Members and friends, we hope you’re all doing well! We’re looking forward to an event happening soon with our board member Mandana Chaffa, Vice President of the Barrios Book in Translation Prize, who will talk with Maureen Freely, translator of Cold Nights of Childhood by Tezer Özlü, winner of the 2023 Barrios Prize. This will be on Zoom on Wednesday, Oct. 9, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern—registration is required; you can do so here.
Later that month, we’ll be hosting a wide-ranging interactive roundtable conversation about the future of book criticism at Litquake in San Francisco on Friday, Oct. 25, at 7 p.m. Pacific. Then we’re headed to Massachusetts for the Boston Book Festival, where we’ll be hosting a panel in celebration of our 50th anniversary, on Saturday, Oct. 26, at 11:30 a.m. Eastern.
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC Vice President/Membership and Technology Rebecca Hussey reviewed Iman Mersal’s Traces of Enayat, translated by Robin Moger, for Full Stop.
Former NBCC board member and Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing recipient Steven G. Kellman reviewed Evan Friss’ The Bookshop: A History of the American Bookstore for Arts Alive San Antonio.
Donna Miscolta reviewed Brown Women Have Everything: Essays on Dis(comfort) and Delight by Sayantani Dasgupta for Cha.
Clea Simon reviewed Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders for The Arts Fuse.
Rhoda Feng reviewed Jonathan Lethem’s Cellophane Bricksfor Artforum and Todd May’s Should We Go Extinct?and Saraid de Silva’s Ammafor the TLS.
Former NBCC board member Ruben Quesada reviewed Kevin McClellan’s SKY. POND. MOUTH., for Harvard Review.
Costa Beavin Pappas wrote about Cairo’s contemporary art scene for the Observer.
Tamara MC wrote about her grandmother for The Keepthings.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Harald Jähner’s Vertigo: The Rise and Fall of Weimar Germany and Frank McDonough’s The Weimar Years: Rise and Fall 1918–1933 for The Wall Street Journal and Malcolm Gladwell’s Revenge of the Tipping Point for the Los Angeles Times.
Tiffany Troy wrote about Naoko Fujimoto’s reinterpretation of Heian period Japanese woman poets for Asymptote.
Robert Rubsam reviewed Olga Tokarczuk’s The Empusium, translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones, for Vulture, and Sally Rooney’s Intermezzofor America.
Priscilla Gilman reviewed The Mighty Red by Louise Erdrich for The Boston Globe.
Chris Barsanti reviewed Neal Stephenson’s Polostanfor PopMatters.
Heller McAlpin reviewed Richard Powers’ Playground and Sally Rooney’s Intermezzo for NPR.
Ricardo Santiago Soto reviewed Lauren Sherman and Chantal Fernandez’s Selling Sexy for Ricardo Reviews.
For The Red Hook Star-Revue, Michael Quinn reviewed Brendan Gillen’s novel about the Brooklyn music scene, Static.
Bill Thompson reviewed The Heart of the Wild, edited by Ben Minteer and Jonathan Losos, for the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier.
Alexander Pyles reviewed Dismantling Mass Incarceration: A Handbook for Change, edited by Premal Dharia, James Forman Jr., and Maria Hawilo, and In Hospital Environments: Essays on Illness & Philosophyby Jake Goldsmith for Life Matters Journal.
Tom Peebles reviewed T.D. Allman’s In France Profound: The Long History of a House, a Mountain Town, and a People for his blog.
Member Interviews
Nina Palattella interviewed Tony Tulathimutte about his new book, Rejection, for Kirkus Reviews.
Tiffany Troy interviewed Lawrence Schimel about translating Music for Bamboo Strings by Carlos Pintado for the Columbia University Press blog.
Nicole Graev Lipson interviewed Jerald Walker about his new book, Magically Black and Other Essays, for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Eric Olson profiled saxophonist Kenny G around the release of his new memoir, Life in the Key of G, for Seattle Met.
Elaine Szewczyk profiled Richard Price for Publishers Weekly.
Rhoda Feng interviewed Michel Chaouli about Something Speaks to Me: Where Criticism Begins for Liberties.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Jane Ciabattari’s Literary Hub conversation with Richard Powers covers his experience chronicling the relationship between technology and nature.
Costa Beavin Pappas interviewed Robin Talley about Everything Glittered for Publishers Weekly.
Harvey Freedenberg interviewed Wright Thompson about his new book, The Barn: The Secret History of a Murder in Mississippi, for BookPage.
For Publishers Weekly, and in honor of World Kid Lit Month, Emma Kantor spoke with publishers and literary translators about the current landscape of children’s books in translation, and how they are bringing more voices from around the globe to readers in the U.S.
Kathleen Rooney interviewed Rachel Robbins about her debut novel, The Sound of a Thousand Stars, for Chicago Magazine.
Chuck Augello interviewed Kim Addonizio about her new book, Exit Opera, for Identity Theory.
For their Book Cougars podcast, NBCC member Chris Wolak and Emily Fine spoke with James R. Benn about his new World War II mystery, The Phantom Patrol.
Laura Wetherington interviewed Lynne Thompson about her new book of poems, Blue on a Blue Palette, for the University of Arizona Poetry Center Blog.
Jake Casella Brookins talked to Amal El-Mohtar, science fiction and fantasy reviewer for The New York Times, about Seth Dickinson’s novel The Traitor Baru Cormorant for the podcast A Meal of Thorns.
Member News
DW McKinney’s essay “Seeking Sanctuary,” published in the Desert Companion, received third place for Coverage of Underserved Communities in the 2024 Nevada Press Foundation’s Awards for Excellence Contest.
Joan Gelfand’s Outside Voices: A Memoir of the Berkeley Revolution, published by Post Hill Press in January, has won the NYC Big Book Award in New Non-Fiction. It also won “Distinguished” for Women’s Issues.
NBCC Vice President/Membership and Technology Rebecca Hussey, with co-hosts Frances Evangelista and Dorian Stuber, discussed Elizabeth Bowen’s novel The House in Paris for the One Bright Book podcast.
Former NBCC board member Ruben Quesada will join poets A. Van Jordan, Dorianne Laux, and Alice Templeton, curated by D.A. Powell and Preeti Vangani, for LitQuake on Wednesday, Oct. 23, from 7:30 – 9 p.m. Pacific Time at Grace Notes: Poetry at Grace Cathedral.
Roberto Carlos Garcia’s debut essay collection, Traveling Freely, will be published by Northwestern University Press/Curbstone Books on Oct. 15, 2024. The book explores questions of race, identity, and the inherent exploitations of capitalism—all from the author’s specific vantage point as a Black Dominican American man. Garcia pre-launched the book earlier this month with an event at the Brooklyn Caribbean Book Festival, in conversation with Cleyvis Natera.
“the book shop” by bill lapp is licensed under CC BY 2.0.