Members and friends, we hope you’re enjoying the first days of fall! Our members have been busy this past week, reviewing books by authors including Addie Citchens, Jane Hamilton, Angela Flournoy, and Lily King, and interviewing writers such as Kiese Laymon, Jonathan Lethem, Patricia Lockwood, and Derrick Barnes. We’ve also got a bunch of exciting events planned over the next few weeks that we’d love for you to attend. Take care, and thanks for reading!
Upcoming NBCC Events
Tomorrow, 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
Omari Weekes reviewed Addie Citchens’ Dominion for The Atlantic.
Christina Nellas Acosta reviewed Paula Byrne’s Six Weeks by the Sea for Open Letters Review.
Benoit Landon reviewed A Thousand Untellable Stories, written by Emmelie Prophete and translated from the French by Aidan Rooney, for Words Without Borders.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Awards Christoph Irmscher reviewed Jonathan Aaron’s Just About Anythingfor On the Seawall; Philip Hoare’s William Blake and the Sea Monsters of Love for The Art Newspaper; and Henry Wiencek’s Stan and Gus: Art, Ardor, and the Friendship that Built the Gilded Age and Alan Lightman and Martin Rees’ The Shape of Wonder: How Scientists Think, Work, and Live for The Wall Street Journal.
Catherine Parnell reviewed A Stranger Comes to Town by Lynne Sharon Schwartz for Compulsive Reader.
Joan Frank reviewed Jane Hamilton’s The Phoebe Variations for The Washington Post.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Lauren LeBlanc reviewed Angela Flournoy’s The Wildernessfor The Boston Globe.
Former NBCC board member and recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Steven G. Kellman reviewed Gerald Sorin’s Saul Bellow: “I Was a Jew and an American and a Writer” for American Literary History.
Chris Barsanti reviewed Caroline Fraser’s Murderland: Crime and Bloodlust in the Time of Serial Killers in the Fall 2025 print issue of Rain Taxi Review of Books.
Dan Kois, alongside Rebecca Onion, put together a big package at Slate on the contemporary revolution in picture books. It includes a list of the 25 greatest picture books of the past 25 years; interviews with Mo Willems, Sophie Blackall, and Matt de la Peña and Christian Robinson; a Q&A with the little girl who inspired Ian Falconer’s Olivia books; and commentary from Mac Barnett and Jon Klassen.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Anne Sebba’s The Women’s Orchestra of Auschwitz for the Forward.
Tom Peebles reviewed Nick Witham’s Popularizing the Past: Historians, Publishers and Readers in Postwar America on his personal blog.
Heidi Seaborn wrote a list of “Ten Poetry Books of Insistence and Resistance” for Electric Lit, a critical lyric essay called “Time Pieces” for The Adroit Journal, and a personal essay about how writing poetry can freeze time for Literary Hub.
Paul Wilner wrote a fall book roundup for Alta.
Priscilla Gilman reviewed Lily King’s Heart the Loverfor The Boston Globe.
Member Interviews
Sullivan Summer interviewed NAACP Image Award Winner Kiese Laymon, alongside folklorist and scholar, Dr. Constance R. Bailey, about Bailey’s latest addition to the University Press of Mississippi’s Conversations series, Conversations with Kiese Laymon, for the New Books Network.
Tiffany Troy was interviewed by Jonathan Fletcher in Action, Spectacle. Tiffany’s Dominuswas reviewed by Abigail Ardelle Zammit in the same publication.
Former NBCC board member Anita Felicelli profiled Joanna Howard, author of Porthole, and Angela Flournoy, author of The Wilderness, for Alta.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Jane Ciabattari’s Literary Hub conversation with NBCC fiction award winner (for Motherless Brooklyn) Jonathan Lethem about his new and collected story collection out this week, A Different Kind of Tension, includes a question about the last story in the book, which was inspired by an AI hallucination that should give every writer pause.
Tiffany Troy interviewed Esteban Rodriguez about his latest poetry collection, The Lost Nostalgias, in the Fall 2025 print issue of Rain Taxi Review of Books.
Eric Olson talked to Patricia Lockwood about her new book, Tolstoy, and magic mushrooms for Literary Hub.
NBCC Vice President/Online Michael Schaub interviewed Derrick Barnes for Kirkus Reviews and Ella Berman and Claire Jia for The Orange County Register.
Member News
Catherine Parnell’s short story “When We Were Six” appeared in Reckon Review.
“Alleyway Bookstore” by Rob Faulkner is licensed under CC BY 2.0.