Members and friends, we have an exciting event coming later this week! Three of the most accomplished poetry critics today, Stephanie Burt, Anahid Nersessian, and David Orr, will discuss being a poetry critic, the state of poetry criticism, and the pleasures and practicalities of becoming such a critic now. NBCC President Adam Dalva will introduce the panel, and NBCC board members Rebecca Morgan Frank and David Woo will serve as moderators. This Zoom event, which will take place this Thursday, June 26 at 6 p.m. Eastern, is free and open to the public! You can register now at this link. We hope to see you there!
Member Reviews/Essays
For Next Avenue, Michael Quinn wrote about learning German in midlife to connect with his partner’s mother as she faced dementia, and how a journey to Switzerland after her death became a way to honor memory, language, and love.
Clea Simon reviewed James Lee Burke’s Don’t Forget Me, Little Bessie for The Arts Fuse.
Robert Rubsam reviewed Pip Adam’s Audition for The Atlantic.
Charles Green reviewed Nicholas Boggs’ Baldwin: A Love Story for the Washington Blade.
Nicole Yurcaba reviewed Alina Stefanescu’s My Heresies for Southern Review of Books and Andrew Forbes’ The Diapause for The Temz Review.
Jake Casella Brookins reviewed Darkly Lem’s Transmentation | Transience for Locus.
Sheila McClear reviewed Submersed: Wonder, Obsession, and Murder in the World of Amateur Submarines by Matthew Gavin Frank for The Washington Post.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Anthony Horowitz’s Marble Hall Murders for BookTrib.
Oline H. Cogdill reviewed Marguerite by the Lake by Mary Dixie Carter for Shelf Awareness and We Don’t Talk About Carol by Kristen L. Berry and Sex and Death on the Beach: A Florida Beach Mystery by Elaine Viets for the South Florida Sun Sentinel.
Suzana Vuljevic wrote about Ledia Xhoga’s Misinterpretation for AGNI.
Carl Hoffman reviewed Bryan Burrough’s The Gunfighters: How Texas Made the West Wild for The Washington Post.
Genanne Walsh reviewed Paul Rudnick’s What Is Wrong with You? for the Portland Press Herald – Maine Sunday Telegram.
Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed Stefanie Leder’s Love, Coffee, and Revolution for Shelf Awareness.
Priscilla Gilman reviewed I’ll Be Right Here by Amy Bloom for The Boston Globe.
Les Schofield reviewed David Ferry’s Some Things I Said for MicroLit.
Member Interviews
Celia McGee profiled Heather Clark and her debut novel, The Scrapbook, for The New York Times.
Nell Beram interviewed Northern Irish writer Steve Cavanagh about his latest Eddie Flynn thriller, Fifty Fifty, for Shelf Awareness.
Oline H. Cogdill interviewed Alex Segura for the Broward Public Library Foundation as part of its extra LitLIVE! Program.
Jake Casella Brookins talked to andré m. carrington, author of Speculative Blackness, about Nnedi Okorafor’s latest novel, Death of the Author, for the podcast A Meal of Thorns.
Elaine Szewczyk profiled David Levithan for Publishers Weekly.
NBCC Vice President/Online Michael Schaub interviewed Dean Van Nguyen about Words for My Comrades: A Political History of Tupac Shakur for The Orange County Register.
Member News
Former NBCC board member Rod Davis has received five indie-oriented awards for his Korea-based, Vietnam-era novel, The Life of Kim and the Behavior of Men: Silver Award, Independent Publisher Book Awards (IPPY), 2025, for Military/Wartime Fiction; Honorable Mention, Foreword/INDIE 2024 Award Winners, War and Military Fiction, and previous Finalist in the general Awards Contest; Finalist, Military Fiction, 7th Annual American Fiction Awards, American Book Fest, 2024; and Finalist, Author of the Year 2025, International Impact Book Awards, Contemporary Fiction.
“Cat-aloguing the books” by Can Pac Swire is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.