Members and friends, we hope you’re doing well! Our members have been busy this past week with reviews of books by authors including Eric Puchner, Ada Calhoun, Erin Crosby Eckstine, Jeff Hobbs, Edmund White, and more, and with interviews with writers such as Rob Franklin, Paula Whyman, and Amanda Peters. Take care, and thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC lifetime member Fran Hawthorne reviewed Nesting by Roisín O’Donnell for the New York Journal of Books.
Rebecca Ruth Gould wrote about Perfect Victims and the Politics of Appeal by Mohammed El-Kurd and One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This by Omar El Akkad for The Markaz Review.
Otosirieze wrote about the film Conclave and its dangerous narrative about African Catholicism for Open Country Mag.
Kasia Bartoszyńska reviewed Michael Chaouli’s Something Speaks to Me, Jonathan Kramnick’s Criticism and Truth, and Lauren Oyler’s No Judgment for The Point.
Nina Renata Aron reviewed Bread and Milk by Karolina Ramqvist, translated from the Swedish by Saskia Vogel, for Words Without Borders, and Ugliness by Moshtari Hilal, translated from the German by Elisabeth Lauffer, for Dirt.
Joan Frank reviewed Eric Puchner’s Dream State for The Boston Globe, Michelle de Kretser’s Theory & Practice for The Washington Post, and Nicole Graev Lipson’s Mothers and Other Fictional Charactersfor the San Francisco Chronicle.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Lauren LeBlanc reviewed Ada Calhoun’s Crush for The Boston Globe.
Sarah Johnson reviewed Emma Donoghue’s The Paris Express for Booklist and Lauren Willig’s The Girl from Greenwich Street, Erin Crosby Eckstine’s Junie, and Candace Robb’s A Snake in the Barley for the Historical Novels Review.
Tom Peebles reviewed Richard Carwardine’s Righteous Strife: How Warring Religious Nationalists Forged Lincoln’s Union for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Jeff Hobbs’ Seeking Shelter for the Los Angeles Times.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Heather O’Neill’s The Capital of Dreams and Joseph Finder’s The Oligarch’s Daughter for BookTrib.
Michael Bobelian reviewed Jeffrey Toobin’s The Pardonfor The Washington Post.
Martha Anne Toll reviewed Elyse Durham’s Maya & Natashafor Pointe.
George Yatchisin reviewed Adam Chandler’s 99% Perspiration: A New Working History of the American Way of Life for the California Review of Books.
George De Stefano reviewed Edmund White’s The Loves of My Lifefor the New York Journal of Books.
For The Red Hook Star-Revue, Michael Quinn reviewed Giovanna Silva’s photography book, Days Without Number, with a text by Sasha Frere-Jones.
Melissa Holbrook Pierson reviewed Dona Ann McAdams’s Black Box for Hyperallergic.
Bruce Krajewski reviewed Richard Osman’s We Solve Murders for the Dublin Review of Books.
Member Interviews
Former NBCC President Tom Beer interviewed Rob Franklin, author of Great Black Hope, for Kirkus Reviews‘ Debuts Issue.
Martha Anne Toll interviewed Paula Whyman for Vol. 1 Brooklyn.
For The Rumpus, Annell Lopez interviewed NBCC member Roberto Garcia for The Rumpus about his new essay collection, Traveling Freely.
Geoff Graser interviewed poet and NBCC member Lisa Russ Spaar about the paperback publication of her debut novel, Paradise Close, for Publishers Weekly. An unabridged version of the interview is available on Graser’s website.
For her Literary Hub column, NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Jane Ciabattari interviewed Amanda Peters about chronicling the Native experience in her collection Waiting for the Long Night Moon.
Aiden Hunt interviewed poet Kate Colby for the Philly Poetry Chapbook Review.
For the Duluth News Tribune, Jay Gabler interviewed romance author Cassandra Medcalf.
Member News
A poem by NBCC board member and poetry chair David Woo appears in the anthology A Century of Poetry in The New Yorker: 1925-2025.
Former NBCC President and current board member David Varno is now co-editing the Publishers Weekly Picks newsletter with Conner Reed, which contains book recommendations from them and their fellow reviews editors, plus author interviews and features. This week, to honor Black History Month, they rounded up a number of books reviewed in PW that were published this month to mark the occasion. Here’s the link to subscribe.
At the invitation of World Literature Today, for their 15 Books for the 21st Century, 2021–2025 feature, Hélène Cardona nominated Questioning Ireland by Thomas McCarthy.
“Melting into the Stacks” by Laura D’Alessandro is licensed under CC BY 2.0.