Friends, we hope you’re doing well! Our members have been busy this past week with reviews of books by authors including Margaret Atwood, Susan Straight, Patti Smith, Claire-Louise Bennet, Alexander McCall Smith, and more, and interviews with writers such as Zadie Smith, Rachel Hawkins, and Dr. Javier Wallace. Take care, and thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Michelle Chan Schmidt reviewed Spent Bullets, written by Terao Tetsuya and translated from the Chinese by Kevin Wang, for The Baffler.
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Celine Nguyen reviewed W. David Marx’s Blank Space: A Cultural History of the Twenty-First Century, and discussed how the crisis in criticism is affecting artistic innovation, for Asterisk.
Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed Margaret Atwood’s Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts for the Los Angeles Times.
Kristen Martin reviewed Susan Straight’s Sacrament for The Washington Post.
Kitty Kelley reviewed David McCullough’s History Mattersfor the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Ron Slate reviewed Make It Broken by Patrick Pritchett; Art Is by Makoto Fujimura; The Name on the Wall, written by Herve Le Tellier and translated from the French by Adriana Hunter; and Another Bone-Swapping Event by Brad Fox for On The Seawall.
Charles Green reviewed Jeffrey Seller’s Theater Kid and Brian Alessandro’s Julian’s Debut for The Gay & Lesbian Review and Michael Okon’s Monsterland Below for Blueink Review.
Former NBCC board member and recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing Steven G. Kellman’s essay “Talking to the Dead” appeared in the Potomac Review.
Christina Acosta reviewed Charles Finch’s The Hidden City and Gill Hornby’s The Elopement for the Historical Novel Society.
Erick Verran reviewed Aaron Fagan’s Atom and Voidfor On the Seawall, Yuki Tanaka’s Chronicle of Drifting for the Poetry Project, Christian Gullette’s Coachella Elegy for Literary Matters, and Armen Davoudian’s The Palace of Forty Pillars for Gulf Coast.
Diane Josefowicz reviewed Darcie Dennigan’s Little Neck for The Providence Eye.
Heller McAlpin reviewed Patti Smith’s latest memoir, Bread of Angels, for NPR and Anna North’s novel Bog Queen for The Christian Science Monitor.
Samantha Neugebauer reviewed The Mind Reels by Fredrick deBoer for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Anne Charles reviewed Gaar Adams’ Guest Privileges for The Gay & Lesbian Review.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed Mothers, written by Brenda Lozano and translated from the Spanish by Heather Cleary, for Southwest Review; False War, written by Carlos Manuel Álvarez and translated from the Spanish by Natasha Wimmer, for Words Without Borders; A Fictional Inquiry, written by Daniele Del Giudice and translated from the Italian by Anne Milano Appel for On the Seawall; The Silver Bookby Olivia Laing for The Boston Globe; and Big Kiss, Bye-Byeby Claire-Louise Bennett for The Minnesota Star Tribune.
Michael Barron reviewed Schattenfroh, written by Michael Lentz and translated from the German by Max Lawton, for The Point.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Alexander McCall Smith’s In the Time of Five Pumpkins for BookTrib.
Marcie Geffner reviewed Ithaca by Claire North for her Substack, Mostly Books.
Ellen Prentiss Campbell reviewed Frances Wilson’s Electric Spark: The Enigma of Dame Murielfor the Washington Independent Review of Books and Maddie Ballard’s Patchwork: A Sewist’s Diary for Cleaver.
Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed The Minimalist Photographer: 50 Techniques for Capturing Beauty in Simplicity by Antony Zacharias for Shelf Awareness.
Martha Anne Toll reviewed Jerome Charyn’s Maria La Divinafor the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Member Interviews
Edna Bonhomme interviewed Zadie Smith for The Nation.
Elaine Szewczyk profiled Rachel Hawkins for Publishers Weekly.
Sullivan Summer interviewed race and sports scholar and founder of Black Austin Tours Dr. Javier Wallace about his book, Basketball Trafficking: Stolen Black Panamanian Dreams for the New Books Network.
Gayle Feldman interviewed Barnes & Noble/Waterstones CEO James Daunt for The Bookseller.
Member News
Katarzyna Bartoszyńska’s book Reading Togetherwas published this month by the University of Chicago Press.
Martha Anne Toll’s Duet for One was reviewed by Tara Van De Mark for the Pittsburgh Review of Books.
Gayle Feldman will publish her 23-years-in-the-making biography of Random House’s cofounder, Nothing Random: Bennett Cerf and the Publishing House He Built, on January 13. It just received a starred review in Publishers Weekly.
Jeanne Bonner will read from her translation, This Darkness Will Never End, an Italian short story collection written by Hungarian-born writer Edith Bruck and published earlier this year, at Forbes Library in Northampton, Massachusetts, on December 8. For more information on the event, go here. To request a review copy, email Jeanne at Jeanne.bonner@gmail.com.
Carole Burns will be conducting an online interview with author Carys Davies, winner of the Royal Society of Literature’s Ondaatje Prize and the 2025 Wales Book of the Year Award for her most recent novel, Clear, on Wednesday, November 12, at 2:30 p.m. Eastern as part of her Writers in Conversation series at the University of Southampton, U.K.
Elina Alter’s translation of Alla Gorbunova’s short story collection (Th)ings and (Th)oughts was published by Deep Vellum on November 4.
Diane Josefowicz was interviewed by Rachel Léon for the Chicago Review of Books about her debut story collection, Guardians & Saints (Cornerstone Press).
“State Library Of South Australia” by adai chang is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.