Friends, we hope you’re having a good spring! This week, our members have been busy reviewing books by authors including Claire Messud, Teddy Wayne, Francine Prose, and Hari Kunzru. They also have some exciting news to share with you—and soon, we will too, so watch this space! Take care, and as always, thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
Tope Folarin reviewed Claire Messud’s This Strange Eventful Historyfor The Atlantic and Vinson Cunningham’s Great Expectationsfor The Nation.
Mary Pols reviewed The Winner by Teddy Wayne for The New York Times.
NBCC board member J. Howard Rosier reviewed Callie Siskel’s Two Minds for the Poetry Foundation.
Sharon Beriro reviewed Tarek El-Ariss’ Water on Fire: A Memoir of War for the Brooklyn Rail.
Carl Hoffman reviewed Randall Sullivan’s The Devil’s Best Trick: How the Face of Evil Disappeared for The Washington Post.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Andromeda Romano-Lax’s The Deepest Lake for BookTrib.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed Woodworm, written by Layla Martínez and translated by Sophie Hughes and Annie McDermott, for the Southwest Review.
George De Stefano reviewed Marlon Brando: Hollywood Rebel by Burt Kearns for the New York Journal of Books.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Paul Hendrickson’s Fighting the Night for The Pennsylvania Gazette.
Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed Kate Brody’s Rabbit Hole for the Portland Press Herald.
Meredith Maran wrote about attending a luxury wellness retreat for Fodor’s Travel, and reviewed Francine Prose’s 1974for the Los Angeles Times.
Nell Beram reviewed four books for Shelf Awareness: Blue Ruin by Hari Kunzru; How to Become Famous: Lost Einsteins, Forgotten Superstars, and How the Beatles Came to Be by Cass R. Sunstein; A Rough Way to Go by Sam Garonzik; and Shake It Up, Baby!: The Rise of Beatlemania and the Mayhem of 1963 by Ken McNab.
West Branch editor-at-large Shara Lessley reviewed collections by Molly Twomey, Jessica Traynor, Rosamund Taylor, and Tara Bergin in “New Art on Old Ground: Irish Women Poets.”
Diane Josefowicz reviewed Cheri Johnson’s Annika Rose for West Trade Review.
Member Interviews
Grant Faulkner interviewed Dhonielle Clayton on the Write-minded podcast about effecting change in publishing and how that often comes with backlash.
Member News
Former NBCC board member Sean Carlson’s poem, “California Redwood in Killarney,” was published by the Irish Independent as its monthly New Irish Writing selection. (If you hit a paywall, you can read the poem via the Irish Centre for Poetry Studies’ Facebook page.)
Following the closure of Polis Books, Clea Simon’s 2021 novel Hold Me Down (longlisted for the Massachusetts Book Award) has been acquired by Bloodhound Books. The UK-based publisher will reissue the mystery on Sept. 9.
Experimental filmmaker Gerry Fialka has done a 90-minute YouTube interview with Mary Mackey about where she gets ideas for her poems, novels, and screenplays. In September, Fialka will do a second interview with Mackey concentrating on her novels.
Former NBCC board member Lori Feathers is partnering with writer Anthony Garrett for an ongoing collective criticism correspondence about the beloved cult novel Miss MacIntosh, My Darling, recently reissued by Dalkey Archive.
The U.K. journal New Books in German interviewed Shelley Frisch about her recent translations from German and a book launch at 92NY of the latest one, with Daniel Mendelsohn and the book’s author, Eva Umlauf.
“Daunt Books” by Al Case is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.