Members and friends, save the date! We’ll be announcing the shortlists for our NBCC Awards on Thursday, Jan. 23, at 10 a.m. Eastern on social media. If you’d like to be the first to know which books will be contending for the prizes, be sure to follow us on Bluesky, Instagram, and Facebook. We hope you’re all staying safe and having a good 2025 so far, and as always, thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Hannah Bonner reviewed Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch, and its new film adaptation, directed by Marielle Heller, for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Sarah McCraw Crow reviewed Lili Anorak’s Didion & Babitz, Elizabeth Strout’s Tell Me Everything, Louis Bayard’s The Wildes, and Gina Maria Balibrera’s The Volcano Daughtersfor BookPage.
Former NBCC board member Marion Winik wrote an encomium to leftovers, with illustrations, for the Baltimore Fishbowl. Also she is having fun working for former NBCC President Kate Tuttle at the Boston Globe book section. She loved these Nayantara Roy and Adam Haslett novels, and Christopher Bollen is a trip!
Roxana Robinson wrote about Georgia O’Keeffe’s life in New Mexico for The Atlantic.
Christopher Spaide joins NBCC board member Rebecca Morgan Frank as co-curator of Literary Hub‘s monthly poetry column. They kick off the new year with their Anticipated Poetry Books list.
Sean Carlson’s poem “Water wants”—in part responding to Sally Hayden’s My Fourth Time, We Drowned—was published in Ninth Letter‘s folio of new writing from 2024 Elizabeth Kostova Foundation fellows.
Former NBCC board member and recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Steven G. Kellman reviewed Matthew Pearl’s Save Our Souls for Arts Alive San Antonio.
George Yatchisin reviewed Weike Wang’s Rental House and Robert Hilburn’s A Few Words in Defense of Our Country: The Biography of Randy Newman for the California Review of Books.
Meena Venkataramanan reviewed The Urban Refugee, edited by Bülent Batuman and Kivanç Kilinç, for Places Journal.
Bill Thompson reviewed The Memory Palace: True Short Stories of the Past by Nate DiMeo and Portrait in Red: A Paris Obsession by L. John Harris for the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier.
Nell Beram reviewed Susan Minot’s Don’t Be a Stranger for the Portland Press Herald.
Aiden Hunt reviewed Context Collapse by Ryan Ruby for the NewPages blog.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed Preston Lauterbach’s Before Elvisfor The Minnesota Star Tribune and wrote about Antonina W. Bouis’ translation of Sergei Lebedev’s The Lady of the Mine for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Kai Maristed reviewed Command Performance, written by Jean Echenoz and translated by Mark Polizzotti, for World Literature Today.
Member Interviews
For The Emancipator, NBCC board member David Woo interviewed poet Danez Smith about their curation of the anthology Blues in Stereo: The Early Works of Langston Hughes.
For The Ink, Adam M. Lowenstein spoke with researcher Renee DiResta about her book Invisible Rulers, and interviewed political scientist Hahrie Han about her book Undivided.
NBCC Vice President/Events Jane Ciabattari’s Literary Hub conversation with Adam Ross, author of Playworld, focuses on chronicling a Reagan-era New York City childhood.
Grant Faulkner spoke with Pulitzer Prize-winning author Forrest Gander about his new book, Mojave Ghost—and its connection to landscape, the multiplicity of selves, and the kaleidoscopic experience of bringing together multiple eras of a lived life.
Hollay Ghadery recently interviewed Caroline Topperman about her new nonfiction book, Your Roots Cast a Shadow, for the Creative Nonfiction Collective blog. Hollay also interviewed authors Kim Fahner (The Donoghue Girl), Ellen Chang Richardson (Blood Belies), and Harman Burns (Yellow Barks Spider) for the New Books Network.
Member News
Sarah McCraw Crow co-founded, with middle-grade author Emilie Christie Burack, the New Hampshire Book Festival. The first New Hampshire Book Festival took place Oct. 4 and 5, in Concord (with keynote authors Jean Hanff Korelitz and Kate DiCamillo, and 50 other authors). The next festival will take place Oct. 3 and 4, 2025, in Concord.
John Skoyles served as guest editor for the winter issue of Ploughshares. He also has a story in Five Points.
Former NBCC board member Lori Feathers has launched The Big Book Project, a multi-platform reading forum for readers who want to explore big, dense fiction, one novel at a time. The first novel is Roberto Bolaño’s 2666.
“Daunt Books” by Al Case is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.