Members and friends, we hope you’re enjoying the last days of summer! Our members have been keeping busy this past week reviewing books by authors including Myriam Gurba, Zadie Smith, Silvia Moreno-Garcia, Fran Littlewood, and Yiyun Li, and interviewing writers like Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Gabriel Bump. We hope you’re all staying safe, and as always, thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Hannah Bonner reviewed Sarah Rose Etter’s Ripe for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Gabriel Nicholas reviewed Tamara Kneese’s Death Glitch: How Techno-Solutionism Fails Us in This Life for The Washington Post.
Charles Green reviewed Victoria Houseman’s American Classicist: The Life and Loves of Edith Hamilton for The Gay & Lesbian Review, and Oliver Soden’s Masquerade: The Lives of Noël Coward and Patti Hartigan’s August Wilson: A Life, both for DC Theater Arts.
Kitty Kelley reviewed Letters for the Ages: The Private and Personal Letters of Sir Winston Churchill, edited by James Drake and Allen Packwood, for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
NBCC Vice President/Fundraising Anita Felicelli reviewed Myriam Gurba’s Creepfor Alta.
Joan Frank reviewed Carol Roh Spaulding’s Waiting for Mr. Kim and Other Stories for the San Francisco Chronicle.
Former NBCC board member and Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing recipient Steven G. Kellman reviewed Anna Funder’s Wifedom for The American Scholar.
Nell Beram reviewed four books for Shelf Awareness: Charlie Chaplin vs. America: When Art, Sex, and Politics Collided by Scott Eyman; Stuff Mom Never Told You: The Feminist Past, Present, and Future by Anney Reese and Samantha McVey; Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult: A Memoir of Mental Illness and the Quest to Belong Anywhere by Maria Bamford; and Wednesday’s Child by Yiyun Li.
Heller McAlpin reviewed Chris Bachelder and Jennifer Habel’s Dayswork for The Wall Street Journal and Zadie Smith’s The Fraud for The Christian Science Monitor.
Carr Harkrader reviewed Giorgio Parisi’s In a Flight of Starlings: The Wonders of Complex Systemsfor the Washington Independent Review of Books, and wrote a piece about the end of summer vacations, which highlights and discusses Rumaan Alam’s 2020 novel, Leave the World Behind, for Slate.
Eric Liebetrau wrote about Michael Harriot’s Black AF History: The Un-Whitewashed Story of Americafor Kirkus Reviews.
Fran Hawthorne reviewed Fran Littlewood’s Amazing Grace Adamsfor the New York Journal of Books.
Yvonne C. Garrett reviewed Silvia Moreno-Garcia’s Silver Nitrate and Brenda Lozanos’ Witches for The Brooklyn Rail.
Rebecca Hussey reviewed Sleepless: A Memoir of Insomnia, written by Marie Darrieussecq and translated by Penny Hueston, for Words Without Borders.
Jeffrey Mannix reviewed The Interpreter by Brooke Robinson and An Honest Man by Michael Koryta for his Murder Ink column in the Durango Telegraph, covering southwest Colorado and the Four Corners of the Southwest.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Sadie Jones’ Amy & Lanfor BookTrib.
Samantha Neugebauer reviewed Mobility by Lydia Kiesling for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
NBCC Vice President/Emerging Critics Fellowship and Online Michael Schaub reviewed Yiyun Li’s Wednesday’s Childfor NPR.
Member Interviews
Former NBCC President David Varno talked to Ed Park about his second novel in 15 years, Same Bed Different Dreams, and what it took to pull off the Underworld of modern Korean history, for Publishers Weekly.
DW McKinney interviewed Dr. Ibram X. Kendi and Joel Christian Gill about their graphic interpretation of Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning for The Fanatic by Publishers Weekly.
Marian Perales talked to Gabriel Bump about his upcoming second novel, The New Naturals, for Publishers Weekly.
Emma Kantor interviewed Turner Classic Movies host Eddie Muller about his hardboiled picture book debut, Kid Noir: Kitty Feral and the Case of the Marshmallow Monkey, for Publishers Weekly.
Member News
Holly Genovese has launched a new podcast, Gilmore Gays, queering both Gilmore Girls and the large body of criticism around it.
Elina Alter’s translation of Oksana Vasyakina’s novel Wound was published last week by Catapult Books.
“Bookstore cat at Ophelias Books” by brewbooks is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.