Reminder: NBCC at Virginia Fall for the Book Thursday night, September 22, and NBCC at The New School Friday night, September 23. Details:
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 22
NBCC at Fall for the Book Thursday, September 22
On September 22, NBCC board member Marcela Valdes will lead a discussion on the popularity and significance of autobiography at George Mason University's Fall for the Book festival. Three authors (including one NBCC award winner) will attend; they are:
Peter Manseau is the author the memoir Vows: The Story of a Priest, a Nun, and Their Son; the novel Songs for the Butcher’s Daughter; and most recently Rag and Bone: A Journey Among the World’s Holy Dead. He has won the National Jewish Book Award, the Sophie Brody Medal for Outstanding Achievement in Jewish Literature, and the Ribalow Prize for Fiction, and he was shortlisted for the Mercantile Library First Novel Award. He is also a founding editor of KillingTheBuddha.com and coauthor of Killing the Buddha: A Heretic’s Bible.
E. Ethelbert Miller is the author of several collections of poems; his most recent, How We Sleep On The Nights We Don’t Make Love, was an Independent Publisher Award Finalist. His memoir Fathering Words: The Making of An African American Writer was selected by DC WE READ for its one book, one city program sponsored by the D.C. Public Libraries, and in his most recent memoir, The 5th Inning, Miller returns to “baseball, the game of his youth, in order to find the metaphor that will provide the measurement of his life.”
Ariel Sabar’s debut book, My Father’s Paradise: A Son’s Search for his Family’s Past, won the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. His second book, Heart of the City, was published this year. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Washington Monthly, and other publications.
Panel moderator Marcela Valdes is the books editor of The Washington Examiner and a contributing editor for Publishers Weekly. She writes for The Nation, The Washington Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Los Angeles Times, The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Believer, and Bookforum, among other publications. She was a founder of Críticas, the English-language magazine devoted to Spanish-language books. She is now serving her second term on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle.
The NBCC panel discussion takes place on Thursday, September 22, at 6 p.m. in Student Union Building II, Rooms 3, 4 and 5.
FRIDAY, SEPTEMBER 23
NBCC award honorees Darin Strauss, Lynne Tillman, David Hajdu talk about how New York City inspires them:
URBAN MIRRORS
The National Book Critics Circle and The New School present
NEW YORK, NEW YORK (AND BROOKLYN AND THE BRONX)
Friday, September 23rd
6: 30 p.m., Tishman Auditorium.The New School
66 West 12th St New York, NY
A reading/conversation with NBCC award finalists and winners whose lives in the New York metropolitan area are reflected in their prose.
Moderated by Jane Ciabattari, NBCC VP/Onlne, former NBCC president
A recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship, Lynne Tillman is a novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic. Her novels include “Haunted Houses,” “Motion Sickness,” and “No Lease on Life,” a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Fiction and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. Tillman has published three nonfiction books, including an essay collection,”The Broad Picture,” as well as four story collections, including “Absence Makes the Heart” and, most recently, “Someday This Will Be Funny.” She is currently writing a column for Frieze magazine. Recently, EBR published a casebook on her most recent novel, American Genuis, A Comedy.”
A recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, Darin Strauss is the author of the novels “Chang & Eng,” “The Real McCoy,” and “More Than It Hurts You,” and the National Book Critics Circle award-winning memoir “Half a Life”. These have been New York Times Notable Books, Newsweek, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Chicago Tribune, and NPR Best Books of the Year, and Darin has been translated into fourteen languages and published in nineteen countries. He is a Clinical Associate Professor at NYU's creative writing program.
David Hajdu is the longtime music critic for The New Republic and a professor at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where he teaches a seminar in arts and culture. He is the author of four books, three of which were finalists for the National Book Critics Circle Award: “Lush Life: A Biography of Billy Strayhorn,” “Positively 4th Street: The Lives and Times of Joan Baez, Bob Dylan, Mimi Baez Farina and Richard Farina,” and “Heroes and Villains: Essays on Music, Movies, Comics and Culture.” He has lived in Manhattan since 1974, when he came from New Jersey to attend NYU.