Critical Notes

New Reviews and More From NBCC Members

By Jennie Hann

Member Reviews/Essays

NBCC board member Anita Felicelli reviewed Meron Hadero’s A Down Home Meal for These Troubled Times for Alta and Ottessa Moshfegh’s Lapvona for The Washington Post.

Kitty Kelley reviewed Undelivered: The Never-Heard Speeches that Would Have Rewritten History by Jeff Nussbaum for the Washington Independent Review of Books.

Julia M. Klein profiled Efren Olivares in connection with his memoir, My Boy Will Die of Sorrow, for The Pennsylvania Gazette.

Theodore Kinni reviewed Decision Leadership: Empowering Others to Make Better Choices by Don A. Moore and Max H. Bazerman for strategy+business.

Chris Barsanti reviewed James Kirchick’s Secret City for PopMatters. He also reviewed the graphic novels The High Desert by James Spooner, Keeping Two by Jordan Crane, and Acting Class by Nick Drnaso for the Minneapolis Star-Tribune.

John Domini reviewed Bitter Orange Tree by Jokha Alharthi, translated from the Arabic by Marilyn Booth, for Words Without Borders.

Abby Walthausen reviewed What is Now Known Was once Only Imagined: An (Auto)biography of Niki de Saint Phalle by Nicole Rudick for The Rupture.

R.J. Heller reviewed both Take It Easy: Portland in the 1970s by John Duncan and From the Mountains to the Sea: The Historic Restoration of the Penobscot River, edited by Peter Taylor, for four newspapers in downeast Maine.

Dana Wilde reviewed Bill Roorbach’s novel Lucky Turtle for his “Off Radar” column for Central Maine Newspapers.

Cory Oldweiler reviewed Sudhir Venkatesh’s The Tomorrow Game for The Boston Globe.

Meg Waite Clayton’s latest Bay City Books column includes new books by Kristin Chen, Asa Reid, Danielle Steel, Dallas Woodburn, Jane Kuo, and the late Anthony Veasna So.

Leanne Phillips reviewed Surf and Rescue: George Freeth and the Birth of California Beach Culture by Patrick Moser for Kelp Journal.

Christoph Irmscher reviewed Nate Schweber’s This America Of Ours: Bernard and Avis DeVoto and the Forgotten Fight to Save the Wild for The Wall Street Journal.

Rhoda Feng reviewed the plays for colored girls who have considered suicide/when the rainbow is enuf and Suffs in the summer issue of Liber.

Member Interviews

NBCC board member Anita Felicelli interviewed Mat Johnson about his new novel, Invisible Things, for Alta.

For Literary Hub, NBCC VP/Events Jane Ciabattari interviewed Joseph Han about his first novel, Nuclear Family, which he calls “an occasion to remember and resist, and hopefully to push for peace and healing in an increasingly militarized world.”

Member News

Dean Rader has a poem in the July issue of Poetry and is interviewed by Marissa Ahmadkhani in the new issue of The West Review.

Partner News

The PEN/Faulkner Foundation has announced the addition of four new directors, including former NBCC board members Jabari Asim and Clay Smith, NBCC member Martha Anne Toll, and Jojo Ruf.

“Extra” photo by NBCC member Lanie Tankard. Used with permission.

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