Friends, we hope you’ve been doing well! This past week, our members have been keeping busy reviewing books by authors including Drew Gilpin Faust, Angie Kim, Stephen Kearse, Yunte Huang, and Don Paterson, and interviewing writers like Farah Karim-Cooper and Ruth Madievsky. Stay safe and cool out there, and as always, thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC Emerging Critic Fellow Jenessa Abrams reviewed Mothers’ Instinct, written by Barbara Abel and translated by Susan Pickford, for Words Without Borders.
Farooz Rather wrote an essay about Anuk Arudprgasam’s novel A Passage North and South Asian war fiction for Public Books.
Former NBCC board member Mary Ann Gwinn reviewed Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury by Drew Gilpin Faust for the Los Angeles Times.
Hamilton Cain reviewed Angie Kim’s Happiness Fallsfor The Washington Post.
NBCC Vice President/Fundraising Anita Felicelli reviewed William J. Mann’s Bogie and Bacall: The Surprising True Story of Hollywood’s Greatest Love Affair for Alta. Also in the magazine, Anita writes about taking a trip to Ken Kesey’s former house and Sometimes a Great Notion.
Jake Casella Brookins reviewed Liquid Snakes by Stephen Kearse for the Chicago Review of Books.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Jess Walter’s The Angel of Romeand Spencer Quinn’s Mrs. Plansky’s Revengefor BookTrib.
Michael Malone reviewed Margot Douaihy’s Scorched Grace for The Examiner News of Pleasantville, N.Y.
For Air Mail, where she is now a contributing writer, Celia McGee reviewed Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang and The Brightest Star by Gail Tsukiyama.
Daneet Steffens reviewed Don Paterson’s Toy Fightsfor The Boston Globe.
Nell Beram reviewed three books for Shelf Awareness: Better than Sane: Tales from a Dangling Girl by Alison Rose; Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang; and Miss Morton and the Spirits of the Underworld by Catherine Lloyd.
Patricia Schultheis reviewed Necessary Trouble: Growing Up at Midcentury by Drew Gilpin Faust for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Dan Kubis reviewed Don Paterson’s Toy Fights for the Chicago Review of Books.
Claude Peck reviewed Emma Donoghue’s Learned by Heartfor the Minneapolis Star Tribune.
Joyce Sáenz Harris wrote about Ruth J. Simmons’ Up Homefor The Dallas Morning News.
Ann Fabian reviewed Daughter of the Dragon: Anna May Wong’s Rendezvous with American History by Yunte Huang for The National Book Review.
Member Interviews
Meena Venkataramanan talked to Farah Karim-Cooper about The Great White Bard: How to Love Shakespeare While Talking About Race for The Washington Post.
Betsy Groban wrote a “Story Behind the Book” piece for The Boston Globe about Kaija Langley and her novel-in-verse The Order of Things.
Sasha Vasilyuk interviewed Ruth Madievsky, author of All-Night Pharmacy, for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
For their podcast Across the Pond, former NBCC board member Lori Feathers and co-host Sam Jordison talked to Frances Riddle about her translation of Claudia Pineiro’s A Little Luck, and graphic artist and writer Rian Hughes on his “novel, graphic,” The Black Locomotive.
Member News
Tiffany Troy’s debut poetry collection, Dominus, will be published by BlazeVOX [books] on Sept. 18.
This week, Storey will publish former NBCC board member Tess Taylor’s Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens & the Hands That Tend Them, which features a diverse range of contemporary voices offering poems that celebrate that joyful connection to the natural world. Poets include Ross Gay, Jericho Brown, Mark Doty, Jane Hirshfield, Ada Limón, Danusha Laméris, Naomi Shihab Nye, Garrett Hongo, Ellen Bass, and James Crews. It also features a foreword by Aimee Nezhukumatathil, reflective pauses, and personal recipes from some of the contributing poets, along with original, whimsical illustrations by Melissa Castrillon.
Rebecca Foust won the 2023 New Ohio Review Prize for Poetry with her poem “Has this happened to you,” and her book Only (Four Way Books) won a Silver Medal in the 2023 IPPY Awards.
“typewriter” by Bob Doran is licensed under CC BY 2.0.