Friends, register now! On Monday, Oct. 20 at 4 p.m. Pacific/7 p.m. Eastern, please join us on Zoom for “Criticism 101: Interview Fundamentals,” led by NBCC President Adam Dalva. Adam will share practical approaches to getting your author interviews pitched and accepted, and break down tactical differences among the many forms that interviewing can entail. Cost: $10 for non-members/free for NBCC members (fee can be applied to a new NBCC membership within two weeks of the event). Register here.
Upcoming NBCC Events
Join us tomorrow, 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.
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
Nicole Schrag reviewed The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai for BookTrib.
Bruce Krajewski reviewed Mel Pennant’s A Murder for Miss Hortense and Martin Walker’s An Enemy in the Village: A Bruno, Chief of Police Novel for On the Seawall. His essay “Leonine Chameleons: Relativism and Fascism” appeared in the Blog of the American Philosophical Association.
NBCC board member Tobias Carroll wrote about surreal takes on London from the likes of Alan Moore, Helen Oyeyemi, Iain Sinclair, and Steve Aylett for Speculative Insight and about some translated books for Words Without Borders.
Celia McGee reviewed Mountaineering Women: Climbing Through History by Joanna Croston for Air Mail.
Joanne B. Mulcahy reviewed Michael N. McGregor’s An Island to Myself: The Place of Solitude in an Active Life in the fall 2025 print issue of Rain Taxi Review of Books.
Marcie Geffner wrote about Thad McIlroy’s controversial pro-AI presentation to Authors Guild members in “AI Evangelist Ignores Authors’ Concerns” for her Substack, Six Forty-Five.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Simon Toyne’s The Black Highway for BookTrib.
Charles Green reviewed Isham Cook’s The Tao of Poison for Blueink Review.
Eric Olson wrote about Thomas Pynchon’s Seattle connection and his short, silly Boeing career for The Seattle Times.
Carol Iaciofano Aucoin reviewed Lily King’s Heart the Lover for WBUR’s Arts & Culture.
Ryan Ruby reviewed Francesca Wade’s Gertrude Stein: An Afterlifefor Bookforum.
Nell Beram reviewed two books for Shelf Awareness: Other People’s Houses by Clare Mackintosh and A Particularly Nasty Case by Adam Kay.
Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed Live Fast, written by Brigitte Giraud and translated from the French by Cory Stockwell, for World Literature Today and The Killer Question by Janice Hallett for Shelf Awareness.
Member Interviews
Grant Faulkner talked to Melissa Febos about Dry Season on the podcast Memoir Nation.
NBCC board member Tobias Carroll interviewed Mattie Lubchansky for Vol. 1 Brooklyn.
Charles Green interviewed Richard E. Cytowic about his memoir, The Magician’s Accomplice, for the Washington Blade.
Sullivan Summer interviewed best-selling author, speaker, and social justice advocate Dr. Keisha Blain about her new book, Without Fear: Black Women and the Making of Human Rights, for the New Books Network.
Tiffany Troy interviewed poets Diana Arterian, Anthony Borruso, Robert Fanning, and Patricia Smith as well as translators Danielle Pieratti, James Shea, and Dorothy Tse about their latest poetry collections or collections in translation for this issue of Tupelo Quarterly.
Kurt Baumeister interviewed Amber Sparks for The Brooklyn Rail.
“Beco dos Livros. Used bookstore, Porto Alegre” by Eduardo Zárate is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.