NBCC board member Jonathan Leal speaks at the NBCC 50th Anniversary panel at Litquake in San Francisco on Oct. 25, 2024. Photograph by Janis Cooke Newman.
Friends, we hope you’re having a good fall so far! Our members have been busy this week with reviews of books by authors including Andre Aciman, Jenny Slate, Jesse Ball, Susan Minot, Liu Hong, and much more, and interviews with writers such as Mallory Smart, Elyse Graham, and Michael Castleman. Thanks so much for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Hannah Bonner reviewed Christine Smallwood’s La Captive for Hyperallergic.
Joan Frank reviewed Betsey Lerner’s Shred Sisters for The Washington Post and Andre Aciman’s Roman Year for The Boston Globe.
NBCC board member May-lee Chai reviewed the short story collection Canoes by Maylis de Kerangal, translated by Jessica Moore, for the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Rhoda Feng reviewed the audiobook version of Jenny Slate’s Lifeform for The New York Times; Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Stolen Pridefor The American Prospect; and Jesse Ball’s The Repeat Roomfor The Washington Post.
Leigh Rastivo reviewed The Miró Worm and the Mysteries of Writing by Sven Birkerts and The Letters of Seamus Heaney, selected and edited by Christopher Reid, for The Arts Fuse.
Jessica Gigot reviewed Chris La Tray’s Becoming Little Shell: A Landless Indian’s Journey Home for Terrain.org.
Dean Rader reviewed Bashō: The Complete Haiku of Matsuo Bashō, edited and translated by Andrew Fitzsimons, for ZYZZYVA.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Anthony Fauci’s On Call and Francis Collins’ The Road to Wisdom for Harvard Public Health; Bill Vaughn’s The Plot Against Native America for the Los Angeles Times; Susan Minot’s Don’t Be a Stranger for The Boston Globe; and Bruce Eric Kaplan’s They Went Another Way for the Forward.
Former NBCC board member and Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing recipient Steven G. Kellman reviewed Rachel Kushner’s Creation Lakefor Arts Alive San Antonio.
NBCC board member Tobias Carroll reviewed Matthew J.C. Clark’s Bjarki, Not Bjarki for the Portland Press Herald.
Celia McGee reviewed Rosario Candela and the New York Apartment by David Netto, Paul Goldberger, and Peter Pennoyer, for Air Mail, and wrote about Belle da Costa Greene and the Morgan Library for The New York Times.
Karl Wolff reviewed The Good Women of Fudi by Liu Hong for The Driftless Area Review.
Jake Casella Brookins reviewed Jesse Ball’s The Repeat Room and Nghi Vo’s The City in Glass for Locus.
Former NBCC President Laurie Hertzel reviewed Anna Montague’s How Does That Make You Feel, Magda Eklund? for the Minnesota Star Tribune.
Jean Gazis reviewed AI Snake Oil: What AI Can Do, What It Can’t, and How to Tell the Difference by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor for the website Practical Ecommerce.
Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed S. J. Naude’s Fathers and Fugitives for The National Book Review.
Tamara MC wrote about Judy Blume’s Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret for Pangyrus.
Charles Green reviewed Karen Valby’s The Swans of Harlem: Five Black Ballerinas, Fifty Years of Sisterhood, and Their Reclamation of a Groundbreaking History for Rain Taxi.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Aimee R. Runyan’s Mademoiselle Eiffel for BookTrib.
Britta Stromeyer reviewed I Tell Henrietta by Tina Barry for Bending Genres Journal.
Clea Simon reviewed Daniel Lavery’s Women’s Hotel for The Boston Globe.
Genanne Walsh reviewed Bill Roorbach’s novel Beep for the Portland Press Herald – Maine Sunday Telegram.
Member Interviews
Jeff Alessandrelli interviewed Mallory Smart on the podcast The Lives of Writers. Jeff was also interviewed at BOMB about his book And Yet.
NBCC lifetime member Heather Green interviewed Brazilian artist André Griffo for the latest issue of Asymptote.
Dean Rader and Canadian artist and author Ewa Monika Zebrowki were in conversation about their engagements with Cy Twombly in The Adroit Journal.
NBCC board member Tobias Carroll interviewed Elyse Graham about Book and Dagger for InsideHook.
Jake Casella Brookins talked to Sunny Moraine, author and narrator, about William Gibson’s novel Pattern Recognition for the podcast A Meal of Thorns.
Grant Faulkner interviewed Michael Castleman about his book The Untold Story of Books: A Writer’s History of Book Publishing, a journey from the Gutenberg Press to modern-day publishing, on the Write-minded podcast.
Elaine Szewczyk profiled Tracey Lange for Publishers Weekly.
Kathleen Rooney interviewed Donna Seaman for Chicago magazine.
Member News
Blackstone Publishing acquired NBCC member Michael O’Donnell‘s second novel, Concert Black. The novel chronicles a biographer who seeks to write the life of an eminent conductor. He must stop her to preserve a decades-old secret. The book is scheduled for an April 2026 release.
Britta Stromeyer interviewed NBCC member Hollay Ghadery about her new flash fiction collection Widow Fantasies for her Book Chat.
Hélène Cardona’s translation of André Breton (“Always for the first time”) is included in Dorianne Laux’s new book Finger Exercises for Poets from W. W. Norton & Co.