Freinds, we’d like to remind you that the NBCC Awards are coming up soon! We still have tickets available for the finalists reading on March 19 and awards ceremony and reception on March 20, but they won’t last long, so get yours here while you still can!
Also, be sure to mark your calendars for April 17, when NBCC board members Marie Myung-Ok Lee, Rebecca Morgan Frank, Jonathan Leal, and Rishi Reddi will be participating in the panel discussion “Everyone’s a Critic: Working Writers and Working Criticism” at Columbia University. This event is sponsored by the Asian American Diasporic Writers Series at the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and the Columbia University School of the Arts Writing MFA Program. RSVP here!
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Jenessa Abrams wrote about Shayne Terry’s Leave: A Postpartum Account for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
George Yatchisin reviewed Stuart Murdoch’s Nobody’s Empire for the California Review of Books.
NBCC Vice President/Membership and Technology Rebecca Hussey, with co-hosts Frances Evangelista and Dorian Stuber, discussed Han Kang’s novel We Do Not Part, translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyah Morris, for the One Bright Book podcast.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed The Unworthy, written by Agustina Bazterrica and translated from the Spanish by Sarah Moses, for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Jake Casella Brookins reviewed Leyna Krow’s Sinkhole, and Other Inexplicable Voids for Locus.
Charles Green reviewed Ricky Ian Gordon’s Seeing Through: A Chronicle of Sex, Drugs, and Opera for The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Lauren LeBlanc reviewed Karen Russell’s The Antidotefor the Los Angeles Times.
Ryan Chapman wrote about Jeremy Gordon’s See Friendship for The New York Times Book Review.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Georgia Hunter’s One Good Thing for the Los Angeles Times.
Heller McAlpin reviewed a balm for our times, Chloe Dalton’s Raising Hare, for The Christian Science Monitor, and Robert Seethaler’s The Café With No Name for The Wall Street Journal.
Kurt Baumeister reviewed Lyle Rexer’s The Book of Crow for The Brooklyn Rail.
Anne Charles reviewed Fathers and Fugitives by S.J. Naude for The Gay & Lesbian Review Worldwide.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Suzanne Nelson’s The Librarians of Lisbon and William Boyle’s Saint of the Narrows Street for BookTrib.
Maryanne Hannan reviewed Amy Frykholm’s High Hawks for the Englewood Review of Books and Richard Rohr’s The Tears of Things: Prophetic Wisdom for an Age of Outragefor Today’s American Catholic.
Claude Peck reviewed The Human Scale by Lawrence Wright for The Minnesota Star Tribune.
Julia Flynn Siler, who is spending this spring at Oxford University, reviewed Gary Krist’s Trespassers at the Golden Gate for The Wall Street Journal.
Member Interviews
Zelda Zerkel Morris spoke with Sasha Vasilyuk about her debut novel, Your Presence is Mandatory, for The National Book Review.
Eric Olson interviewed Karen Russell and Matt Dinniman for The Seattle Times.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Jane Ciabattari’s Literary Hub conversation with Emma Pattee about her first novel, Tilt, focuses on imagining the devastating aftermath of the Big One in Portland, Oregon.
The Rumpus published “Of Black Milk, Black Bodies, and Accepting the Muchness in Lyrical Poetry: A Conversation with Tiana Clark” by Tiffany Troy about Clark’s latest collection, Scorched Earth.
Grant Faulkner interviewed Tom Perrotta on the Write-minded podcast about the suburban novel and the ways Tracy Flick has changed with time, among other subjects.
Adam M. Lowenstein interviewed Catherine Bracy about her forthcoming book, World Eaters: How Venture Capital Is Cannibalizing the Economy, for his newsletter, Reframe Your Inbox.
Jake Casella Brookins interviewed critic & editor Eden Kupermintz about the legacy of J.R.R. Tolkien’s The Silmarillion on the podcast A Meal of Thorns.
Member News
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Hannah Bonner will be reading at Five & Dime NYC with filmmaker and poet Lynne Sachs on Friday, March 21, at 8 p.m. You can RSVP here.
Edna Bonhomme’s debut nonfiction book, A History of the World in Six Plagues, will be published by One Signal/Simon & Schuster on March 11, 2025, to mark the fifth anniversary of the COVID-19 lockdown. The book explores how confinement has shaped the ebb and flow of epidemics such as cholera, HIV/AIDS, the Spanish Flu, sleeping sickness, Ebola, and COVID-19, while recounting literary and philosophical perspectives on captivity. Edna is embarking on a Northeast book tour with events at the New York Public Library, Making World Bookstore, and the New York Historical Society. You can learn more on Edna’s website.
Jeanne Bonner’s translation, This Darkness Will Never End, a short story collection written in Italian by Hungarian-born writer Edith Bruck, will be published by Paul Dry Books on April 22. Jeanne won a National Endowment for the Arts Literature in Translation grant for the project. The collection portrays in colorful detail the lives of poor Hungarian Jews before, during and after World War II, with the Holocaust alternately looming ahead as a fate that can’t be avoided or as the horror that can’t be outrun.
Yana Kane’s translations of four poems by a contemporary Ukrainian poet, Dmitry Blizniuk, appeared in The Los Angeles Review.
Toad Press selected diamond & rust by Catalina Vergara, translated by Tiffany Troy, as one of its International Chapbook series selections.
Former NBCC board member Rod Davis’s Korea-based post-war novel, The Life of Kim and the Behavior of Men, has been announced as a Foreword INDIES Book of the Year Awards finalist in the military fiction category. Foreword INDIES and Foreword Clarion Reviews provide trade book reviews of the best titles from independent presses.
Kristin Dykstra’s book, Dissonance, has just been published by the University of Chicago Press; it is the winner of the Phoenix Emerging Poet Book Prize. Kristin also recently published a translation of The Star-Spangled Brand, by Marcelo Morales (Cuba). This bilingual edition includes not only the first rendition of the work in English, but the first publication of the work in the original Spanish.
Kurt Baumeister’s second novel, Twilight of the Gods, was reviewed by Hugh Sheehy at Vol. 1 Brooklyn and John Schertzer at Big Other. Kurt will have a launch reading and Q&A with Christine Sneed for the novel at Village Well Books on March 12 in Los Angeles (Culver City).
Nicole Graev Lipson’s memoir in essays, Mothers and Other Fictional Characters, was published by Chronicle Books on March 4.
Jamie Brown has put on his publisher’s hat at The Broadkill River Press to announce the publication of Erie, Pennsylvania, poet Ronald Wilson’s first collection of poetry, Gridley Park. Jamie will be happy to send a review copy to fellow members who request one via email.
Robert L. Giron was recently named a member of the Texas Institute of Letters.
Clea Simon’s The Butterfly Trap was reviewed by the Bookblog of the Bristol Public Library (Bristol, VA), which “found it most readable” and “was reluctant to put it down…. Recommended for anyone who likes relationship suspense with strong characters and a good sense of place.”