Critical Notes

Roundup 6

By Jane Ciabattari

PW profiles former NBCC president John Freeman, “book review crusader,” focusing in part for his NBCC work in the Campaign to Save Book Reviewing.

Janice Harayda talks to the Newark Star-Ledger blog about being a book blogger, WordPress, her Mitch Albom post, the Delete Key awards, and more.

Scott McLemee examines the Bill Clinton issues Susan Wise Bauer raises in “The Art of the Public Grovel: Sexual Sin and Public Confession in America.”

Amitav Ghosh tells WNYC’s Leonard Lopate the his “Sea of Poppies” is just the beginning of his Ibis trilogy. “This is my project for my next ten, fifteen, twenty years,” he says. (Read the first chapter of “Sea of Poppies” here.)

Laura Miller tends her bookshelf. And talks to David Ulin next Wednesday in LA about her new Narnia book, “The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia.”

Joshua Cohen spends five days focused on Kafka’s “Office Writings.”

Harriet blog at the Poetry Foundation website considers Kevin Prufer and Wayne Miller’s “New European Poets.” Prufer, an NBCC board member, moderates a panel on January 23, 2009:

January 23, 2009, 7 pm Housing Works Bookstore Café.
Poetry in Translation panel: Has the US Lost Touch with World Literature?

Panelists Esther Allen, translator, co-director of PEN World Voices,author of International PEN report on Translation and Globalization;Yvette Chrisianse, South African poet, novelist, professor; Elizabeth Macklin, poet, translator from Basque of Uribe; Jill Schoolman, Director of Archipelago Books; Karen Emmerich, translator of NBCC award finalist Miltos Sachtouris, among other Greek writers.

NBCC Balakian awardee Wyatt Mason reacts to his mail after blogging about “A Canticle for Leibowitz.”

Robin Hemley reflects on Yamashita’s Treasure.

John Domini admires the clarity of DeWitt Henry’s “Safe Suicide.”

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