Critical Notes

Bookbabes Ellen Heltzel and Margo Hammond will launch their new book, “Between the Covers: The Book Babes’ Guide to a Woman’s Reading Pleasures” at Inkwood Books in Tampa, Fl, on

NBCC board member Geeta Sharma-Jensen on “Home,” in which NBCC award winner Marilynne Robinson returns to “Gilead.” (Heads up: Marilynne Robinson, NBCC fiction award winner Bharati Mukherjee, and NBCC fiction

NBCC member and San Antonio playwright Gregg Barrios has a hit in Provincetown with his “Rancho Pancho” play, about Tennessee Williams and Pancho Rodriguez (pictured here in P-town’s Atlantic House

NBCC board member Geeta Sharma-Jensen talks to Daphne Beal. Former NBCC president John Freeman talks to the BBC about David Foster Wallace. And finds Julian Barnes’s new memoir “barbarously intelligent.”

David L. Ulin heard of the death of David Foster Wallace while in New York for an NBCC board meeting. He wrote this appreciation. Former NBCC board member J. Peder

Next week NBCC member Matt Weiland and his coeditor Sean Wilsey publish State by State: A Panoramic Portrait of America,” a 21st century take on updating the WPA writers guide

In the Chicago Tribune, NBCC member Donna Seaman reviews Peter Ferry’s Travel Writing. Meanwhile in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, NBCC member Steve Weinberg takes on New York Times columnist David Carr’s

NBCC board member David L. Ulin speaks about the annoying “embargo” question. NBCC member Donna Seaman finds Peter Ferry’s new novel, “Travel Writing,” “funny, poignant,” and more. Former NBCC prez

Several weeks back the Chicago Tribune book section, edited by NBCC board member Elizabeth Taylor, took a savvy appoach to inevitable change, soliciting reader suggestions. Among the 1,000-plus responses was