Members and friends, we’d like to remind you that applications to our Emerging Critics Fellowships are now open! The NBCC Emerging Critics Program is an interactive, participatory program guided by the philosophy that critical thought can be fostered and enriched through dialogue within a cohort of similarly-interested critics. This is an unpaid mentorship program, with opportunities to publish a review or two during the course of the fellowship year. Apply here by May 10!
Member Reviews/Essays
Michael Quinn reviewed Julie Averbach’s The Art of Trader Joe’s: Discovering the Hidden Art Gems of America’s Favorite Grocery Store for The Village Star-Revue.
Sean Carlson reviewed I Love You So Much It’s Killing Us Both by Mariah Stovall for The Rumpus.
Nancy Naomi Carlson was invited to contribute an “origin story” on how she became a translator by the Poetry Foundation’s new Poets on Translation series.
George Yatchisin reviewed Brian Eno and Bette A.’s What Art Does: An Unfinished Theory for the California Review of Books.
Just published in Image Journal, Martha Anne Toll’s “Ed Simon Takes on Satan: The Devil is in the Details” begins with Toll playing Berlioz in an orchestra, progresses through demonic history with a passing look at Jewish dybbuks, and ends in our “Faustocene Age.” The essay is available online, and you can also download a PDF by clicking this link.
Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed The Café With No Name, written by Robert Seethaler and translated by Katy Derbyshire, for World Literature Today and David Denby’s Eminent Jews: Bernstein, Brooks, Friedan, Mailer for Shelf Awareness.
Nell Beram reviewed four books for Shelf Awareness: John & Paul: A Love Story in Songs by Ian Leslie; Murder by Cheesecake: A Golden Girls Cozy Mystery by Rachel Ekstrom Courage; SMiLE: The Rise, Fall, and Resurrection of Brian Wilson by David Leaf; and What Is Wrong with You? by Paul Rudnick.
NBCC board member Heather Scott Partington reviewed Lydia Millet’s Atavists for the Los Angeles Times and Laila Lalami’s The Dream Hotel for Alta Journal.
Aiden Hunt reviewed Apprentice to a Breathing Hand by Laynie Browne for New Pages.
Lanie Tankard’s review of On the Calculation of Volume (Book I), written by Solvej Balle and translated by Barbara J. Haveland, is featured in the May issue of World Literature Today. The novel is on the shortlist for the 2025 International Booker Prize, with the winner to be announced May 20.
Jennifer Howard published “Home Range,” a personal essay in the literary magazine South 85 about a college road trip she took with her son in the pandemic summer of 2021, under the shadow of her mother’s death and the memory of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Brian Tanguay reviewed Offshore: Stealth Wealth and the New Colonialism by Brooke Harrington for the California Review of Books.
Jennifer Saunders reviewed What Good Is Heaven by Raye Hendrix for Rain Taxi.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Lucy Adlington’s Four Red Sweaters for BookTrib.
Diane Josefowicz reviewed The Passenger Seat by Vijay Khurana for Necessary Fiction and contributed an editor’s note to the new issue of Adroit.
Member Interviews
Elizabeth Lund interviewed Richard Blanco for The Christian Science Monitor.
New Books Network host Hollay Ghadery interviewed poets Natasha Ramoutar, Rob Winger, Tolu Oloruntoba, Charlie Petch, George Elliott Clarke, Catherine Owen, KIRBY, Anne Waldman and Andrew Whiteman, Stedmond Pardy, and Chris Banks; memoir/nonfiction authors Daniel Louise Coleman, Caroline Topperman, D.D. Miller, Margaret Nowaczyk,and Donna Besel; and fiction authors rob mclennan, Tim Welsh, Farzana Doctor, CS Richardson. Tim Blackett, and Jason Pargin.
Jeannine Burgdorf interviewed Virginia Deluca about her nonfiction book If You Must Go, I Wish You Triplets for The Masters Review.
Member News
Sasha Vasilyuk’s novel Your Presence Is Mandatory (Bloomsbury) is a finalist for the California Book Award – First Fiction.
“Deserted book store” by elm3r is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.