Members and friends, we hope you’re enjoying the last days of July! Our members have been hard at work with reviews of books by authors including Sarah Manguso, Katherine Bucknell, Willy Vlautin, Sally Franson, and Karla Cornejo Villavicencio, and interviewing writers such as Jayne Anne Phillips, Margaret Juhae Lee, and Lev Grossman. Stay cool, stay safe, and as always, thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
Christopher Lancette reviewed two books for the Washington Independent Review of Books: Madeline Orr’s Warming Up: How Climate Is Changing Sport and Hugh Warwick’s Cull of the Wild: Killing in the Name of Conservation.
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Jenessa Abrams reviewed Sarah Manguso’s Liarsfor the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Roxana Robinson wrote about reckoning with Alice Munro’s darkest secret for Time.
Ron Slate reviewed The Coin by Yazmin Zaher; Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel by Yoko Tawada, translated by Susan Bernofsky; and Swimming in Paris by Colombe Schneck, translated by Lauren Elkin and Natasha Lehrer, for On The Seawall.
The Los Angeles Review published a double feature with review by Nicole Yurcaba and interview by Tiffany Troy of The God of Freedom, by Yuliya Musakovska and translated by Olena Jennings and the poet.
Charles Green reviewed Katherine Bucknell’s Christopher Isherwood: Inside Out for the Washington Blade.
Jenny Shank wrote about Joe Wilkins’ The Entire Sky and Willy Vlautin’s The Horse for High Country News.
Sylee Gore reviewed Icelight by Ranjit Hoskote for the Harvard Review, Pharmakon by Teju Cole for The London Magazine, and Paul Celan and the Trans-Tibetan Angel by Yoko Tawada, translated by Susan Bernofsky, for Words Without Borders.
Diane Scharper reviewed The Incorruptibles: A True Story of Kingpins, Crime Busters, and the Birth of the American Underworld by Dan Slater for the Washington Examiner.
Miriam O’Neal reviewed Vivian Eyre’s Ishmael’s Violetsfor The Ocean State Review.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Sally Franson’s Big in Sweden for BookTrib.
Edna Bonhomme reviewed Emily Raboteau’s Lessons for Survivalfor the Berlin Review.
Hamilton Cain reviewed Karla Cornejo Villavicencio’s Catalina for The New York Times Book Review; Kevin Barry’s The Heart in Winter for the Los Angeles Review of Books; and Dinaw Mengestu’s Someone Like Us and Chris Nashawaty’s The Future Was Now for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Brian Tanguay reviewed Robin Bernstein’s Freeman’s Challenge: The Murder That Shook America’s Original Prison for Profit by Robin Bernstein for the California Review of Books.
Member Interviews
Hollay Ghadery interviewed author Steven Mayoff for The (CanL)It Crowd.
In a series at Wesleyan University, Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing winner Merve Emre interviewed 11 critics, including NBCC board member Jo Livingstone, about their methodology. You can listen to the interviews at Literary Hub, and read the transcripts at The New York Review of Books.
Grant Faulkner interviewed Jayne Anne Phillips about her Pulitzer prize-winning novel, Night Watch, and Margaret Juhae Lee about her memoir, Starry Field, on the Write-minded podcast.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Jane Ciabattari’s Literary Hub conversation with former NBCC board member Lev Grossman (The Bright Sword) focused on adapting Arthurian legends for a world in turmoil.
Tiffany Troy was in conversation with Matt Mauch at Compulsive Reader.
At InsideHook, NBCC board member Tobias Carroll talked with the writing team of Bob Drury and Tom Clavin about their new book Throne of Grace.
Member News
Rochelle Spencer is an NBCC member and a co-editor, with Tara Christina and Ahmad Wright, of BE: A Journal of Black Experimental and Interdisciplinary Work. They’ve published their summer issue, and will be having a reading on Aug. 3 at 274 Lenox Ave./Malcolm X Blvd, from 2:15 – 3:15 p.m.
NBCC board member May-lee Chai will be in conversation with author Bushra Rehman, discussing Rehman’s novel Roses, in the Mouth of a Lion, via City Lights on Tuesday, July 30, starting 6 p.m. PT (9 p.m. ET). You can register for the virtual event here.
Former NBCC board member Rod Davis was named as a finalist, military fiction, in the 7th annual American Fiction Awards, American Book Fest. It is the second pre-pub award for his novel, The Life of Kim and the Behavior of Men: Human Bondage in the After-market of War.
John Skoyles’ “Poem for a Summer Morning” appeared in Commonweal.
Olga Zilberbourg published a translation of a poem by Kyiv-based poet Olga Bragina in Cagibi.
“Parker Vacumatic” by Colin Harris is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.