Freinds, we have some exciting events coming up, and we’d love you to save these dates!
-On Tuesday, Sept. 30, at 4 p.m. Pacific/7 p.m. Eastern, please join us on Zoom for “Criticism 101: Book Review Fundamentals,” led by Heather Scott Partington, former NBCC president and current treasurer and fiction chair. Heather will teach you how to get started and build a career as a freelance critic. Cost: $10 for non-members/free for NBCC members (fee can be applied to a new NBCC membership within two weeks of the event). You can register here.
-Join us on Tuesday, Oct. 7, at 3:30 p.m. Pacific/6:30 p.m. Eastern, as we talk with Gwendolyn Harper, translator of the late Pedro Lemebel’s A Last Supper of Queer Apostles, winner of the 2024 Barrios Book in Translation Prize. Gwendolyn Harper will be in conversation with Mandana Chaffa, NBCC Barrios Vice President and Co-Vice President of Membership. Register for this free event here.
-On Monday, Oct. 20, at 4 p.m. Pacific/7 p.m. Eastern, we will hold a follow-up to Heather’s event, “Criticism 101: Interviewing Fundamentals” with current NBCC president Adam Dalva. Stay tuned for more information!
-And on Tuesday, Oct. 21, from 7:00 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. Pacific, we’ll be holding a panel, “The Who, What, When & How of Literary Prize,” with LitCamp and media sponsor Publishers Weekly, at the Litquake festival in San Francisco at Page Street Writers (297 Page St.). Join NBCC board members Jane Ciabattari and Iris Jamahl Dunkle; former NBCC board member Oscar Villalon, who also has been a Pulitzer and National Book Award judge; and May-Lee Chai, longtime chair of the NBCC autobiography awards panel. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. This event is free, with a $10–15 suggested donation to support Litquake and the NBCC. RSVP here.
Member Reviews/Essays
Delight Ejiaka wrote an essay about bleaching skin for The Rumpus.
Nicole Schrag reviewed Daughters of Palestine: A Memoir in Five Generations for Plough Quarterly and Discontent, written by Beatriz Serrano and translated from the Spanish by Maya Faye Lethem, for On the Seawall.
Susan Bernofsky reviewed the novel We Do Not Part, written by Nobel laureate Han Kang and translated from the Korean by e. yaewon and Paige Aniyal Morris, for Korean Literature Now.
Ryan Teitman reviewed Chet’la Sebree’s Blue Opening for The Adroit Journal.
For Next Avenue, Michael Quinn wrote about learning to talk about money in a later-in-life relationship.
Edna Bonhomme reviewed Yiyun Li’s Things in Nature Merely Grow for the Berlin Review.
Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed David Greig’s The Book of I for Shelf Awareness.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Philip E. Orbanes’ Monopoly X and Joanne Harris’ Viannefor BookTrib.
Natalie Bakopoulos wrote an essay for Literary Hub about the process of reading and translating her aunt’s book from Greek, a book she learned about years after her death.
NBCC Vice President/Technology and Co-Vice President/Membership Rebecca Hussey reviewed Issa Quincy’s novel Absence for Full Stop.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed Patricia Lockwood’s There Will Never Be Another Youfor The Boston Globe.
For the Duluth News Tribune, Jay Gabler wrote about why so many romance novels are set in the world of hockey.
Robert Rubsam reviewed Jordan Castro’s Muscle Man; Adem Luz Rienspects’ Mixtape Hyperborea; Sebastian Castillo’s Fresh, Green Life; and Tony Tulathimutte’s Rejection for Vulture.
Nell Beram reviewed three books for Shelf Awareness: Death in Trieste by Jason, Happiness & Love by Zoe Dubno, and I Write to Find Out What I Am Thinking by Joan Didion.
Member Interviews
Sullivan Summer interviewed Black feminist scholar Dr. Susana M. Morris about her new cultural biography, Positive Obsession: The Life and Times of Octavia E. Butler, for the New Books Network.
Rebecca Brenner Graham interviewed historian Kate Haulman about her book, The Mother of Washington in Nineteenth-Century America, for Smithsonian Magazine.
NBCC board member Mary Ann Gwinn interviewed historian Jill Lepore for Kirkus Reviews about her new book, We the People: A History of the U.S. Constitution.
Grant Faulkner talked with Roxane Gay about memoir on the Memoir Nation podcast. They talked about oversharing and boundaries, when memoir becomes manifesto, and how Roxane’s success and visibility has impacted her writing.
Elaine Szewczyk profiled Olivia Laing for Publishers Weekly.
Member News
Connie Post’s book Broken Metronome (Glass Lyre Press) is the winner of the 2025 NYC Big Book Award in the category of Grief, Loss and Remembrance.
The Forgetters, NBCC lifetime member Greg Sarris’ novel in stories, was a finalist for the Northern California Book Awards. His new novel, The Last Human Bear, will be published in June 2026 by Heyday Books based in Berkeley. For 50-plus years, Heyday has amplified the stories of California’s first peoples, whose cultures and histories are crucially distinct from Native communities elsewhere in the US. Over a hundred of Native California communities exist today, but the stories of the state’s Indigenous people are still almost entirely absent from American fiction. Sarris’ work fills that gap.
Sullivan Summer was profiled in a recent issue of the New Books Network Newsletter.
“Library owl” by JuliaC2006 is licensed under CC BY 2.0.