Jane Ciabattari is a fiction writer, book critic and widely published journalist. She is the author of the short story collection Stealing the Fire, the nonfiction book Winning Moves (a Literary Guild offering) and the e-book To the End of Time: The Seduction and Conquest of a Media Empire, which is based on her Columbia Journalism Review piece on Time-Warner merger. Her reviews and features have appeared in the Guardian, The New York Times, Bookforum, npr.org, Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, the Daily Beast, the San Francisco Chronicle, Threepenny Review, Ms., The East Hampton Star, among other publications. A longtime contributing editor and columnist for Parade, she has been managing editor of the Sunday magazine of the San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, and managing editor of Redbook, editor in chief of Dial, the public television magazine. She serves on the executive board of the Overseas Press Club. For more information: www.janeciabattari.com . Her current term on the board ends in 2012.

Craig Morgan Teicher is the poetry editor for Publishers Weekly.  His reviews also appear in many other publications, including Bookforum, Boston Review and Time Out New York.  His first book of poetry, Brenda Is in the Room and Other Poems, came out in 2008.  His website is http://www.craigmorganteicher.com.  His term on the board ends in 2012.

Barbara Hoffert is Editor of Library Journal’s book review, which publishes 6000 reviews annually. She assigns fiction and poetry reviews for the magazine and is also responsible for the magazine’s popular Prepub Alert column, which previews major releases four months in advance of publication. She was president of the National Book Critics Circle for three years, having been the board member for six years, and was chair of the Materials Selection Committee of the RUSA (Reference and User Services Assn.) division of the American Library Association. IN 2006, She won ALA-RUSA’s Louis Shores’ Greenwood Publishing Group award for excellence in reviewing. Her current term on the NBCC board ends in 2010.

KEVIN PRUFER’s newest books are Fallen from a Chariot (Carnegie Mellon, 2005) and National Anthem (Four Way Books, 2008), which was named one of the five best poetry books of the year by Publishers Weekly.  He’s also editor of New European Poets (Graywolf, 2008) and Pleiades: A Journal of New Writing, among others.  The recipient of three Pushcart prizes and numerous awards from the Poetry Society of America, he lives in rural Missouri.  Visit him at http://www.kevinprufer.com. His current term on the board ends in 2010.

Rigoberto González, author of eight books and recipient of both Guggenheim and NEA grants, reviews for the El Paso Times twice a month and is currently teaching at the MFA writing program of Rutgers—Newark, the State University of New Jersey. His current term on the NBCC board ends in 2012.

Lizzie Skurnick’s reviews and features have appeared in the NYTBR, the Washington Post, the Baltimore Sun, and many other publications. Her literary blog, Old Hag, has been featured in the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the Village Voice, the Guardian, and elsewhere. A teacher in the Masters in Writing program at Johns Hopkins, her book of poetry, Check-In, is available from Caketrain Press. Her current term on the NBCC board ends in 2010.

Mary Ann Gwinn is the book editor at The Seattle Times. She tries to feed the appetites of readers in America’s Most Literate City by putting out the books section, assigning and editing reviews, and writing about books and authors. She’s been in that position since 1998 ’ before that she was an assistant city editor, feature writer and environmental reporter. She won a Pulitzer Prize in 1990 for her contribution to the Times’ coverage of the Exxon Valdez oil spill. She grew up in a hot and humid town in eastern Arkansas where there was nothing to do but read, and the musty smell of old books makes her very happy indeed. Her current term on the NBCC board ends in 2009.

A Brooklyn-based writer and critic, Eric Banks is the former editor of Bookforum and senior editor of Artforum. His writing appears in numerous periodicals and he contributes a blog on university press books to the Chronicle of Higher Education.

Geeta Sharma-Jensen is the book editor at the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Her current term on the NBCC board ends in 2010.

Steven G. Kellman was awarded the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing in 2007.  His work has appeared in a wide variety of publications including the Texas Observer, Chronicle of Higher Education, Huffingtonpost.com, Chicago Tribune, Review of Contemporary Fiction, the Believer, Bookforum, and Georgia Review.  His books include Redemption: The Life of Henry Roth (Norton, 2005), The Translingual Imagination (Nebraska, 2000), Loving Reading: Erotics of the Text (Archon, 1985), and The Self-Begetting Novel (Columbia, 1980).  Kellman is a professor of comparative literature at the University of Texas at San Antonio.  He served two previous terms on the board of the NBCC, from 1996-2002.  His current term runs until 2012.

Karen R. Long has served as the book editor at The Plain Dealer in Cleveland since February 2005.  She is responsible for directing the paper’s book coverage, writing stories and weekly reviews.  She has covered science, religion and medicine for The Plain Dealer, and worked as one of its investigative reporters.  In 2002, the Associated Press named her the best feature writer in Ohio, and in 2006 she won the University of Missouri Lifestyle Journalism award for best magazine profile.  She is the mother of three children, ages 16, 19, and 21.  Her NBCC term expires in 2012.

James Marcus is a writer, translator, critic, and editor. He is the author of Amazonia: Five Years at the Epicenter of the Dot-Com Juggernaut and five translations from the Italian (the most recent being Tullio Kezich’s Dino: The Life and Films of Dino De Laurentiis and Saul Steinberg’s Letters to Aldo Buzzi). He has contributed to The Los Angeles Times Book Review, Salon, Newsday, The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times Book Review, Lingua Franca, The Nation, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other publications. And he blogs at House of Mirth. His current term on the NBCC board ends in 2011.

Maureen N. McLane is a critic, poet, and scholar. A contributing editor at Boston Review, her articles on poetry, contemporary fiction, teaching, and sexuality have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, American Poet, The Boston Globe, The Boston Phoenix, Chicago Review, and Harvard Review. In 2003 she won the National Book Critics Circle Nona Balakian Award for Excellence in Book Reviewing. She is the author of Same Life: Poems (FSG, 2008), Balladeering, MInstrelsy, and the Making of British Romantic Poetry (Cambridge UP, 2008), and Romanticism and the Human Sciences: Poetry, Population and the Discourse of the Species (CUP, 2000; paperback, 2006); she is also co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to British Romantic Poetry (CUP, 2008).  She is currently associate professor of English at NYU.  Her current term on the NBCC board ends in 2010.

Scott McLemee writes Intellectual Affairs, a weekly column about books and ideas, for Inside Higher Ed. His reviews and essays have appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Nation, Bookforum, Newsday, and elsewhere. He was a contributing editor for Lingua Franca from 1995 until 2001, and the senior writer covering the humanities for The Chronicle of Higher Education from 2001 to 2005; and he won the NBCC’s Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing for 2003. He blogs at Quick Study.  His current term on the board runs until 2011. 

Biography: published in Art in America, Open City, Artnet, Artforum, Paper Magazine, New York Press, Brooklyn Rail, Time Out New York, BOMB Magazine, Playboy and many other venues; author of the novels, A STILL SMALL VOICE (Delacorte), THE WHOLE (MTV / Simon & Schuster), the 2004 bestseller, SNOWBALL’S CHANCE (Roof), the recently released ALL THE WORLD’S A GRAVE: A NEW PLAY BY WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE (Penguin/Plume), and the forthcoming TALES OF WOE (MTV Press); MFA in Creative Writing from Columbia University; Associate Creative Writing Professor at New School University. His term on the board ends in 2012.

Jennifer Reese’s writing appears in the New York Times and other publications. Her current term on the board ends in 2010.

Elizabeth Taylor is the books editor of the Chicago Tribune.

David L. Ulin is book editor of the Los Angeles Times. He is the author of The Myth of Solid Ground: Earthquakes, Prediction, and the Fault Line Between Reason and Faith, selected as a Best Book of 2004 by the San Francisco Chronicle and the Chicago Tribune, and the editor of Another City: Writing from Los Angeles and Writing Los Angeles: A Literary Anthology, which won a California Book Award. He has written for The Atlantic Monthly, The Nation, The New York Times Book Review, Bookforum, and National Public Radios All Things Considered; his essay The Half-Birthday of the Apocalypse was nominated for a 2004 Pushcart Prize.  His current term on the NBCC board ends in 2011.

Art Winslow was an editor at The Nation for sixteen years, serving as co-literary editor, literary editor, or executive editor during most of them. Since leaving as a staff editor in 2003 (he remains a contributing editor), he has been working on his own writing; his criticism has appeared in The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Newsday, Book Forum, and WBUR. He is a past president of the National Book Critics Circle, has been a panelist for the National Endowment for the Arts in evaluating literary magazines, and taught workshops at the Third Coast Writers’ Conference. In spring 2005 he will be a visiting writer and professor at Western Michigan University in Kalamazoo. His current term on the NBCC board ends in 2011.

Linda Wolfe is a journalist, essayist, critic and fiction writer. A Contributing Editor of New York Magazine for twenty-five years, she has published one novel and eight books of nonfiction. She has also been Book Editor of Psychology Today and the short-lived magazine Woman, and served on the Executive Board of PEN. Her book reviews have appeared in, among other places, the New York Times Book Review, Newsday, the Washington Post, the Boston Globe, the Nation, and the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. Her current term on the board ends in 2011.