Members and friends, registration is now open for the NBCC virtual panel The Interview as Literary Criticism on Tuesday, Nov. 10, 2026, at 7 p.m. Eastern/4 p.m. Pacific! The panel is free but registration is required—you can register here. The panel will be a cross-genre discussion about the interview as a means for deepening the national literary conversation featuring five acclaimed critics discussing the elements of what makes a good interview, favorite interviews, overcoming difficulties, and the future of book criticism. The panel will feature Charlie Jane Anders, NBCC board member Mandana Chaffa, former NBCC President and current advisory board member Jane Ciabattari, Deborah D. Douglas, and Gary M. Kramer, and will be moderated by NBCC board member May-lee Chai.
Member Reviews/Essays
NBCC Emerging Critics Fellow Alisyn Amant reviewed Emily Wilson’s Crossing the Wine-Dark Sea: Journeys Through Ancient Literature for Harvard Review.
Hannah Bonner reviewed Laura Palm’s Film Elegyfor Delicatessen.
Joyce Sáenz Harris reviewed Willie Nelson’s The Last Leaffor The Dallas Morning News.
Brian Tanguay reviewed The House Where Nothing Hurts by Ali Fountain and River of Dreams by Robin Blackburn McBride for the California Review of Books.
For The Gay & Lesbian Review, Michael Quinn reviewed Michael Cunningham’s memoir, Unsayable: A Life in Writing.
The Washington Post opinion section republished an essay by Jan Harayda, former NBCC Vice President/Awards, about John Steinbeck’s Journal of a Novel: The East of Eden Letters and how that book relates to the new Netflix series adaptation of East of Eden. The essay first appeared on Jan’s bestselling Substack, Jansplaining, which covers books, publishing, and journalism, especially book reviews.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Sarah Hepola’s The Only Thing There Is to Want for The Wall Street Journal.
Tamara MC wrote about corn in the Tucson Basin for Offrange and about Dark Hollow Farm in Oregon for Oregon Wine Press.
Marcie Geffner posted bite-sized reviews of Countdown Battle of the Bulge by Chris Wallace, The Rush by Nathaniel Philbrick, Strange Music by Percival Everett, and four other novels in her monthly roundup for Mostly Books.
Charles Green reviewed Brad Gooch’s Good Morning Moon for The Gay & Lesbian Review.
In her Girl Writing column for the Washington Independent Review of Books, Ellen Prentiss Campbell wrote about What Clever Friends: The Selected Letters of Jane Kenyon and Alice Mattison.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Robyn Gigl’s All We Hide and Dervla McTiernan’s Three Reasons for Revenge for BookTrib.
Melissa Holbrook Pierson reviewed Mark Alice Durant’s Confessions of a Working Class Artist for Hyperallergic.
Tom Peebles reviewed Omri Boehm’s Radical Universalism: Beyond Identity on his personal blog.
Member Interviews
Elaine Szewczyk profiled Leslie Wolfe for Publishers Weekly.
Sullivan Summer interviewed scholar Dr. Stacey Patton about her latest book, Strung Up: How White America Learned to Lynch Black Children, on the Additions to the Archive podcast.
For their Book Cougars podcast, NBCC member Chris Wolak and Emily Fine talked with NBCC member Mary Lisa Gavenas about her new book, Selling Opportunity: The Story of Mary Kay.
Natalia Holtzman interviewed graphic novelist Huda Fahmy about the fourth and final installment in her middle-grade Huda F series for Hour Detroit.
Anne Charles interviewed Sarah Schulman for The Gay & Lesbian Review.
For The Village Star-Revue, Michael Quinn spoke to artist Scooter LaForge about Wasteland, a collaboration with writer Jason Haaf that combines melancholic confessions about aging and queer desire with images of the Manhattan skyline, naked men, cartoon characters, and clowns.
NBCC Online Chair Michael Schaub interviewed Paul Yoon for The Orange County Register.
Member News
Julia M. Klein has been named a finalist in the category of “books/literature criticism” in the Los Angeles Press Club’s National Arts and Entertainment Awards. Winners will be announced Dec. 6.
“Library” by Geoff Coupe is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.