Members and friends, our members have been busy this past week with reviews of books by authors including Harriet Clark, Portia Elan, Ben Lerner, and Vincent Yu, and interviews with Dr. Constance Bailey, Molly Templeton, Tom Perrotta, and Anna Dorn. Take care, and thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
For The Gay & Lesbian Review, Michael Quinn reviewed Steve Turtell’s account of his friendship with Peter Hujar, Portraits and Places.
Hannah Bonner wrote an essay for Poetry’s Hard Feelings series, titled “On Fear: Radiant and Brimming.”
Adam Rosen wrote about the cult rock documentary Heavy Metal Parking Lot for The New York Times.
Diya Isha wrote about how Manu Joseph, India’s novelist-turned-provocateur, seems to have lost his way, retreating from his oeuvre into the kind of writing he once mocked, for Himal Southasian.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed Harriet Clark’s The Hillfor The Boston Globe.
Sara Polsky reviewed Portia Elan’s Homebound for The Brooklyn Rail.
Ellen Prentiss Campbell’s latest Girl Writing column for the Washington Independent Review of Books deals with books, reading, and a children’s bookshop.
Richard Scott Larson reviewed Ben Lerner’s Transcription for Slant.
Randy Cepuch reviewed Christopher Hebert’s Deliveryfor the Washington Independent Review of Books.
For Locus, Jake Casella Brookins reviewed Black Hole Heart, written by K.A. Teryna and translated from the Russian by Alex Shvartsman, and The Night Ship by Alex Woodroe.
Rebecca Ruth Gould reviewed Gilbert Achcar’s The Gaza Catastrophe: The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective and Avi Shlaim’s Genocide in Gaza: Israel’s Long War on Palestinefor The Textual Materialist.
McKenzie Watson-Fore has reviewed Stephanie Stalvey’s graphic memoir Everything in Color: A Love Story for Hippocampus Magazine.
Kristen Martin reviewed Madeline Lane-McKinley’s Solidarity With Children for Lux and Katie Benner and Erica L. Green’s Miracle Childrenfor The Nation.
Carol Iaciofano Aucoin reviewed Vincent Yu’s novel Seek Immediate Shelter for WBUR’s Arts & Culture.
Jeannine Burgdorf reviewed Tom Howard’s book of short stories, Invisibilia, for The Masters Review.
Bill Thompson reviewed Caroline Tracey’s Salt Lakes for the Charleston (S.C.) Post and Courier.
Michael Bobelian reviewed Suzy Hansen’s From Life Itself: Turkey, Istanbul, and a Neighborhood in the Age of Erdoğanfor the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Member Interviews
Sullivan Summer interviewed folklorist and historian Dr. Constance Bailey about her edited collection Get It While It’s Hot: Gas Station, Roadside, and Convenience Cuisine in the US South for the Additions to the Archive podcast.
Jake Casella Brookins talked to Molly Templeton, book critic and administrator of the Ursula K. Le Guin Prize for Fiction, about the mass-market fantasy era and Jo Clayton’s Moongather for the A Meal of Thorns podcast.
NBCC Online Chair Michael Schaub interviewed Tom Perrotta and Anna Dorn for The Orange County Register.
Member News
John Skoyles’ poem “Hello and Goodbye” appears in the Spring 2026 issue of UK’s The Poetry Review, Volume 116:1.
Lisa Russ Spaar’s seventh full-length collection of poems, Soul Cake, was published by Persea Books on May 5. The collection was reviewed by NBCC board member Rebecca Morgan Frank at Literary Hub.
Nancy Naomi Carlson’s translation of French-Senegalese writer Sylvie Kandé’s Gestuary was included in Ms. Magazine‘s “Reads for the Rest of Us: The Best Poetry of 2025 and 2026.”
“Stockholms Stadsbibliotek” by dilettantiquity is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.