Members and friends, last week, we announced our first-ever longlists for the NBCC Awards! You can find links to the lists on our awards page. Stay tuned—we’ll be announcing our shortlists on Jan. 23, and save the date for our awards ceremony in New York on March 20!
Critical Notes will be taking next week off and returning on Jan. 6. We’d like to thank you all for making this a great year for the NBCC—we couldn’t have done it without your support. We hope you all have a restful holiday season, and we wish you a happy 2025!
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Tomi Onabanjo reviewed Maya Binyam’s Hangman for The European Review of Books.
John Domini, in the year-end The Brooklyn Rail, praised the final work from the Croatian refugee Dubravka Ugrešić, A Muzzle for Witches, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac. The book is longlisted for the NBCC Gregg Barrios Book in Translation Prize.
Delight Ejiaka reviewed Pemi Aguda’s Ghostroots for World Literature Today.
Joyce Sáenz Harris about plans for the Larry McMurtry Literary Center in his hometown of Archer City, Texas, for The Dallas Morning News.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Lauren LeBlanc and incoming NBCC board member Wadzanai Mhute contributed to the Boston Globe’s list of the 75 best books of 2024.
Claude Peck reviewed Daniel Aleman’s I Might Be in Trouble for The Minnesota Star Tribune.
NBCC board member Tobias Carroll wrote about Camilla Grudova’s The Coiled Serpent for Reactor.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Clare Chambers’ Shy Creatures for BookTrib.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Lily Tuck’s The Rest Is Memory for the Los Angeles Times.
Ellen Prentiss Campbell wrote about her visit to Hiroshima for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Diane Josefowicz contributed brief reviews of The Boy in the Rain by Stephanie Cowell, Us Fools by Nora Lange, Lori & Joe by Amy Arnold, and Spatriati by Mario Desiati, translated by Michael F. Moore, to Necessary Fiction‘s annual holiday round-up. Diane’s translation of “A Roman Morning” by Anna de Noailles appears in the new issue of Exacting Clam, along with an essay, “I Was Not Made to Be Dead: Resurrecting Anna de Noailles (1876-1933).”
Former NBCC board member and recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Steven G. Kellman reviewed The Mortal and Immortal Life of the Girl from Milan, written by Domenico Starnone and translated by Oonagh Stransky, for Arts Alive San Antonio.
Frank Freeman reviewed Sydney Lea’s Now Look for the Portland Press Herald.
George Yatchisin reviewed Greil Marcus’ What Nails It for the California Review of Books.
Tom Peebles reviewed Alexandra Popoff’sAyn Rand: Writing a Gospel of Successon his personal blog.
Michael Quinn reviewed New York Nico’s Guide to NYC, by Nicolas Heller with Jason Diamond and photography by Jeremy Cohen, for The Red Hook Star-Revue.
Carl Hoffman reviewed Alex Cuadros’ When We Sold God’s Eye: Diamonds, Murder, and a Clash of Worlds in the Amazon for The Washington Post.
For The Tangential, Jay Gabler reviewed Carson the Magnificent by Bill Zehme with Mike Thomas. He also talked to people in Duluth, Minnesota, about what they’re reading this winter, for the Duluth News Tribune.
Olga Zilberbourg reviewed Holly Wilson’s Kittentitsfor The Common, and Katherine E. Young’s translation of People and Trees by Akram Aylisli for Words Without Borders.
Member Interviews
Ryan Chapman interviewed Nora Lange about her novel Us Fools, longlisted for the NBCC Award for Fiction, for BOMB.
Hollay Ghadery interviewed award-winning authors Armand Garnet Ruffo, Wayne Ng, and Tim Bowling for The New Books Network Canadian Studies podcast.
NBCC board member Tobias Carroll interviewed Mark Solms about a revised translation of Sigmund Freud’s work for InsideHook.
Anne Charles edited poet/writer Judith Barrington about Virginia’s Apple: Collected Memoirs for the show All Things LGBTQ.
NBCC Vice President/Online Michael Schaub interviewed Peter Ames Carlin and Dagoberto Gilb for the Orange County Register.
Member News
Yana Kane’s translation of Dmitry Blizniuk’s “My Fish Will Stay Alive” was selected for the Deep Vellum 2025 Best Literary Translations Anthology.
Tiffany Troy, a 2024 Queens Art Fund New Work recipient, was interviewed by Nicollette Barsamian for the Queens Gazette as part of the “Local Express” series.
Amy Yee’s Far From the Rooftop of the World: Travels Among Tibetan Refugees on Four Continents, which features a foreword by the Dalai Lama, won the Chicago Writers Association’s 2024 Book of the Year award in the nonfiction category. The book also won two awards in Foreword Reviews‘ INDIES Book of the Year contest in the Travel and Social Sciences categories.
Kelli Russell Agodon’s poem “In Wonderland, We’re Surprised/Not Surprised to Learn the Chamomile Tea Tastes Bitter” was one of 13 poems from Invisible Strings: 113 Poets Respond to the Songs of Taylor Swift, edited by Kristie Frederick Daugherty, featured in The New York Times.
“NYLO Hotel Plano, TX reading room” by Jerald Jackson is licensed under CC BY 2.0.