCC award winner.

NBCC board member Scott McLemee’s further thoughts on the NBCC awards ceremony, including Ron Charles’s news-making acceptance speech. (Gawker called him “the funniest bastard in the whole world.”)

NBCC member Gregg Barrios talks to NBCC board member, poet/novelist/memoirist/critic Rigoberto Gonzalez.

Jennifer Reese calls Daniyal Mueenuddin’s “In Other Rooms, Other Wonders"a “riveting wide-angle portrait of contemporary Pakistan.”

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette books editor Bob Hoover offers his perspective on last week’s NBCC events.

Longtime NBCC member John Mark Eberhart was laid off Monday morning by the Kansas City Star, in the paper’s fourth round of layoffs since June. He had worked at The Star 22 years and served as book review editor since March 2000.

Joe Peschel compares Patrick Somerville to Charles Baxter in his review of “The Cradle.”