Members and friends, we hope you’re having a great September! Our members have been busy this past week with reviews of books by authors including Chloe Benjamin, Adam Voith, Emma Cline, and Drew Buxton, and interviews with writers such as Marlon James, Jill Lepore, and Shannon Hale. Take care, and thanks for reading!
Member Reviews/Essays
Frances Thomas reviewed Glenn Diaz’s Yñiga for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
NBCC Secretary Lauren LeBlanc wrote about Chloe Benjamin’s Under Storyfor The New York Times Book Review.
Lee Rossi reviewed I Am Trying to Love the Whole World by Jenny Browne for Rhino Reviews.
NBCC Fundraising & Grants Co-Chair Tobias Carroll wrote about De Elizabeth’s She Haunts Me Still for Reactor; comic book biographies of comic book creators for Publishers Weekly; some August books in translation for Words Without Borders; and Adam Voith’s Recommended If You Like for Zona Motel.
Linda Hitchcock reviewed James Bailey’s Like a Cat Loves a Bird for BookTrib.
Robert Rubsam wrote about a number of recent and recently-translated dancefloor novels, including Monica Ojeda’s Electric Shamans at the Festival of the Sun, for The New Yorker, and reviewed Meredith McKinney’s new translation of Matsuo Bashō’s The Narrow Road of Oku for The Baffler.
NBCC board member Rebecca Morgan Frank covered seven new poetry collections for Literary Hub.
Diya Isha wrote an essay, “Confessions of an AI Editor,” for The Nation.
Ryan Chapman reviewed Adam Voith’s Recommended If You Like for The Metropolitan Review.
Randy Cepuch reviewed Kobuk the Destroyer and Other Tales from the Wild, Unseen World of Test Engineering by Alex Davies for the Washington Independent Review of Books.
Tom Peebles reviewed Julia Ioffe’s Motherland: A Feminist History of Modern Russia, From Revolution to Autocracy for his blog.
For Air Mail, Celia McGee reviewed Emilio Pucci: The Astonishing Odyssey of a Fashion Icon by Terrence Ward and Idanna Pucci.
Ann Levin reviewed American Scoundrel: Roy Cohn’s Dark Journey From Joe McCarthy to Donald Trump by Kai Bird with Susan Goldmark for the Forward.
Charles Green reviewed Chris Cheng’s Proven in Blood: A Novel of War, Betrayal and Belonging for Blueink Review and James Penha’s Queer as Folk Tales for The Gay & Lesbian Review.
Tamara MC wrote about encountering tarantulas at Big Bend National Park for BBC Wildlife.
For The Boston Globe, Cory Oldweiler reviewed Emma Cline’s Switzy.
Elaine Szewczyk wrote a piece for Publishers Weekly about the making of the picture book On Fridays by Winsome Bingham and Caldecott Honor artist Jason Griffin.
For The Gay & Lesbian Review, Michael Quinn reviewed Hujar: Contact at the Morgan Library & Museum, where Peter Hujar’s contact sheets offer a revealing look at how he developed his artistry.
NBCC Online Chair Michael Schaub reviewed Drew Buxton’s Daytona Teddy Riggsfor Southwest Review.
Member Interviews
Eric Olson interviewed Marlon James for Literary Hub.
McKenzie Watson-Fore interviewed Jesusland author Joelle Kidd for Afterwords, the Broad Ripple Review Blog.
Clea Simon interviewed Jill Lepore about her new book, The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, for Harvard’s FAS Current.
Betsy Groban interviewed Shannon Hale for Publishers Weekly.
Anne Charles interviewed novelist Sarah Schulman on the All Things LGBTQ Interview Show. Their wide-ranging conversation covered U.S. theatre, the LGBTQ publishing industry, her novel-in-progress, Palestine, and strategies for activism in the current political moment.
NBCC Online Chair Michael Schaub interviewed Andre Hardy for The Orange County Register.
Member News
Jenny Shank will be interviewing Colson Whitehead on stage at Denver’s Lighthouse Writers’ Workshop on Friday, September 25, from 1-2:30 p.m. They will focus on his writing process for this Shop Talk, discussing “craft, process, and the private machinery behind the work.” Tickets are available here.
Hannah Bonner’s novella Bree: An Autobiography is now available for preorder from Prairie Lights, Longfellow Books, McNally Jackson Books, and Malaprop’s Bookstore. An imagined autobiography of the character Bree Daniels (played by Jane Fonda) from Alan J. Pakula’s Klute (1971),Bree is a hybrid of film theory, memoir, and persona with blurbs from Bennett Sims, Stephanie Barber, Courtney Stephens, Daniella Shreir, among others.
Betsy Groban’s children’s book A Monkey Named Punch, illustrated by Joanie Stone, was published on Sept. 1 by Golden Books.
McKenzie Watson-Fore is teaching “A Language Lover’s Guide to Copyediting” with PACT Desk Set, an online forum for craft talks and classes, on Sunday, Sept. 27, from 1:00–2:15 p.m. Pacific.
Martha Anne Toll was profiled in Poets & Writers, in a piece by Uttama Kirit Patel called “The Self-Taught Writer: Crafting a Bespoke Education.”
This summer, Jeremy Michael Reed translated Pablo Palacio’s “A Man Kicked to Death” for the Translation Tuesday feature at Asymptote and published two of his own poems, “Things I Know by Listening to Them” in Crab Orchard Review and “A Layering of Other Worlds” in Elysium Review.
Joan Silverman’s newsletter, Away From It All: Essays From Near + Far, highlights “essays by leading writers on any and everything, but the news.” Recent issues feature work by Beth Ann Fennelly, Sven Birkerts, Aimee Bender, and Andre Dubus III. For more information, visit awayfromitall.substack.com.
Esther Kim published a new artist book, Homelands 고향땅, which translates a memoir by Sohng Ung Kim, her grandfather, a camera repairman and photographer, about walking from North to South Korea before the division.
“typewriter” by Amy Ross is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0.