Friends, we hope you’re doing well! Our members have been busy this week with reviews of books by authors including David Szalay, Gish Jen, Susan Orlean, Thomas McGuane, Donika Kelly, and more. Take care, and thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Diya Isha reviewed David Szalay’s Flesh for Scroll.in.
John Leonard Prize reader Claude Peck reviewed Gish Jen’s Bad Bad Girl for The Minnesota Star Tribune.
Bruce Krajewski reviewed Nalini Jones’ The Unbroken Coast for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Ryan Teitman wrote “A Gaming Table in Philadelphia,” an essay on tabletop roleplaying games, for The Poetry Foundation’s This Be the Place series.
Kristina Sepetys reviewed Journey to the Edge of Life, written by Tezer Özlü and translated from the Turkish by Maureen Freely, for Michigan Quarterly Review.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Lauren LeBlanc reviewed Susan Orlean’s Joyridefor Alta.
David Starkey reviewed A Wooded Shore by Thomas McGuane for the California Review of Books.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Jimmy Hawkins’ The Heart of It’s a Wonderful Life, Doug Most’s Launching Liberty, and Nikki Giovanni’s The New Book for BookTrib.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Awards Christoph Irmscher reviewed Laurent Binet’s Perspectives, translated from the French by Sam Taylor, for The Art Newspaper.
Ellen Prentiss Campbell reviewed Natalie Bakopoulos’ Archipelagofor Cleaver.
Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed Harper Lee’s The Land of Sweet Forever for the Los Angeles Times.
Brian Tanguay reviewed A Case of Life and Limb: The Trials of Gabriel Ward by Sally Smith for the California Review of Books.
Clea Simon reviewed Lion Hearts by Dan Jones for The Arts Fuse.
Michael Quinn wrote about the Strand bookstore’s 98th anniversary for The Village Star-Revue.
Diane Scharper reviewed The Lost Mary by James Tabor for the National Catholic Reporter.
Charles Green reviewed John Van Hoesen’s Insist That They Love You: Craig Rodwell and the Fight for Gay Pride for the Washington Blade.
Former NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Hannah Bonner reviewed Donika Kelly’s The Natural Order of Things for Poetry.
Jim Scott reviewed Nicholas Boggs’ Baldwin: A Love Story for the Wellington Square Bookshop blog.
Tom Peebles reviewed Lisa Waller Rogers’ When People Were Things: Harriet Beecher Stowe, Abraham Lincoln, and the Emancipation Proclamation on his personal blog.
Allan Graubard reviewed Cavalier Perspective: Last Essays 1952-1966 by Andre Breton for Rain Taxi.
Dan Kois wrote about Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials and The Book of Dust for The New York Times Book Review.
George Yatchisin reviewed The Hounding by Xenobe Purvis for the California Review of Books.
Member Interviews
Clea Simon was interviewed on the podcast Book Stew talking about series, standalones, and her new mystery, The Butterfly Trap.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Awards Christoph Irmscher was interviewed by the Washington Monthly‘s Anne Kim: “In Defense of Book Reviews.”
Anne Charles interviewed queer photographer Dona Ann McAdams and artist John Killacky on All Things LGBTQ. They discussed McAdams’ recent publication, Black Box: A Photographic Memoir, and Killacky’s documentary about her life and work.
NBCC Co-Vice President/Events Jane Ciabattari’s Literary Hub conversation this week featured former NBCC fiction award finalist Adam Johnson, who talked about his new novel, The Wayfinder, a captivating novel set 1,000 years ago in Polynesia, featuring a young girl who will be queen and the last of the Tongan “king of kings.”
Former NBCC board member and recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Steven G. Kellman interviewed Tim Brookes, director of the Endangered Alphabets Project, for Asymptote.
Member News
Former NBCC President Carlin Romano completed nine months as a Fulbright/Nehru Senior Scholar to India for Academic and Professional Excellence. He served as Distinguished Visiting Professor of Philosophy at the University of Delhi and Visiting Professor of Humanities at Ashoka University, and delivered lectures at 14 other universities in India and Sri Lanka. He continues as Critic-at-Large of Moment Magazine in Washington and returns to teaching philosophy at the University of Pennsylvania in the spring of 2026.