Friends, we hope you’re having a great fall so far! The recording of Mandana Chaffa’s conversation with Gwendolyn Harper, translator of Pedro Lemebel’s A Last Supper of Queer Apostles, winner of the 2024 Barrios Book in Translation Prize, is now available. You can view it here. Read on for some exciting upcoming events and some reviews, interviews, and more from our members!
Upcoming NBCC Events
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.
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
Edna Bonhomme reviewed Angela Flournoy’s The Wildernessfor The New Republic.
Jennifer Howard wrote about the 25th anniversary of Kate DiCamillo’s Because of Winn-Dixie, along with Holly Goldberg Sloan’s new novel, Finding Lost, for The New York Times Book Review.
James Marcus reviewed Thomas Pynchon’s Shadow Ticket for the TLS.
Jim Schley reviewed Sue Halpern’s What We Leave Behind for Seven Days.
Hope Reese wrote about books about relationship attachment styles for The New York Times.
Brian Tanguay reviewed Front Street: Resistance and Rebirth in the Tent Cities of Techlandia by Brian Barth; The Perfect Tuba: Forging Fulfillment from the Bass Horn, Band, and Hard Work by Sam Quinones; Saving Ourselves From Big Car by David Obst; and Without Precedent: How Chief Justice John Roberts and His Accomplices Rewrote the Constitution and Dismantled Our Rights by Lisa Graves for the California Review of Books.
Ryan Ruby reviewed Shadow Ticket by Thomas Pynchon for Sidecar and Things That Disappear, written by Jenny Erpenbeck and translated from the German by Kurt Beals, for The New York Times Book Review, and wrote an essay about the end of the Canon Wars and the 18th-century Chinese novelist Wu Jingzi for Liberties.
Heller McAlpin reviewed Lily King’s Heart the Lover for The Wall Street Journal.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Sarah Landewich’s The Fire Concerto for BookTrib.
Diane Josefowicz reviewed Ways Home: Stories by Karen Lee Boren for The Providence Eye.
John Leonard Prize reader Claude Peck reviewed Megha Majumdar’s A Guardian and a Thief for The Minnesota Star Tribune.
Charles Green reviewed Pekka Harju-Autti’s LoveVortex and the Drakor’s Curse for Blueink Review.
David Starkey reviewed Dark Renaissance: The Dangerous Times and Fatal Genius of Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival by Stephen Greenblatt for the California Review of Books.
Robert Rubsam reviewed Vaim, written by Jon Fosse and translated from the Norwegian by Damion Searles, for The Washington Post, and wrote an essay about Yasunari Kawabata for Liberties.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed Anna North’s Bog Queenfor The Boston Globe.
Diane Scharper reviewed Storyteller: The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson by Leo Damrosch for the Washington Examiner.
Ellen Prentiss Campbell wrote about visiting Rungstedlund, the Karen Blixen Museum, for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Member Interviews
DW McKinney interviewed Hannah Grieco about her debut short story chapbook, First Kicking, Then Not, for Mutha Magazine.
Sullivan Summer interviewed historian Dr. Kenja McCray about her new book, Essential Soldiers: Women Activists and Black Power Movement Leadership, for the New Books Network.
Mandana Chaffa, Vice President of the Barrios Book in Translation Prize and Co-Vice President of Membership, interviewed Donika Kelly about The Natural Order of Things for The Brooklyn Rail.
For the Duluth News Tribune, Jay Gabler interviewed John U. Bacon, author of The Gales of November: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald.
Tiffany Troy was in conversation with Kevin Young for The Rumpus and Chenxin Jiang for Cha: An Asian Literary Journal.
Member News
Elena Sheppard’s debut memoir, The Eternal Forest: A Memoir of the Cuban Diaspora, was published on Sept. 30 by St. Martin’s Press.
North of Oxford posted two poems by Robert Allen Papinchak, “grief” and “Getting on the ferry.”
Hope Reese was on BBC Woman’s Hour discussing her book, The Women Are Not Fine.
Diane Josefowicz’s Guardians & Saints: Stories arrives on Oct. 14 from Cornerstone Press.
Ben Yagoda’s 14th book, and first novel, Alias O. Henry, was published on Sept. 16 by Paul Dry Books.
Other News
LaGuardia Community College (CUNY) is holding their Writing Day celebration, part of a national celebration of writing as an agent for social change and reflection, on Tuesday, Oct. 21, 9 a.m.-12 p.m., in the Poolside Cafe, 31-10 Thomson Ave. Drs. Thomas Fink, Lucy McNair, and Chris Alexander will lead a poetry translation workshop. The event, co-organized by Drs. Deirdre Flood, Anastasia Figuera, and Rochelle Spencer, features writing games and video testimonials from writers.
“Books n books” by Mauricio Mendez is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.