Friends, we hope you’re doing well! Our members have been keeping busy with reviews of books by authors including Geraldine Brooks, Ruth Franklin, K-Ming Chang, Neko Case, and Stuart Murdoch, and interviews with writers like Binnie Kirshenbaum, Richard Nelson, and John Straley. Take care, and as always, thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
In a cover story for the San Francisco Chronicle’s Datebook, Meredith Maran wrote about trans writers anticipating Trump’s inauguration and a personal essay about her and her nonbinary partner.
Kristina Sepetys reviewed K-Ming Chang’s Ceciliafor the Colorado Review.
Kitty Kelley reviewed Geraldine Brooks’ Memorial Daysfor the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Ruth Franklin’s The Many Lives of Anne Frank for the Forward and Margaret Morganroth Gullette’s American Eldercide for Harvard Public Health.
Ann Fabian reviewed The Crazies: The Cattleman, the Wind Prospector and a War Out West by Amy Gamerman for The National Book Review.
Rhoda Feng reviewed Chris Hayes’ The Sirens’ Callfor The American Prospect.
Kristen Martin reviewed Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum’s Elita for The Washington Post and Sarah Chihaya’s Bibliophobia for The Atlantic.
Dan Kois reviewed Edmund White’s The Loves of My Life for Slate.
Ron Slate reviewed The Cities We Need by Gabrielle Bendiner-Viani, What Nails It by Greil Marcus, The Picture Not Taken by Benjamin Swett, and The Age of Reconstruction by Don H. Doyle for On The Seawall.
George Yatchisin reviewed Neko Case’s The Harder I Fight the More I Love You for the California Review of Books.
Claude Peck, a John Leonard Prize judge, reviewed Memorial Days by Geraldine Brooks for The Minnesota Star Tribune.
Tahneer Oksman reviewed Kay Sohini’s This Beautiful, Ridiculous City for The Washington Post.
Nell Beram reviewed two books for Shelf Awareness: The New Couple in 5B by Lisa Unger and Nobody’s Empire by Belle and Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch.
Randy Cepuch reviewed Off the Ground: Paul McCartney in the 1990s by JR Moores for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Beth Kander’s I Made It Out of Clay, Michael Sears’ Love the Stranger, and Megan Tady’s Bluebird Day for BookTrib.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed Ali Smith’s Glifffor The Boston Globe.
Corey Van Landingham reviewed Esther Lin’s Cold Thief Place and Jessica Fisher’s Daywork for West Branch.
Aiden Hunt reviewed Black Bell by Alison C. Rollins and Every Hard Sweetness by Sheila Carter-Jones for Jacket2.
NBCC board member Tobias Carroll reviewed Jeffrey Lewis’ Leonard Cohen for the Portland Press Herald.
Charles Green reviewed MP Summers’ Sketches from the Periphery for Blueink Review.
Member Interviews
Costa Beavin Pappas interviewed Alia Al-Senussi about her work as a power broker of Arab art for Cairo Scene.
Tiffany Troy presented “lyreless poet oh unlyred one”: A Roundtable with Translators Odile Cisneros, Suzanne Jill Levine, and Charles A. Perrone on Translating galáxias by Haroldo de Campos for Asymptote‘s blog.
Elaine Szewczyk profiled Binnie Kirshenbaum for Publishers Weekly.
NBCC board member Tobias Carroll interviewed The Penalty Kick author Robert McCrum for InsideHook.
Rhoda Feng interviewed Richard Nelson about his new book A Diary of War & Theatre for Liberties.
NBCC Vice President/Online Michael Schaub interviewed John Straley for the Orange County Register.
Member News
The Inside Literary Prize, co-founded by former NBCC board member Lori Feathers, released its shortlist. The award, now in its second year, is the first major U.S. book prize to be judged by incarcerated people.
Tiffany Troy was awarded a What Can We Do? grant by the Asian American Arts Alliance to present a symposium on Asian American diasporic poetry in Flushing, Queens.
NBCC board member Tobias Carroll will be writing about the film Kill List as part of Bloomsbury’s Timecodes series.
Kristen Martin spoke about her new book, The Sun Won’t Come Out Tomorrow, with Julie Lurie for Mother Jones and with Heather Radke for The Baffler.
“central library” by Ilya Haykinson is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.