Members and friends, we’d love for you to join us for a special virtual event on Tuesday, August 11, at 7:30 p.m. Eastern! Literary podcasts have established themselves as a place for insightful conversations about books and reading. For this event, representatives of five bookish podcasts will discuss the ways in which this medium has opened up literary conversations, including deep dives into an author’s work, interviews with writers, book clubs, and detailed discussions of a single book.
Join panelists Leah Abrams and Heather Akumiah (Limousine), NBCC board member Rebecca Hussey (One Bright Book), Oriana Schwindt (By-the-Bywater), Brad Listi (Otherppl), and Charlotte Shane (Reading Writers) for this discussion, moderated by NBCC board member Tobias Carroll. You can register here. We hope to see you there!
Member Reviews/Essays
Kitty Kelley reviewed Jeffrey Meyers’ The Biographer’s Quest and Tommy Orange’s There There for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Former NBCC President Laurie Hertzel reviewed the third book in Colson Whitehead’s Harlem trilogy, Cool Machine, for The Irish Times.
Paul Wilner reviewed Jay Quint’s Village Dreams for The Bay Area Reporter.
Serena Agusto-Cox reviewed Letters from Cuckold Creek by Kristin Kowalski Ferragut for Beltway Poetry Quarterly, Tread Upon by Christopher Kondrich for Washington Unbound, and The Memory Police, written by Yōko Ogawa and translated from the Japanese by Stephen Snyder, for the Savvy Verse & Wit Substack.
In “Angel with a Flower on Her Chest,” Sean Carlson reviewed In Late Summer, written by Magdalena Blažević and translated from the Croatian by Anđelka Raguž, for AGNI.
Diane Scharper reviewed Jane Rogoyska’s Hotel Exile for the Washington Examiner.
Erik Gleibermann wrote “On the Poetics of Canine Narration” for Literary Hub.
Sarah Dowling reviewed Claudia Rankine’s Triagefor the Toronto Review.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Peter Ackroyd’s Auden for the Lives column of The Wall Street Journal.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Before I Knew I Loved You, written by Toshikazu Kawaguchi and translated from the Japanese by Geoffrey Trousselot, for BookTrib.
Cory Oldweiler reviewed The Depopulation, written by Marina Closs and translated from the Spanish by Thomas Bunstead, for Southwest Review, and Sunriseby Téa Obreht for The Boston Globe.
Frank Freeman reviewed Ru Marshall’s American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Nina Renata Aronn reviewed Cooking in the Wrong Century, written by Teresa Präauer and translated from the German by Eleanor Updegraff, for Words Without Borders.
Dan Kubis reviewed Claudia Rankine’s Triagefor the Chicago Review of Books.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Chris Young’s The Wound is Where the Light Enters and Lucy Schiller’s Aging Out for the Los Angeles Times.
In his column “Biblioscopy” for MedHum.org, Tony Miksanek reviewed The Story of the Body: Poems of Illness & Recovery, edited by Meghan O’Rourke, The Human Remains by Nathan A. Gray; and The News from Dublin by Colm Tóibín.
Member Interviews
For their Book Cougars podcast, NBCC member Chris Wolak and Emily Fine spoke with Denise Kiernan about her new book, Obstinate Daughters: The Rebels, Writers, and Renegade Women Who Ignited the American Revolution. Chris and Emily also recently interviewed Claire Fuller about her new novel, Hunger and Thirst.
NBCC Barrios Book in Translation Prize Chair and Membership Co-Vice President Mandana Chaffa interviewed Fatimah Asghar about Daughter of the Mountains for BOMB magazine.
Sullivan Summer interviewed author and historian Dr. Blair L.M. Kelley about her new book, Black Freedom: A Visual History of Juneteenth and Emancipation Days, on the Additions to the Archive podcast.
Abby Manzella interviewed Beth Ann Fennelly about her new book of micro-memoirs, The Irish Goodbye, at CRAFT Literary.
Elaine Szewczyk profiled T. Geronimo Johnson for Publishers Weekly.
Member News
Former NBCC President Laurie Hertzel’s recent memoir Ghosts of Fourth Street was the lead book in a roundup of memoirs reviewed in The Irish Times.
Joan Silverman’s newsletter, Away From It All, promises a bit of respite from the news and information that assault us daily. The newsletter highlights “essays by leading writers on any and everything, but the news.” The latest issue features essays by Aimee Bender, Rivka Galchen, and Jennifer Gallo Gaites. For more information, visit awayfromitall.substack.com.
NBCC member and award-winning author Hollay Ghadery is featured on the cover of The Ampersand Review, and has interviewed dozens of new authors on her New Books Network podcast.
“Underwood Typewriter” by arianravan is licensed under CC BY 2.0.