Members and friends, earlier this month, we sponsored a virtual event about literary podcasts as criticism, moderated by NBCC Fundraising & Grants Co-Chair Tobias Carroll and featuring panelists Leah Abrams and Heather Akumiah (Limousine), NBCC Technology Chair and Membership Co-Chair Rebecca Hussey (One Bright Book), Oriana Schwindt (By-the-Bywater), Brad Listi (Otherppl), and Charlotte Shane (Reading Writers). In case you missed it, it’s now available to watch on YouTube, and we hope you’ll check it out!
Member Reviews/Essays
Robert Rubsam reviewed Chang-rae Lee’s A Tender Agefor Alta.
Tamara MC wrote about the Telluride Mushroom Festival for Offrange.
Sullivan Summer reviewed Sheree Renée Thomas’s The Tongue I Dream In for the Ancillary Review of Books.
NBCC Fundraising & Grants Co-Chair Tobias Carroll reviewed Claire Hopple’s Change the Subject for Zona Motel and wrote about Scott McClanahan’s Fights! for Vol. 1 Brooklyn.
For The Red Hook Star-Revue, Michael Quinn reviewed Mike Fiorito’s The Innerspace of Outerspace, a meditation on music, UFOs, and the pull of the unknown.
Britta Stromeyer reviewed The Sleep Thief, written by Ibtisam Azem and translated from the Arabic by Sinan Antoon, for ArabLit.
Marcie Geffner reviewed A Year of Marvelous Ways by Sarah Winman for the Washington Independent Review of Books and published her July roundup of new books on her Substack, Mostly Books.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed Samantha Silva’s Sometime This Century for BookTrib.
JoeAnn Hart reviewed The Parliament of Mice: A Fable by Robert Epstein for Ecolit Books.
Clea Simon reviewed Daniel Silva’s Ransom for The Arts Fuse.
Charles Green reviewed Jean Pugh Shipman’s One Tragic June for Blueink Review.
Douglas C. MacLeod, Jr. reviewed Compensation by Augustine Cerf for his Substack newsletter and Changing Gender by Susan Stryker for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Cory Oldweiler contributed fiction titles to The Boston Globe’s fall books preview.
Julia M. Klein reviewed Richard Russo’s Under the Falls for The Metropolitan Review.
Member Interviews
NBCC Fundraising & Grants Co-Chair Tobias Carroll interviewed Ron Currie and Karishma Jobanputra for the Portland Press Herald.
Former NBCC President and current advisory board member Jane Ciabattari’s Literary Hub conversation with Chang-rae Lee focuses on his new novel, A Tender Age, which traces the year Jeoh-Gi turns 11, in 1976, and begins to make the transition from beloved son in a closely connected family where his Korean immigrant parents seem infallible to the complex universe of adulthood in a second language. Jane’s Literary Hub conversation with Téa Obreht focuses on Sunrise, which reinvents the Western crime novel, wrapping together stories from 2024, 2003 and 1902, with characters ping-ponging off each other and surprises at every turn.
Eric Olson ran a Seattle Times roundtable with Samantha Paige Rosen, Kristen Arnett, and Simone Gorrindo around Rosen’s new essay anthology Living, Together.
Anne Charles interviewed Avery Irons, author of the novel Belonging to the Air, on the Vermont cable access show All Things LGBTQ.
Member News
Jamie Brown will have flash pieces “Fortunes” 3 through 7 published in the last issue of Gargoyle. These grew out of his attempt to write a brief piece of fiction in the second person future tense. He has had two others, of the fifteen he has written, previously published in other publications.
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.” Recent issues feature essays by Sven Birkerts, Aimee Bender, and Beth Ann Fennelly. For more information, visit awayfromitall.substack.com.
DW McKinney was awarded a 2026 Right to Write Award for WRITEABILITY’s Monthly Mentorship Program. DW was also named a 2026 Literary Arts Fellow by the Nevada Arts Council.
“Bookshop” by Conxa Rodà is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.