Members and friends, it’s almost that time! We’ll be announcing the shortlists for our NBCC Awards this 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. And please save the date for the National Book Critics Circle Awards on Thursday, March 20, at 6:30 p.m. Eastern! We hope you’ll join us either in person in New York or via our livestream. Take care, and thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
Roxana Robinson wrote about her mother’s polio and anti-vaxxers for The Washington Post.
NBCC board member Marie Myung-Ok Lee wrote about taking a group tour in South Korea based on the K-drama genre for The New York Times.
Barbara J. King reviewed The Interpretation of Cats, written by Claude Béata and translated from the French by David Watson, for the TLS.
NBCC lifetime member Heller McAlpin reviewed John Dufresne’s My Darling Boy for The New York Times.
Michael Bobelian reviewed Michelle Adams’ The Containment: Detroit, the Supreme Court, and the Battle for Racial Justice in the Northfor The Washington Post.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed We Do Not Part, written by Han Kang and translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, for The Boston Globe.
Catherine Parnell reviewed My Women, written by Yuliia Iliukha and translated from the Ukrainian by Hanna Leliv, for Five on the Fifth.
Former NBCC board member Joanna Scutts reviewed Stephanie Gorton’s The Icon and the Idealist for The New Republic.
Jeanne Bonner reviewed Ballerina, written by Patrick Modiano and translated from the French by Mark Polizzotti, for The Boston Globe.
Diane Scharper reviewed Julie Gilbert’s Giant Love: Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film for the Washington Examiner.
Tara Cheesman wrote about ephemeral art and selling to the collective in her review of Kevin Killian’s Selected Amazon Reviews for the Cleveland Review of Books.
NBCC board member May-lee Chai reviewed the Tunisian historical novel A Calamity of Noble Houses, written by Amira Ghenim and translated from the Arabic by Miled Faiza and Karen McNeil, for The New York Times.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Bonnie Kistler’s Shell Games and Suja Sukumar’s When Mimi Went Missing for BookTrib.
Robert Rubsam reviewed Lily Tuck’s The Rest Is Memory for The Atlantic.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Perle Mesta’s The Woman Who Knew Everyone for The Washington Post, Bernhard Schlink’s The Granddaughter for The Wall Street Journal, and Olivia Campbell’s Sisters in Science for the Los Angeles Times.
Aiden Hunt reviewed Daniel Borzutzky’s The Murmuring Grief of the Americasfor The Adroit Journal.
Nicole Yurcaba reviewed Oleksandr Mykhed’s The Language of War for New Eastern Europe and Nancy Jensen’s In Our Midst for the Southern Review of Books.
Melissa Holbrook Pierson reviewed Propagandopolis by Bradley Davies for Hyperallergic.
Diane Josefowicz’s translation of “A Roman Morning” by Anna de Noailles was published in Exacting Clam, along with a companion essay, “‘I Was Not Made to Be Dead’: Translating Anna de Noailles.” Her reviews of Thunderhead by Miranda Darling and Softie: Stories by Megan Howell were published at Necessary Fiction.
Hollay Ghadery reviewed Coming into Being: Mothers on Finding and Realizing Feminism, edited by Andrea O’Reilly, Fiona Joy Green, and Victoria for Herizon.
JoeAnn Hart reviewed The Language of Trees: A Rewilding of Literature and Landscape by Katie Holten for Ecolit Books.
Brian Tanguay reviewed The Golden Road: How Ancient India Transformed the World by William Dalrymple for the California Review of Books.
Clea Simon reviewed Holly Stars’ Murder in the Dressing Room for The Arts Fuse.
Britta Stromeyer reviewed The Burrow by Melanie Cheng for On The Seawall.
Hannah Joyner reviewed What Remains: The Collected Poems of Hannah Arendt, translated and edited by Samantha Rose Hill with Genese Grill, for Open Letters Review.
Member Interviews
For The Polis Project, Benoit Landon spoke to Quebec writer Eric Chacour about his debut novel, What I Know About You, a love story between two men in 1980s Egypt.
Tiffany Troy interviewed John Compton, Jonathan Fletcher, Joan Larkin, Ananda Lima, Charleen McClure, and Yaccaira Salvatierra about their latest collections and editors Chenda Bao, Nicole Hefner Callihan, and Jennifer Franklin about the anthology Braving the Body for Tupelo Quarterly.
“We subconsciously know that technology is really scary, and what’s scary about technology is how little we understand.” In Jane Ciabattari’s Literary Hub column, she talks to Sara Sligar about modernizing a Gothic cult classic.
For Shelf Awareness, Nell Beram interviewed Adam Haslett about his new novel, Mothers and Sons.
Elaine Szewczyk profiled Binnie Kirshenbaum for Publishers Weekly.
Hollay Ghadery interviewed Kathleen Lippa, Ariel Gordon, Rod Carley, Mariam Pirbhai, and Ben Berman Ghan for the New Books Network podcast.
Member News
Kristen Martin’s first book, The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow: The Dark History of American Orphanhood, will be published on Jan. 21 by Bold Type Books. Kristen has some events coming up later this month, including one with fellow NBCC member Lily Meyer at Politics & Prose in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 22.
Sylee Gore’s debut poetry chapbook, Maximum Summer, will be published on March 24 by Atelos.
Former NBCC board member Lori Feathers, chair of the Republic of Consciousness Prize for small presses in the U.S. and Canada, announced the longlist for the 2024 prize, which rewards small publishers for their commitment to exceptional literary merit.