Members and friends, we hope you’re having a good February so far! Our members have been hard at work with reviews by authors including Jennifer Finney Boylan, Pope Francis, Imani Perry, Allegra Goodman, and Olivia Wolfgang-Smith, and interviews with writers such as Kevin Fagan, Eleanor Barraclough, Saad T. Farooqi, Charlotte Wood, and more. Take care, and as always, thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
Joan Silverman reviewed Jennifer Finney Boylan’s Cleavagefor the Portland Press Herald.
Irina Dumitrescu reviewed Lea Ypi’s Free: Coming of Age at the End of History for the New York Review of Books. And in her column in the TLS, she wrote about a 13th-century romance’s depiction of a government takeover as well as about novels about the publishing industry.
Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed Julie Gilbert’s Giant Lovefor the TLS.
Jason Berry reviewed Pope Francis’ Hopefor the National Catholic Reporter.
Hollay Ghadery reviewed Pamela Mulloy’s Off the Tracks: A Meditation on Train Journeys in a Time of No Travel for Heavy Feather Review.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Lauren LeBlanc wrote about Tove Jansson’s trip to the U.S. for The Atlantic.
Rhoda Feng reviewed Imani Perry’s Black in Bluesfor Frieze.
Meg Lemke compiled a preview of comics and graphic novels coming in the spring for Publishers Weekly.
Joan Frank reviewed Allegra Goodman’s Isola for The Washington Post.
Nell Beram reviewed four books for Shelf Awareness: Penitence by Kristin Koval; Pretend We’re Dead: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Women in Rock in the ’90s by Tanya Pearson; Rogues and Scholars: A History of the London Art World: 1945-2000 by James Stourton; and Wild West Village: Not a Memoir (Unless I Win an Oscar, Die Tragically, or Score a Country #1) by Lola Kirke.
NBCC board member Tobias Carroll wrote about some January books in translation for Words Without Borders.
Bill Thompson reviewed Sweet Nothings: Confessions of a Candy Lover by Sarah Perry for the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier.
Carol Iaciofano Aucoin reviewed Tova Mirvis’ We Would Never for WBUR’s Arts & Culture.
Former NBCC Board Member Mark Athitakis reviewed Olivia Wolfgang-Smith’s Mutual Interest for The Washington Post.
Kai Maristed reviewed Darkenbloom, written by Eva Menasse and translated from the German by Charlotte Collins, for The Arts Fuse.
Celia McGee reviewed Jane Austen’s Bookshelf: A Rare Book Collector’s Quest To Find the Women Writers Who Shaped a Legend by Rebecca Romney, for Air Mail.
Member Interviews
Paul Wilner interviewed Kevin Fagan, author of The Lost and the Found: A True Story of Homelessness, Found Family and Second Chances, for the San Francisco Examiner.
At Vol. 1 Brooklyn, NBCC board member Tobias Carroll spoke with Christina Cooke about her novel Broughtupsy, and for InsideHook, he talked with Stephen Harrison about Wikipedia and his novel The Editors, and with Eleanor Barraclough about her book Embers of the Hands.
Hollay Ghadery interviewed authors Ayelet Tsabari, Jamie Tennant, Saad T. Farooqi, Gloria Blizzard, and Louise Ells for the New Books Network.
Eric Olson profiled Charlotte Wood for Literary Hub.
Sean Carlson’s interview with Erin Fornoff (We Are an Archipelago, 2025, Salmon Poetry) and Gustav Parker Hibbett (High Jump as Icarus Story, 2024, Banshee Press; shortlisted for the 2024 T.S. Eliot Prize) on their experiences growing up in the U.S. and writing poetry in Ireland, was published in The Common.
For their Book Cougars podcast, NBCC member Chris Wolak and Emily Fine spoke with Pulitzer Prize winner Megan Marshall about her new memoir, After Lives: On Biography and the Mysteries of the Human Heart.
Costa Beavin Pappas interviewed the author of She Wore Red Trainers, Na’ima B. Robert, on pioneering the halal romance genre in the U.K. for CairoScene.
Member News
Louisiana State University Press has published The Complete Poems by Wendy Barker. Steven G. Kellman, a former NBCC board member and recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing, edited and contributed the afterword to this sumptuous collection by his late, beloved wife, Wendy.
Meg Lemke is one of four people to win the inaugural CBC Graphic Novel Advocate Award.
Former board member Lori Feathers and her fellow judges for the 2024 Republic of Consciousness Prize, US & Canada invite everyone to a virtual Zoom party where indie publishers, authors, and translators will discuss their longlisted titles for the 2024 prize on Feb. 19 at 7 a.m. Eastern.
Charlotte Gray reviewed NBCC member Rebecca Brenner Graham’s Dear Miss Perkins: A Story of Frances Perkins’s Efforts to Aid Refugees from Nazi Germany for The Wall Street Journal. Rebecca was also profiled in Contingent Magazine.
Elizabeth Rosner was interviewed on Elevation with John Kelly on Sirius U2-X Radio. The interview can be downloaded here.
Clea Simon was interviewed about her upcoming novel The Butterfly Trap by Alan Warren for the House of Mystery Radio on NBC podcast.
Edna Bonhomme’s A History of the World in Six Plagues will be published on March 11, 2025, by Simon & Schuster (North America), Dialogue Books (UK), and Ullstein Verlag (Germany) to mark the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdown. The book examines humanity’s approach to pandemic diseases, taking readers on a journey across different places and times, from Port-au-Prince to Tanzania and plantation-era America to today’s COVID-19-affected world. It reveals shocking truths about the patterns of discrimination in response to disease, highlighting the current global health crisis.
“Card Catalog” by stantontcady is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.