Friends, we hope you’re having a good December so far! Our members have been keeping busy with reviews of books by authors including Ella Baxter, Fabienne Josaphat, Lily Tuck, Damion Searls, Weike Wang, and more, and interviews with writers like mónica teresa ortiz, Juhea Kim, Julie Salverson, and Marcia Clark. As always, thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
Former NBCC board member and recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Steven G. Kellman reviewed Amanda Jones’ That Librarianfor The Blood Pudding.
Nicole Yurcaba reviewed Ella Baxter’s Woo Woo for Heavy Feather Review.
Former NBCC board member Anita Felicelli wrote about accessing the unconscious in fiction for Literary Hub.
Shani R. Friedman reviewed Susan Seidelman’s Desperately Seeking Somethingfor TC Jewfolk.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Lauren LeBlanc wrote about 2023 PEN/Bellwether winner Fabienne Josaphat’s Kingdom of No Tomorrow for the Los Angeles Times.
An essay by Erika Dreifus, “An Open Letter to the Editor of The New York Times Book Review,” appeared in Judith magazine.
Clea Simon reviewed Lily Tuck’s The Rest Is Memory, and wrote an op-ed about how to talk to a cancer patient, for The Boston Globe.
Bruce Krajewski reviewed Damion Searls’ The Philosophy of Translation for the Los Angeles Review of Books.
Brian Tanguay reviewed Fergus M. Bordewich’s Klan War: Ulysses S. Grant and the Battle to Save Reconstruction for the California Review of Books.
For the Los Angeles Times, Ilana Masad reviewed Those Opulent Days by Jacqui Pham and Stranger Than Fiction: Lives of the Twentieth-Century Novel by Edwin Frank; for them, Masad wrote about six favorite books of 2024; and for The Boston Globe, Masad reviewed This Is Why We Can’t Have Nice Things by Naomi Wood.
Joyce Sáenz Harris reviewed Julie Gilbert’s Giant Lovefor The Dallas Morning News.
Kristen Martin reviewed David Rowell’s The Endless Refrain and Ella Baxter’s Woo Woo for The Washington Post.
Nell Beram reviewed two books for Shelf Awareness: Giant Love: Edna Ferber, Her Best-Selling Novel of Texas, and the Making of a Classic American Film by Julie Gilbert and A Town Without Time: Gay Talese’s New York by Gay Talese.
Sean Carlson’s short essay, “Soft Approach,” was published by The New York Times in Sunday’s Metropolitan Diary column.
Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed Damir Karakaš’ Celebration, translated by Ellen Elias-Bursac, for Asymptote.
Carol Iaciofano Aucoin reviewed Weike Wang’s novel Rental House for WBUR’s Arts & Culture.
Jake Casella Brookins reviewed Seth Dickinson’s Exordia for Seize the Press, and Eden Robins’ Remember You Will Die for Locus.
Member Interviews
Laura Villareal interviewed Brent Ameneyro on his debut poetry collection, A Face Made of Clay, and mónica teresa ortiz on their latest book of provocation for Letras Latinas Blog 2.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Jane Ciabattari’s Literary Hub conversation with Juhea Kim, author of City of Night Birds, focuses on isolation, ballet, and writing.
Hollay Ghadery interviewed acclaimed author Julie Salverson about her new book, A Necessary Distance: Confessions of a Script Writer’s Daughter, on NBN’s Canadian Studies podcast.
Jake Casella Brookins talked to author and Gothic scholar Jon Greenaway about Sarah Perry’s Melmoth for the podcast A Meal of Thorns.
Anne Charles interviewed writer/artist/teacher Amy Hoffman on the Vermont cable-access show All Things LGBTQ. They discussed two of Hoffman’s early memoirs: Hospital Time, about Hoffman’s caregiving of a friend with AIDS, and An Army of Ex-Lovers, an account of her involvement with the Boston-based publication Gay Community News.
Jenny Shank did a podcast/video recording with Greg Wolfe, the editor of Slant Books, on his Slant Cast program to discuss A.G. Mojtabai’s new book, Featherless.
For their Book Cougars podcast NBCC member Chris Wolak and Emily Fine spoke with playwright Laura Thoma about her new Christmas play, Miss Margaret’s Barton Cottage Christmas Surprise, and with Marcia Clark about her new nonfiction book, Trial by Ambush.
Sarah Dowling interviewed Amber Jamilla Musser about her book Between Shadows and Noise: Sensation, Situatedness, and the Undisciplined for Mid Theory Collective.
Member News
Margot Douaihy’s second crime novel, Blessed Water, was named a New York Times Best Crime Novel of 2024.
Former NBCC board member Anita Felicelli’s How We Know Our Time Travelers: Storieswas published by WTAW Press on Dec. 3.
Nancy Naomi Carlson’s translation of Djiboutian writer Abdourahman A. Waberi’s When We Only Have the Earth is forthcoming from the African Poetry Book series (University of Nebraska Press), edited by Kwame Dawes. Chris Abani writes: “In this wonderful collection we encounter a poet who moves deftly from the political to the intimate with an impressive sense of play. There is a tone to the work, carried over into this remarkable translation, of the studied, sharp, witty, and yet poignant ways in which French language writers approach the world.”
Chris Barsanti has a new chapbook, A Minnesota Book(ish) Miscellany, available from Rain Taxi.
Elizabeth Rosner was interviewed by Mitzi Rapkin for her First Draft podcast.