Critical Notes

Reviews and More from NBCC Members

By David Varno

Photo of wall-to-ceiling bookcases

Dear NBCC Friends,
 
Please join us in a hearty congratulations to Ryan Ruby and Parul Sehgal, winners of the second annual Silvers-Dudley prizes for literary criticism. Ruby is an NBCC member, and Sehgal won the NBCC’s Balakian prize for criticism in 2011.
 
Reviews
 
Priscilla Gilman reviewed Sam by Allegra Goodman for the Boston Globe.

Lauren LeBlanc wrote an essay on literary mentors and Darryl Pinckney’s memoir Come Back in September for the Atlantic.

Former NBCC Board member Mark Athitakis reviewed Michael Tau’s Extreme Music: From Silence to Noise and Everything in Between for On the Seawall.
 
Rebecca Morgan Frank reviewed K. Ivers Short Film Starring My Beloved’s Red Bronco and Matthew Donovan’s The Dug-Up Gun Museum for the Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books.
 
Julia Lichtblau reviewed Arinze Ifeakandu’s God’s Children Are Little Broken Things for The Common
 
Julia M. Klein reviewed Sarah Gristwood’s The Tudors in Love for the Boston Globe.
 
Amy Reardon reviewed Anca L. Szilágyi’s Dreams Under Glass for Barrelhouse.
 
Mary Maxwell reviewed Grace Schulman’s Again, The Dawn: New and Selected Poems, 1976-2022 for On the Seawall.
 
Beatrice Szymkowiak reviewed of the poetry collection Swallowed Light by Michael Wasson for Under a Warm Green Linden. 
 
Anne Charles reviewed I Lay This Body Down: The Transatlantic Life of Rosey E. Pool by Lonneke Geerlings for The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide.
 
Cassandra Whitaker reviewed Jos Charles’s A Year and Other Poems for Plume.
 
Tamara MC reviewed in Daniella Mestyanek Young’s Uncultured for Diagram and interviewed the author for BOMB.
 
Jay Gabler reviewed Rae Meadows’s novel Winterland and Bruce Berglund’s history The Fastest Game in the World: Hockey and the Globalization of Sports for the Duluth News Tribune.
 
Elizabeth Tucker reviewed The Bureau of Past Management by Iris Hanika, translated by Abigail Wender, for On the Seawall.
 
Jeffrey Mannix reviewed Sugar Street by Jonathan Dee for his Murder Ink column in the Durango Telegraph.
 
Ron Slate reviewed Jersey Breaks, a memoir by Robert Pinsky, and American Wildflowers: A Literary Field Guide edited by Susan Barba for On The Seawall.
 
Michael Quinn reviewed Paulina Porizkova’s No Filter: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful for The Red Hook Star-Revue.
 
Board member Ruben Quesada reviewed six books for the Harvard Review
 
Nell Beram reviewed The American Way: A True Story of Nazi Escape, Superman, and Marilyn Monroe by Helene Stapinski and Bonnie Siegler; Mid-Century Modern Furniture by Dominic Bradbury; Roald Dahl: Teller of the Unexpected by Matthew Dennison; and This Is Tomorrow: Twentieth-Century Britain and Its Artists by Michael Bird for Shelf Awareness.
 
Interviews
 
Jeff Alessandrelli talked with Daniel Levin Becker for Berfrois and Kelly Krumrie for The Adroit Journal.
 
Former board member Tom Beer interviewed Tom Crewe about his debut novel, The New Life, for Kirkus Reviews.
 
Trisha Collopy spoke with Nina LaCour and Kelly Barnhill for Rain Taxi.
 
Member News
 
Lisa Peet has been named executive editor of Library Journal
 
Ruben Quesada published the anthology Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry. On February 3, Quesada will join the Poetry Foundation for a virtual and in-person event to launch the book.

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Photo by Chelsea Leu