Friends, we’d like to remind you that we’re celebrating our 50th anniversary with a pair of events at the Bay Area Book Festival on Sunday, June 2. At 11 a.m. Pacific, NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Jane Ciabattari will host a panel, NBCC Superstars of Fiction, featuring three authors whose first books won NBCC Awards: Jonathan Lethem, Tommy Orange, and Amy Tan. And at 3 p.m. Pacific, NBCC President Heather Scott Partington will host another panel, NBCC Superstars of Poetry, featuring some of the best and most beloved poets of our times: Victoria Chang, Forrest Gander, and D.A. Powell. We’d love to see you there!
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Hannah Bonner wrote about Heather Lewis’ Notice for The Sewanee Review.
Diane Josefowicz wrote about learning to tap dance at midlife for The Boston Globe.
Kitty Kelley reviewed Edward F. O’Keefe’s The Loves of Theodore Roosevelt: The Women Who Created a Presidentand wrote about George Saunders for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Former NBCC board member and recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Steven G. Kellman reviewed A Revolver to Carry at Night, written by Monika Zgustova and translated by Julie Jones, for Arts Alive San Antonio.
Nicole Yurcaba reviewed Serkan Gorkemli’s Sweet Tooth and Other Stories for Tupelo Quarterly, Nina Murray’s Gannota for Chytomo, and Kalpna Singh-Chitnis’ Love Letters to Ukraine From Uyava for The Los Angeles Review.
NBCC Vice President/Treasurer Jacob M. Appel reviewed Jonathan Kravetz’s How We Were Before for Barrelhouse.
George Yatchisin reviewed John O’Connor’s The Secret History of Bigfoot for the California Review of Books.
Hamilton Cain wrote about Javier Zamora’s Solitoin an essay for Alta’s California Book Club.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed K-Ming Chang’s Cecilia for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Chris Barsanti reviewed Wildcat, Ethan Hawke’s biopic about Flannery O’Connor, for Slant magazine, and wrote a roundup of graphic novels by Ernie Bushmiller, Emil Ferris, Luke Healy, and Tessa Hulls for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Nell Beram reviewed three books for Shelf Awareness: Rebel Girl: My Life as a Feminist Punk by Kathleen Hanna; The Return of Ellie Black by Emiko Jean; and S.S. Murder by Q. Patrick.
Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr. reviewed Paige Layle’s But Everyone Feels This Way: How an Autism Diagnosis Saved My Lifefor Penumbra Online. He also spoke about Young Frankenstein on the Yeah-Uh-Huh podcast.
David Starkey reviewed Michael Korda’s Muse of Fire for the California Review of Books.
Patricia Schultheis reviewed Joseph Epstein’s Never Say You’ve Had a Lucky Life: Especially If You’ve Had a Lucky Lifefor the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Tom Peebles reviewed David Kertzer’s The Pope at War: The Secret History of Pius XII, Mussolini and Hitler on his personal blog.
Walter Cummins reviewed Terese Svoboda’s Roxy and Coco for the California Review of Books.
Joan Silverman reviewed Monica Wood’s How to Read a Bookfor the Portland Press Herald.
Martha Anne Toll reviewed The Hebrew Teacher, written by Maya Arad and translated by Jessica Cohen, for Lilith, and The Physics of Sorrow, written by Georgi Gospodinov and translated by Angela Rodel, for NPR.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Sara Nisha Adams’ The Twilight Garden for BookTrib.
Sarah Dowling reviewed Jordan Abel’s Empty Spacesfor the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Randy Cepuch reviewed Eric Cheezum’s Chessie: A Cultural History of the Chesapeake Bay Sea Monster for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Katrina Gulliver reviewed Julie Satow’s When Women Ran Fifth Avenue for The Wall Street Journal.
Member Interviews
Michael Malone spoke with Serj Tankian about his memoir, Down With the System, for the Los Angeles Times.
Nell Beram interviewed Kathleen Hanna about her new memoir, Rebel Girl, for Shelf Awareness.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Jane Ciabattari’s Literary Hub conversation with R.O. Kwon about her second novel, Exhibit, focused on the power of each word, the “life-saving support of women artists and writers,” doing hands-on research in ballet, photography, the influence of Clarice Lispector, Susan Sontag, and writing her way to into a book’s most truthful version.
Paul Wilner interviewed Daniel Handler about his new essay collection, And Then? And Then? What Else?, for the Nob Hill Gazette.
Tiffany Troy interviewed Catherine Barnett, Michael Chang, Lauren Aliza Green, Carlie Hoffman, Matthew Lippman, Rose McLarney, and Diane Mehta about their latest books for Tupelo Quarterly‘s Issue 32.
Grant Faulkner interviewed Susan Kiyo Ito about her memoir, I Would Meet You Anywhere, a finalist for the NBCC Award for Autobiography, on the Write-minded podcast.
Member News
Laura Wetherington’s poetry pamphlet, Little Machines, has just been released with Salò Press. These poems are small documentaries about commuting by train in the Netherlands, a project sidetracked by pandemic lockdowns and daycare closures.
Hélène Cardona’s poem “At My Funeral” from her collection Life in Suspension (Salmon Poetry), introduced and read by Major Jackson, was featured in episode 1118 of The Slowdown.
“We Have Many Balloons!” by McNally Jackson is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.