Members and friends, we hope you’re doing well! Our members have been busy this past week with reviews by authors including Kate Christensen, Cristina Rivera Garza, Serena Chopra, Catherine Liu, and Katherine Packert Burke, and interviews with authors Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, Greg Sarris, and Jonah Mixon-Webster. Take care, stay cool, and thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
Briallen Hopper reviewed Spawning Season: An Experiment in Queer Parenthood by Joseph Osmundson and Good Morning Moon: A Snapshot of an American Family by Brad Gooch for The New Republic.
NBCC Secretary Lauren LeBlanc reviewed Kate Christensen’s Good Companyfor The Boston Globe.
Edna Bonhomme reviewed Autobiography of Cotton, written by Cristina Rivera Garza and translated from the Spanish by Christina MacSweeney, for the Berlin Review.
Karen Sherk Chio reviewed A Catalog of Future Mercies by Serena Chopra for West Trade Review.
Tom Peebles reviewed Steven J. Zipperstein’s Phillip Roth: Stung by Life on his personal blog.
With the support of an arts-writing travel grant from the Dorothea and Leo Rabkin Foundation, Sean Carlson’s essay, “Beyond Worlds with Sheila Isham,” in Rhode Island’s alternative monthly Motif magazine, revisits the American abstract expressionist in anticipation of an exhibition of her life and artwork opening in July at the Newport Art Museum.
Brian Tanguay reviewed Traumatized by Catherine Liu for the California Review of Books.
Paul Wilner previewed a bumper crop of summer/fall readings for Alta.
Marcie Geffner reviewed All Us Saints, a novel by Katherine Packert Burke, for Washington Independent Review of Books.
Cory Oldweiler wrote about Cathedrals, written by Claudia Piñeiro and translated from the Spanish by Frances Riddle, for Southwest Review, and Devotionsby Lucy Caldwell for The Boston Globe.
Carol Iaciofano Aucoin reviewed Jenny Jackson’s The Shampoo Effect and Jamie Day’s Beach Thriller for WBUR’s Arts & Culture.
George Yatchisin reviewed Flagrant, Self-Destructive Gestures by Ted Geltner for the California Review of Books.
Yvonne C. Garrett reviewed Deb Olin Unferth’s Earth 7 for The Brooklyn Rail.
Member Interviews
Sullivan Summer interviewed historian Dr. Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor about her hybrid memoir/cultural exploration, Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me, for the Additions to the Archive podcast.
NBCC former President and current advisory board member Jane Ciabattari’s Literary Hub conversation with tribal leader Greg Sarris about his new novel, The Last Human Bear, delves into the stories he learned from tribal elders, the real person behind his protagonist, and the history of his Sonoma County, California, tribe.
Natalia Holtzman interviewed the PEN/Joyce Osterweil Award-winning poet Jonah Mixon-Webster about his latest book for Hour Detroit.
Member News
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Michelle Chan Schmidt translated three poems by Hongkongese writer Tang Siu Wa for Modern Poetry in Translation‘s latest issue, “At the Gate of Exile: Focus on Archives.”
NBCC board member May-lee Chai has a new book of essays coming out this September, My Hungry Ghosts: Essays & Incantations. Digital review copies or hard-copy ARCs will be available in July and can be requested from the publicist, Jessica Griffin, at publicity@blairpub.com.
Abby Frucht was interviewed by Curtis Smith for JMWW.
Joan Silverman’s newsletter, Away From It All: Essays From Near + Far, highlights “essays by leading writers on any and everything, but the news.” The latest issue features work by Roger Rosenblatt, Darien Gee, and Suzanne Roberts. For more information, visit awayfromitall.substack.com.
Lisa Russ Spaar’s latest poetry collection, Soul Cake, was reviewed by Rosalie Moffett at The Adroit Journaland by NBCC board member Rebecca Morgan Frank at Literary Hub. Lisa was interviewed about her book by Geoff Graser at The Brooklyn Rail.
Tony Miksanek was featured in MedHum.org, a public voice cultivating empathy and critical thinking in health, culture, and the arts, where he discussed storytelling, how reading great literature augments empathy, and the medical humanities.
Tiffany Troy and Carlie Hoffman have begun their residency at MinEastry of Postcollapse Art and Culture (founded by Ilknur Demirkoparan and Vuslat D. Katsanis). Their co-curated exhibit, The American Wing, features poets who shape the rich, polyglot and ever-evolving landscape of American poetry.
Hélène Cardona’s short film My Mother Ceridwen, adapted from the poem in her collection Life in Suspension (Salmon Poetry), has received an Honorable Mention at the 2026 International Poetry Film Festival in Los Angeles. Rooted in myth and memory, the film explores motherhood as a transformative, cyclical presence moving between shadow and light, the personal and the archetypal.
“Library of Congress” by Victoria Pickering is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.