Members and friends, we hope you’ve been staying warm this winter, with plenty of books to keep you company! Our critics have been keeping busy with reviews of books by authors including Sheila Heti, Margot Livesey, Venita Blackburn, V. V. Ganeshananthan, and more. Remember that our NBCC Awards are coming up next month, and you can still get tickets here—and as always, thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
Celine Nguyen reviewed Sheila Heti’s Alphabetical Diaries for ArtReview.
Joan Frank reviewed Roxana Robinson’s Leaving for The Washington Post.
NBCC board member David Woo reviewed seven poetry books at Literary Hub, including titles by Gregory Pardlo, Dorianne Laux, and Tracy Fuad.
Miriam O’Neal reviewed Brian Turner’s the wild delight of wild things for Microlit Almanac.
Former NBCC President Laurie Hertzel reviewed Margot Livesey’s The Road From Belhaven for The Washington Post, and David Finkel’s An American Dreamer for the Star Tribune.
For Colorado Review, Michael Quinn reviewed Live in Suspense by David Groff.
NBCC Vice President/Fundraising Anita Felicelli reviewed Venita Blackburn’s Dead in Long Beach, California, and wrote an essay on the refusal of qualia in Dave Eggers’ The Every, for Alta. (The Alta California Book Club will meet on Feb. 15 with John Freeman to discuss The Every.)
Roxana Robinson wrote about five stories of first love for The Wall Street Journal.
Eric Liebetrau wrote about Calvin Trillin’s The Lede: Dispatches From a Life in the Press and Joan Acocella’s The Bloodied Nightgown: And Other Essaysfor Kirkus Reviews.
Bridget Quinn wrote about art as artificial intelligence and Dave Eggers’ The Every for Alta.
NBCC board member Lauren LeBlanc wrote about the audiobook edition of Michael Cunningham’s novel Day as read by Julianne Moore.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Keren Blankfeld’s Lovers in Auschwitz and Dan Stone’s The Holocaust for the Forward.
George Yatchisin reviewed Susanna Hoff’s This Bird Has Flown and A.K. Blakemore’s The Glutton for the California Review of Books.
RJ Heller reviewed Margie Patlak’s Wild and Wondrous: Nature’s Artistry on the Coast of Maine for the Bangor Daily News.
Jim Schley reviewed Greg Delanty’s The Professor of Forgetting for Seven Days.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed Vicki Sokolik’s If You See Themfor the Star Tribune.
Jake Casella Brookins reviewed Aric McBay’s Inversion for Locus.
Nell Beram reviewed four books for Shelf Awareness: Dear Mom and Dad: A Letter About Family, Memory, and the America We Once Knew by Patti Davis; Owning Up: New Fiction by George Pelecanos; The Reservoir by David Duchovny; and Set for Life by Andrew Ewell.
Brian Tanguay reviewed Brotherless Night by V. V. Ganeshananthan for the California Review of Books.
Member Interviews
Carole V. Burns interviewed Donna Hemans about The House of Plain Truth for Electric Literature.
NBCC Vice President/Fundraising Anita Felicelli interviewed Jonathan Kellerman for Alta.
Anne Charles talked to Richard Schneider, editor and founder of The Gay and Lesbian Review Worldwide, on the occasion of the publication’s 30th anniversary, for the Vermont cable access show All Things LGBTQ.
Member News
Tess Taylor, poet and editor of the best-selling anthology Leaning Toward Light: Poems for Gardens and the Hands That Tend Them, shares the 17-syllable practice that changed her life and the life of hundreds around the U.S with CNN. And at the Getty Museum, Taylor records a bonus episode of her award-winning podcast Intimate Addresses which follows untold stories of artists from the Getty Archives through letters. Catch up with this riveting series before the final episode drops.
Roxana Robinson’s new novel, Leaving, was reviewed at The New York Times, People, and NPR.
Douglas C. MacLeod Jr.’s essay “Film Adaptation, Depoliticization and The Man Without a Face” is featured in the just-released anthology A Critical Companion to Mel Gibson, edited by Adam Barkman and Antonio Sanna and published by Rowman & Littlefield.
The Los Angeles Review of Books and UC Riverside Department of Creative Writing honored former NBCC board member Rigoberto Gonzalez and NBCC fiction honoree Dave Eggers with annual lifetime achievement awards.
“2007-5-12 19-42-02_0007” by keso s is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.