Members and friends, we hope you’re doing well! Our members have been busy over the past week with reviews of books by authors including Laurie Hertzel, Ben Lerner, Yann Martel, and Arthur Sze, and interviews with writers such as Allie Rowbottom, Maria Semple, and John Waters. Take care, and thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
Deborah Copperud reviewed former NBCC President Laurie Hertzel’s memoir Ghosts of Fourth Street: My Family, a Death, and the Hills of Duluth for Minnesota Monthly.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed The Violenceby Adriana E. Ramírez for The Boston Globe and Tarantula, written by Eduardo Halfon and translated from the Spanish by Daniel Hahn, for On the Seawall.
Brian Tanguay reviewed Honeysuckle by Bar Fridman-Tell for the California Review of Books.
Kevin Anthony Brown’s essay-review of Stendhal’s Armance, The Red and the Black, and The Charterhouse of Parma appeared in the April 2026 edition of New English Review.
Valerie Duff-Strautmann reviewed Maggie Dietz’s If You Would Let Me for On the Seawall.
Tara Menon reviewed Ben Lerner’s Transcription for The Nation.
Daniel Mendelsohn reviewed Yann Martel’s Son of Nobody for The New York Times Book Review.
Joanne B. Mulcahy reviewed Terese Svoboda’s Hitler and My Mother-in-Law for On the Seawall.
David Starkey reviewed The Complete Notebooks by Albert Camus for the California Review of Books.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Frances Crawford’s A Bad, Bad Place for BookTrib.
For her Substack, Mostly Books, Marcie Geffner reviewed Your Data Will be Used Against You: Policing in the Age of Self Surveillance by Andrew Guthrie Ferguson and published capsule reviews of The Book of Fallen Leaves by A.S. Tamaki; White Supremacy: A Short History by John Broich; The Monroe Girls, written by Antoine Volodine and translated from the French by Alyson Waters; Apple in China by Patrick McGee; and The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz.
Nancy Naomi Carlson reviewed U.S. Poet Laureate Arthur Sze’s Transient Worlds for On the Seawall.
Steven G. Kellman reviewed David Streitfeld’s Western Star: The Life and Legends of Larry McMurtry for The American Scholar.
NBCC Online Chair Michael Schaub contributed to the Los Angeles Times’ feature about the 101 best book club picks.
Member Interviews
Sullivan Summer interviewed historian of slavery and freedom in North America Dr. Antwain K. Hunter about his book, A Precarious Balance: Firearms, Race, and Community in North Carolina, 1715-1865, for the New Books Network.
Laura Villareal interviewed Summer Farah about her debut collection, The Hungering Years, for Adi Magazine.
Elaine Szewczyk profiled Allie Rowbottom for Publishers Weekly.
Eric Olson interviewed Maria Semple for The Seattle Times. The two talked about her former “naivety,” life in the New York City publishing world, and Grateful Dead fandom.
For the Duluth News Tribune, Jay Gabler interviewed Gaelynn Lea about her memoir, It Wasn’t Meant to Be Perfect.
Jake Cline interviewed John Waters for Arsht Magazine, where they discussed Elena Ferrante impersonators, why he thinks “writing a book is not fun,” his 80th birthday (on April 22) and when we may see a followup to his 2022 novel Liarmouth.
NBCC Online Chair Michael Schaub interviewed Lauren Rothery for The Orange County Register.
Member News
An essay by NBCC Poetry Chair David Woo, “Poets of My Age and the Erotics of Influence,” appeared in Poetry.
Jamie Brown published three pieces of flash fiction in Dreamstreets, a poem in Mediterranean Poetry, and “The Cure,” under the nom de plume Alexander Petersson, in Ice Out Anthology.
“Bookstore” by Chase Elliott Clark is licensed under CC BY 2.0.