Critical Notes

Roundup 20

By Jane Ciabattari

NBCC Reads at The Daily Beast.

VQR editor Ted Genoways makes a persuasive argument for university presses and journals, as the LSU press is in danger.

Ben Greenman celebrates “Please Step Back” tomorrow in Brooklyn. (See him on the NBCC panel at the BEA later this month.) And tomorrow at noon, “Lit and Lunch” at 111 Minna Gallery in San Francisco welcomes translator Karen Emmerich.

Paul Charles Griffin on “Gods and Soldiers.”

Geeta Sharma Jensen talks to moms who write: Milwaukee poet laureate Susan Firer, fiction writers Abby Frucht, Alice Mattison, A. Manette Ansay, and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni.

Peter Schiff, YouTube star and author of “Crash Proof,” @Google, says “Crash Proof 2.0” coming in the fall.

John Beckman’s Wellbutrin “vacation.”

NPR’s Dick Adler’s Top 100 novels.

NBCC member Robin Hemley blogging on his “Do-Over” book, book blockade in the Philippines (via his McSweeney’s piece), authors’ disasters on tour, here. (Dinty Moore’s disastrous book tour post today.)

Nigel Beale on Noel Carroll’s “On Criticism.”

Karen Vanuska discovers Jakov Lind’s “Landscape in Concrete.”

Joe Peschel’s take on Geoff Dyer’s “Jeff in Venice, Death in Varanasi.”

Duck, duck, quack! Art Winslow on Foie Gras Wars.