NBCC board member Katherine A. Powers reviewed the audiobook versions of The Lost Man by Jane Harper, Good Riddance by Elinor Lipman and How to Hide an Empire by Daniel Immerwahr in her monthly column for the Washington Post. She also reviewed five books about travel for the Post's annual summer books guide.

"There is always one book that I use when I write, something I flip open every morning before I start, reading from any page," NBCC member Roxana Robinson tells former NBCC president Jane Ciabattari for her Lit Hub/Book Marks column. "For Dawson’s Fall, this book was Wolf Hall, in which Hilary Mantel shows that the phrase 'historical novel' needn’t mean stiff, romantic or stereotyped." (And more good news: Mantel, who won the NBCC's fiction award in 2010 for Wolf Hall, has announced that The Mirror and the Light, the third novel in her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, is coming in March 2020.)

Ellen Akins reviewed Lanny by Max Porter for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Tobias Carroll has been super-busy, reviewing Julián Herbert's The House of the Pain of Others for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, Masande Ntshanga's Triangulum for Tor.com, and writing his Watchlist column for Words Without Borders.

That said, was he as busy as NBCC Emerging Critic Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers, who had six reviews published? (Not that this is a competition. We are all busy. But still. Six!) Here they are: Kimi Eisele’s The Lightest Object in the Universe, Erica Boyce's The Fifteen Wonders of Daniel Green, Carrie Laben’s A Hawk in the Woods, West Camel’s Attend, and Michael Croley’s short story collection, Any Other Place, all for a special debut fiction feature in Foreword Reviews. And, for a different edition of Foreword, she reviewed Carolyn Kirby’s The Conviction of Cora Burns, a new historical fiction set in Victorian Britain whose social issues are eerily reminscient of our own.  

David Galef reviewed Kaddish.com by Nathan Englander for the Yale Review.

Diane Scharper reviewed three books for the National Catholic Reporter: Women Rowing North by Mary Pipher, Mother Winter by Sophia Shalmiyev, and Maid by Stephanie Land. 

Michele Ross reviewed John Sandford's Neon Prey, Anne Perry's (editor) anthology Odd Partners and Jeffery Deaver's The Never Game for the Cleveland Plain Dealer, which is still not posting book reviews online. Better buy a print subscription, folks.

Former NBCC board member Dan Cryer reviewed Furious Hours by Casey Cep for the Boston Globe.

George de Stefano reviewed Which Side Are You On? by James Sullivan for Pop Matters.

Former board member Ron Charles posted a "Totally Hip Book Review" of Cari Mora, a thriller by Thomas Harris, the creator of Hannibel Lector. (Watch it and scream.) (With fright? With laughter? At the adorableness of the stuffed lamb?)

Julia M. Klein reviews Daniel Okrent's The Guarded Gate for the Boston Globe and Julia M. Klein reviews Justice John Paul Stevens' The Making of a Justice for the Chicago Tribune.

And some splended news... 

Mary Mackey's most recent collection of poetry The Jaguars That Prowl Our Dreams: New and Selected Poems 1974 to 2018 (Marsh Hawk Press)  has won the 2019 Eric Hoffer Award for the Best Book Published by a Small Press. The Hoffer Award highlights salient writing, as well as the independent spirit of small publishers. Since its inception, the Hoffer has become one of the most important international book awards for small, academic, and independent presses and a platform for and the champion of the independent voice.

And Cliff Garstang's new novel, The Shaman of Turtle Valley, has been published by Braddock Avenue Books.

NBCC members within driving distance of San Francisco are invited to the 9th annual NBCC/Zyzzyva cockatil party celebrating criticism and literature in the Bay Area. It's Sunday June 3 at the McEvoy Center for the Arts; for details and to RSVP, email co-host Jane Ciabattari, janeciab@gmail.com

Painting 'Old Woman Reading' by Hungarian artist Sandor Galimberti, 1907. In the public domain.

Send us your stuff! Your work may be highlighted in this roundup; please send links to new reviews, features and other literary pieces, or tell us about awards, honors or new and forthcoming books, by dropping a line to NBCCcritics@gmail.com.

Laurie Hertzel is the senior editor for books at the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the president of the NBCC board.

NBCC board president Laurie Hertzel reviewed Mary Miller's novel Biloxi for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where she is senior editor for books. (It's about a dog. And redemption. And middle age. How could she not review it?) She also wrote a recap of the inaugural Wordplay book festival for her weekly column.

Former NBCC president Tom Beer interviewed John Glynn about Out East: Memoir of a Montauk Summer for Newsday, where he is books editor.

Former NBCC president Jane Ciabattari shares her latest Lit Hub/Book Marks column, in which she discusses five books about trees with Max Porter, including Calvino's The Baron in the Trees and Laura Beatty's Pollard.

And here's Jane’s report from the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, which includes a panel with two John Leonard award finalists (Jamel Brinkley and R.O. Kwon), a courage in publishing panel with newly minted Pulitzer winner Carlos Lozada (also winner of the NBCC's Balakian award), former NBCC president John Freeman, Paris Review editor Emily Nemens and New York Times ethics columnist Kwame Anthony Appiah.

NBCC board member Madeleine Schwartz wrote about the criminally neglected novelist Lore Segal for Harper’s.

Katherine Hill reviewed Amy Hempel’s short story collection Sing to It for the New Republic, making note of the author’s brevity, which is to say, the fact that she doesn’t use too many words to make a point, which is a special talent, and an enviable one, because reading something where the author just keeps going on and on can be quite tedious, which is to say, tiresome, monotonous, wearying and soporific, and we strongly encourage all writers to take special care not to do this, because, honestly, just get to the point already.

NBCC board member Michael Schaub reviewed Karen Russell’s new Orange World for NPR, and interviewed Where We Come From author Oscar Cásares for the Los Angeles Times.

At NPR, Martha Anne Toll reviewed Lorene Cary’s “thoroughly engaging” Ladysitting: My Year With Nana At The End Of Her Century.

Kamil Ahsan reviewed Chia-Chia Lin’s “brutal, but marvelous” The Unpassing for the A.V. Club.

Michelle Newby Lancaster reviewed Spying on the South by Tony Horwitz for Lone Star Literary Life, as did Mary Ann Gwinn for Newsday.

In Newsday, Gerald Bartell wrote about three novels that take place in the Hamptons (hey, just in time for summer!).

Heller McAlpin wrote a tribute to baking maven Maida Heatter and to her late, lamented Christian Science Monitor editor and fellow baking aficionado, Marjorie Kehe, on the occasion of the publication of Heatter’s greatest hits, Happiness is Baking, for the Monitor. She also reviewed Max Porter's Lanny for NPR, and Jayson Greene’s Once More We Saw Stars for Washington Post.

Robert Allen Papinchak's essay review of Sarah Weinman's The Real Lolita: The Kidnapping of Sally Horner and the Novel That Scandalized the World appeared in The Millions.

Oline Cogdill reviewed Michael Koryta’s If She Wakes for the Associated Press.

Mike Lindgren contributed a one-two punch to the Washington Post: a review of David Rowell’s Wherever the Sound Takes You, and a consideration of shock jock Howard Stern’s latest book.

Paul Wilner reviewed Joel Mowdy’s “indelible” short story collection Floyd Harbor for Zyzzyva.

NBCC Emerging Critic Letitia Montgomery-Rodgers reviewed Ross Gay’s The Book of Delights and Rebecca Solnit’s Cinderella Liberator for the spring issue of Orion Magazine.

Lanie Tankard reviewed Duanwad Pimwana's novel Bright for The Woven Tale Press.

Barbara Spindel has been busy diving into nonfiction, reviewing George Packer's Our Man: Richard Holbrooke and the End of the American Century for the Christian Science Monitor and the anthology What My Mother and I Don't Talk About (edited by former NBCC board member Michele Filgate) for the Barnes & Noble Review.

Tobias Carroll wrote about Hwang Jungeun’s I’ll Go On for Review31, and discussed Oakley Hall’s fiction at CrimeReads.

Jessica Smith reviewed Cynthia Arrieu-King's Futureless Languages for Fence Digital.

Kathleen Rooney wrote about Lara Prior-Palmer’s new memoir, Rough Magic: Riding the World’s Loneliest Horse Race, for the Star Tribune.

Ellen Wayland-Smith reviewed Briallen Hopper’s Hard to Love for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

When did you first see yourself in a book? That’s the question Anita Felicelli asked 13 Asian American and Pacific Islander authors for this fascinating piece in Bustle. Anita also reviewed Fernando A. Flores’ Tears of the Trufflepig for On the Seawall; NBCC board member Michael Schaub wrote about the novel as well, for the Texas Observer.

Dana Wilde has had a busy month, reviewing Balancing Act 2: A Book of Poems by Fifty Maine Women for The Cafe Review, Adam Tavel's Richard Wilbur Award-winning collection of poems Catafalque for Rain Taxi, and Ghosts, poems by Mark Melnicove and paintings by Abby Shahn, in his Central Maine Newspapers Off Radar column.

Over at On the Seawall, Rochelle Spencer wrote about the return of The Langston Hughes Review.

Some cool member news: Meg Waite Clayton's forthcoming The Last Train to London, a novel based on the true story of the Kindertransport rescue of ten thousand children from Nazi-occupied Europe and one brave woman who helped them escape, sold at auction here and in Israel, and is now also going to be translated into a dozen languages.

Jessica Smith’s new book of poetry, How to Know the Flowers, is now available from Veliz Books.

NBCC members: Send us your stuff! Your work may be highlighted in this roundup; please send links to new reviews, features and other literary pieces, or tell us about awards, honors or new and forthcoming books, by dropping a line to NBCCcritics@gmail.com.

Photo of Ross Gay by Slowking, used under Creative Commons license.

Send us your stuff! Your work may be highlighted in this roundup; please send links to new reviews, features and other literary pieces, or tell us about awards, honors or new and forthcoming books, by dropping a line to NBCCcritics@gmail.com.

A Quick Reminder About Sustainers

If you or someone you know wants to support the NBCC’s efforts but isn't a member, we’ve recently launched the Sustainer category. Sustainers are nonmembers who support the next generation of literary writers through our Emerging Critics program and keep our awards, events, and this website humming. More information about becoming a Sustainer is at our membership page.

On to the Links...

So, how’s the book review going? We don’t mean the one you’re working on---we’re sure that one is going just great. We mean the book review as a general endeavor. In response to a recent Harper’s cover story on the alleged death of the book review, Lit Hub invited 14 book critics to weigh in. Among the respondents are NBCC President Laurie Hertzel, VP of Communications Kerri Arsenault, and Emerging Critic Leena Soman.

Speaking of LitHub, we neglected to include a link to board member Lori Feathers’ review of Ali Smith’s Spring---an essay that launches her new column for the site, “In Context.” Ellen Akins also reviewed Spring for the Washington Post.

“When Notre Dame burned, I felt nothing. There’s no shortage of 12th century churches around Europe.” At the Tampa Bay Times, Collette Bancroft interviewed David Sedaris about his latest book, Calypso.

Ru Freeman reviewed Laila Lalami’s novel The Other Americans for the Boston Globe.

Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed Ian McEwan’s speculative tale of sex and robots, Machines Like Me, for the Washington Independent Review of Books.

At the Los Angeles Review of Books, Alexander Kafka reviewed Lynne Olson's Madame Fourcade’s Secret War: The Daring Young Woman Who Led France’s Largest Spy Network Against Hitler. “Olson’s research is comprehensive, her writing crackling, and her story astonishing,” he writes. Kafka also reviewed Bee Wilson’s The Way We Eat Now for the Washington Post.

Tara Cheesman reviewed Virginie Despentes’ novel Pretty Things for Barrelhouse.

Former NBCC president Jane Ciabattari's May BBC Culture column includes new novels from Julie Orringer, Sarah Blake, an exhilarating debut memoir about a horse race across Mongolia. and a new story collection from Karen Russell, who " spins intricate sentences and pulls off head-spinning shifts, pushing language to its limits." Her recent Lit Hub/Book Marks columns feature exchanges with Leah Hager Cohen about novels with sprawling families and with Binnie Kirshenbaum about unforgettable novels about mental distress, including Rebecca West's Return of the Soldier, which explores post-World War I PTSD.

At the New York Journal of Books, Karl Wolff reviews Deborah Sengl’s visual adaptation of Karl Kraus’ play The Last Days of Mankind.

Balakian finalist Julia M. Klein reviewed two books on Emmett Till, Dave Tell’s Remembering Emmett Till and Elliott J. Gorn’s Let the People See, for the Chicago Tribune. She also interviewed Emily Jungmin Yoon about her poetry collection, A Cruelty Special to Our Species, for the Pennsylvania Gazette.

Eric Nguyen reviewed Richard Chiem's novel of “troubled, lonely humanity in the internet age,” King of Joy, for LARB’s diaCRITICS channel.

Michelle Newby Lancaster reviewed Oscar Cásares’ novel Where We Come From for Lone Star Literary Life.

Wayne Catan reviewed three new books about Ernest Hemingway in the Idaho Statesman.

Speaking of Papa: The busy Steve Paul reviewed Andrew Feldman’s Ernesto: The Untold Story of Hemingway in Revolutionary Cuba for Booklist. Paul also interviewed Tommy Orange (There There), winner of the NBCC's John Leonard Prize and the PEN/Hemingway Award, for a forthcoming issue of the Ernest Hemingway Society newsletter. And he writes about his current book project, a projected biography of Evan S. Connell, in a "Work in Progress" essay for New Letters magazine.

Paul Wilner reviewed Christian Kiefer’s novel Phantoms for Alta, calling Kiefer “an important literary voice coming into his own,” and reviewed Joshua Furst’s novel Revolutionaries, about the 60s US counterculture, for the website Splice Today.

Back in the present and one continent over, Brian Haman reviewed Charmaine Leung’s memoir of her roots in Singapore, 17A Keong Saik Road, for Singapore Unbound. He also reviewed Jun Yang’s exhibition The Artist, the Work and the Exhibition at Kunsthaus Graz for ArtAsiaPacific, and reviewed Chia-Chia Lin’s debut novel, The Unpassing, for the New York Times.

And speaking of international literature, Tobias Carroll contributed a few recommendations to Vulture’s list of 15 must-read translated books from the past five years. He also reviewed Paul Kerschen’s novel The Warm South for Tor.com.

Laverne Frith reviewed Ann Townsend’s “deeply engrossing” poetry collection Dear Delinquent at the New York Journal of Books.

The National Book Review ran a humorous piece by Rayyan Al-Shawaf about his novel's bumpy path to publication.

John Glassie reviewed Casey Cep's Furious Hours: Murder, Fraud, and the Last Trial of Harper Lee for the Washington Post, calling it a “rich, ambitious, beautifully written book.” In the Star Tribune, Claude Peck concurs, calling it “carefully researched and lyrically composed.”

Lastly, at On the Seawall, this week’s Critical Notes correspondent, board member Mark Athitakis, reviewed NBCC finalist Lia Purpura’s All the Fierce Tethers, a collection of essays that “circle around themes of death, fear, and loss, and how we use words to elide or erase our anxiety and mortality.”

NBCC Events

Please mark your calendars: On May 30 at Book Expo America at New York’s Javits Center, NBCC VP of events Carlin Romano will moderate “If Everyone’s a Critic, Is Anyone a Critic?” with the Washington Post’s Carlos Lozada, NBCC Emerging Critic Jennie Hann, and Alfred A. Knopf publicity director Nicholas Latimer. Don’t have a BEA pass? All NBCC members who would like to attend NBCC’s BEA panel on May 30th  can receive a free credential to attend BEA that day. Please RSVP by May 23rd to Carlin Romano, VP for Events, at cromano@bookcritics.org.

And on June 8 at the Printers Row Lit Fest in Chicago, Lozada will appear in conversation with two NBCC and Pulitzer Prize board members who awarded him this year’s Pulitzer in criticism, Walton Muyumba and past President Elizabeth Taylor. They will discuss book criticism in the age of Goodreads and Amazon, and why it matters.

Member News

Grace Talusan’s debut memoir, The Body Papers, is out now and has been well-received by the New York Times, Nylon, Booklist, and Arkansas International.

Helene Cardona’s Birnam Wood, a translation of poetry by her father, Jose Manuel Cardona, was recently reviewed at Readers’ Favorite; two poems from the book are published and recorded at Terrain.org.

NBCC members: Send us your stuff! Your work may be highlighted in this roundup; please send links to new reviews, features and other literary pieces, or tell us about awards, honors or new and forthcoming books, by dropping a line to NBCCcritics@gmail.com.

Photo of David Sedaris by WBUR, used via Creative Commons license.

Why do we delight in fictions created from the French Revolution? Tobias Carroll explores the frisson of fervor or schadenfreude (is there a French word for that?), paying particular attention to Edward Carey's novel Little, at Lithub. Also at Lithub: Fran Bigman talks to poet Deborah Landau about her new collection, Soft Targets, and in her column In Context NBCC board member Lori Feathers writes about Ali Smith and her latest novel, Spring.

Meanwhile, Spring is reviewed at NPR by Heller McAlpin, who reviews Anna Quindlen's Nanaville and Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me for them as well. She's often one of the busiest reviewers in the NBCC.

But this week even Heller can't compete with NBCC board president Laurie Hertzel, who in addition to all she does for us and running the books pages for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, reviewed John Connell's memoir The Farmer's Son; interviewed a high school poetry champion; wrote her weekly column about lending and borrowing books; and previewed Word Play, the new literary festival which will debut in Minneapolis next weekend.

Geez, all I'm doing is writing this before watching Game of Thrones.

Former NBCC board president Tom Beer reviews Sally Rooney's buzzy new novel Normal People alongside her debut, Conversations with Friends, at Newsday, where he's Books editor.

Jeffrey Ann Goudie reviews What My Mother and I Don't Talk About, a new and sometimes difficult essay collection edited by former NBCC board member Michele Filgate, at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, where Claude Peck reviews screenwriter Dustin Lance Black's memoir Mama's Boy and current NBCC board member David Varno reviews Another Kind of Madness, the debut novel by Ed Pavlić.

Tess Taylor, also on the NBCC board, writes about four poetry collections at the NY Times: Doomstead Days by Brian Teare; Sight Lines by Arthur Sze; Brute by Emily Skaja; and Hold Sway by Sally Ball. Also a the NY Times, Brian Blanchfield reviews artist Chris Rush's Light Years, noting that the memoir "is less a queering of the wilderness than a wilding of queerness."

For the Wall Street Journal, Gregory Crouch reviewed The Impossible Climb by Mark Synnott. Hamilton Cain talked to David Brooks about his memoir The Second Mountain for Oprah Magazine. At The Rumpus, Martha Anne Toll talked to Kendra Allen about her essay collection When You Learn the Alphabet; Toll also reviewed Anna Merlan's book Republic of Lies for NPR.

In April, Robert BIrnbaum wrote about the baseball books of 2019 for the Washington Post. Also at the Washington Post, Daniel Asa Rose talks to former talk show host Craig Ferguson about his new memoir, Riding the Elephant. 

Local outlets are also covering books: At the Working Waterfront in Maine, Dana Wilde writes about author Agnes Bushell; Harvey Freedenberg writes about debut novelist Joel Burcat for The Burg, of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania; Hélène Cardona reviews the poetry collection Howling Enigma by Rustin Larson for North of Oxford, a Philadelphia-based literary journal; and Paul Wilner writes about two biographies of journalist and screenwriter Ben Hecht for the Jewish News of Northern California.

Wilner also reviewed A Wonderful Stroke of Luck by Ann Beattie for ZYZZYVA. Wayne Catan talked to Chang-Rae Lee for The Hemingway Review blog. Julia M. Klein reviewed Defying Hitler by Gordon Thomas and Greg Lewis for The Forward and talked to Nicholas A. Cristakis about his book Blueprint for the alumni magazine Pennsylvania Gazette. NBCC board member David Varno wrote about Enrique Vila-Matas' Mac's Problem, translated by Margaret Jull Costa and Sophie Hughes, for On the Seawall. 

Lisa Peet wrote an essay about literary discovery for Bloom. Theodore Kinni reviewed Steven Rogelberg's The Surprising Science of Meetings for Strategy + Business. Patti Jazanosik reviewed the graphic adaptation of Anne Frank's diary by Ari Folman and David Polosnky for Consequence Magazine. Ellen Prentiss Campbell reviews debut novelist David Hallock Sanders' Busara Road at the Fiction Writers Review. At the New York Journal of Books, Michael J. McCann reviews Gray Day by Eric O'Neil and Emily Eternal by M.G. Wheaton.

Congratulations to Joan Frank, who will be heading to a residency at the Vermont Studio Center this summer, and to Rayyan Al-Shawaf, whose debut novel When All Else Fails is excerpted at Truthdig. 

And back to Tobias Carroll, who started us off; he also reviewed Ian McEwan's Machines Like Me and The Amateurs by Lisa Harman for Tor.com. 

NBCC members: Send us your stuff! Your work may be highlighted in this roundup; please send links to new reviews, features and other literary pieces, or tell us about awards, honors or new and forthcoming books, by dropping a line to NBCCcritics@gmail.com. 

Image: The Toilette of Venus, 1751, by François Boucher, from the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Sally Rooney. Photo by Jonny L. Davies.

REVIEWS AND INTERVIEWS

For the Washington Post, Lauren Sarazen reviewed the book that everyone on both sides of the Atlantic is raving about, Normal People, by Sally Rooney. ("Believe the hype," she says.) Ellen Prentiss Campbell  reviews Normal People, for Washington Independent Review of Books; Heller McAlpin reviews Normal People (and Southern Lady Code) for NPR; Robert Allen Papinchak reviewed Normal People (and Barbara Kingsolver's Unsheltered) for the National Book Review; and NBCC board member Madeleine Schwartz reviewed Normal People for New York Review Books. I'm guessing there will be more Rooney reviews next week. Meanwhile ...

NBCC board member Mary Ann Gwinn interviewed Ian McEwan for the Seattle Times about his new novel, Machines Like Us. ("Future androids," he ruminates, "might develop minds of their own that will be profoundly alien to ours.")

NBCC president Laurie Hertzel reviewed Tucker Lake Chronicle by Joan Crosby for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, a memoir about a couple who followed their dream and moved to the remote north woods for a year, to a cabin with no heat and no plumbing. (And who doesn't have dreams like that?) 

NBCC emerging critic Natalia Holtzman reviewed Belle Boggs's first novel, The Gulf, for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Former NBCC president Jane Ciabattari talks with Rachel Howard about five biographies of writers, with Rachel Cline about books in which the past is a foreign country, and with Jennifer Acker about five novels of interracial love, for her weekly Lit Hub/Book Marks column. 

Bridey Heing interviewed Kristin Hoganson for Longreads about her new book on the Midwest, The Heartland: An American History. (The Midwest, Hoganson argues, has long been misunderstood as far more provincial and isolated than it actually is,)

Claude Peck reviewed Oliver Sacks' Everything In Its Place for the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

Patricia Schultheis reviewed The Night Tiger by Yangsze Choo for the Washington independent Review of Books.

Kathleen Stone's review of Mother is a Verb by Sarah Knott was published in Ploughshares.

Anita Felicelli reviewed Sarah Blake's Naamah in the SF Chronicle.

Page Starzinger reviewed the poetry collection The Thin Wall by Martha Rhodes for the Kenyon Review.

Bridget Quinn reviewed Jean Frémon's novel of artist Louise Bourgeois, Now, Now Louison for Hyperallergic.

Meg Waite Clayton’s monthly Listening In for the San Francisco Chronicle reviews the audiobooks of Lolly Winston's "Me for You," Olivier Bordeaut's debut novel, "Waiting for Bojangles," and Lynne Olson's "Madame Fourcade's Secret War."

Michelle Newby Lancaster reviewed Novuyo Rosa Tshuma's House of Stone for Lone Star Literary Life.

Pam Munter reviewed Off the Charts: The Hidden Lives and Lessons of American Child Prodigies, by Ann Hulbert, for Fourth and Sycamore.

Hamilton Cain profiled writer Susan Choi for LitHub.He also reviewed Spring by Ali Smith for the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and Southern Lady Code by Helen Ellis for Chapter 16.

Mennonite mothers and daughters speak up after years of secret abuse in Miriam Toews’ novel, Women Talking, reviewed by K L. Romo at Washington Independent Review of Books, as well as reviewing "Strong as Steel" by Jon Land and talking to the author in the column there,  "That's What She Said." 

Tobias Carroll's latest Watchlist column for Words Without Borders is up. And he interviewed Maryse Meijer for Vol.1 Brooklyn.

Kevin O'Rourke reviewed Édouard Louis's Who Killed My Father in the Los Angeles Review of Books.

Michele Ross recently reviewed Melissa Scrivner Love's American Heroin, John McMahon's The Good Detective, Lucy Foley's The Hunting Party and Charles Finch's The Vanishing Man for the Cleveland Plain Dealer. Sadly, the newspaper did not post these reviews online.

What is the artist's place in society? Karl Wolff reviews Global Art and the Cold War by John J. Curley for the New York Review of Books.

Diane Scharper reviewed The Friend by Sigrid Nunez for America Magazine Spring 2019 Books Issue.

OTHER GOOD NEWS (INCLUDING: SO MANY BOOKS!)

NBCC VP/Communications and Criticism Chair Kerri Arsenault has been selected for a Fall 2019 two-month writers residency at 100 West Corsicana, an organization that grants artists and writers residencies to work on ambitious projects in a historic, repurposed, three-story Odd Fellows Lodge in downtown Corsicana, Texas.

Nandita Godbole was interviewed by BBC Futures for her biographical fiction Ten Thousand Tongues: secrets of a layered kitchen.

The Restless Ilan Stavans: Outsider on the Inside, by Steven G. Kellman, a former board member and Balakian recipient, will be published this month by the University of Pittsburgh Press.

Longtime book critic Julie Wittes Schlack will soon be facing the terrifying prospect of being on the receiving end of a review. Her new book, This All-at-Onceness, will be published May 30 from Regal House Publishing. A cultural memoir in the form of linked essays, her book, she says, is an "insider’s odyssey through counter-culturalism, consumerism, and the social surveillance state."

Jacob M. Appel's ninth short story collection, Amazing Things Are Happening Here, was published by Black Lawrence Press on April 15.

Dana Wilde co-edited, with Bruce Holsapple, Quarry: The Collected Poems of Peter Kilgore, newly available from North Country Press.

And longtime critic Victoria Amador published a biography -- Olivia de Havilland: Lady Triumphant -- with the University Press of Kentucky on April 22.

Linda Simon's book, Lost Girls: The Invention of the Flapper, is newly out in paperback.

Meanwhile, Anita Felicelli's short story, "The Encroachment of Waking Life," has just published been at Catapult.

What have you done lately? Brag here. Please send info on reviews, profiles, books, short stories and other publishing good stuff to nbcccritics@gmail.com. 

Laurie Hertzel, senior editor for books at the Minneapolis Star Tribune, is the president of the NBCC board.

NBCC members: Send us your stuff! Your work can be highlighted in this roundup; please send links to new reviews, features and other literary pieces, or tell us about awards, honors or new and forthcoming books, by dropping a line to NBCCcritics@gmail.com. 

Man Booker-prizewinning novelist Ian McEwan may be unaware of decades of science fiction stories, books, television and film, as he told the Guardian that “There could be an opening of a mental space for novelists to explore this future, not in terms of travelling at 10 times the speed of light in anti-gravity boots, but in actually looking at the human dilemmas of being close up to something that you know to be artificial but which thinks like you." Indeed, he tackles the idea of robots and sentience in his new novel Machines Like Me. NBCC member Julian Lucas reviews it for the New Yorker, noting McEwan's "penchant for moral geometry," while former board member Ron Charles goes to the Borg in his Totally Hip Video Book Review of it at the Washington Post. 

NBCC member Kathleen Rooney reviews Make Me a City, a "whopper of a debut novel" by Jonathan Carr set in nineteenth century Chicago, for the NY Times. 

New homeowner and NBCC member Ryan Chapman writes about two slightly terrifying books about home being breached by strangers: The Cabin at the End of the World by Paul Tremblay (2018) and W. F. Hermans's An Untouched House (originally published in 1952, in a new translation from the Dutch published in 2018). 

Artist Chris Rush recounts a singular, sometimes dangerous youth in his "stunningly beautiful, original memoir" -- The Light Years -- which is "driven by a search for the divine," writes Kate Tuttle, former NBCC president and current board member, at the L.A. Times. 

NBCC board member Madeleine Schwartz revisits Zelda Fitzgerald for the London Review of Books, writing that in considering her sole, uneven novel Save Me the Waltz against husband F. Scott Fitzgerald's counterpart, Tender Is the Night, she found she missed Zelda's "energy and fizz." 

In the May issue of the Atlantic, NBCC board member John McWhorter writes about the joy of (often childish) neologisms and playful evolutions of language (because kids). 

The spring issue of Ploughshares, out now, was guest edited by former NBCC board member Rigoberto González. 

The Akron Poetry Prize, open now for submissions, is being judged by NBCC board member Victoria Chang. 

At the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, current NBCC president Laurie Hertzel writes that while three local bookstores have recently closed, another three are opening or coming soon to the Twin Cities. "The three new bookstores will not take their places," she writes, "but are carving out new niches." Including candy! And beer! 

ICYMI: the Raven Bookstore in Lawrence, Kansas went viral with a Twitter thread about why readers should buy books from their local indie, not massive online retailers. Convinced? Visit an old favorite or new on Independent Bookstore Day, Sat. April 27. 

Photo credit: Ian McEwan speaking in Paris in 2011 by Thesupermat via Wikimedia Commons.

We Need Your Help Selecting the Next Sandrof Award Honoree

Each year, the NBCC board selects a person or institution to win the Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award, and we’d love to have your help choosing the next winner.

The Sandrof Award, named after the first president of the NBCC, is given annually to a person or institution — a writer, publisher, critic, or editor, among others — who has, over time, made significant contributions to book culture.

Past winners of the award have included Margaret Atwood, Toni Morrison, PEN American Center, Studs Terkel and Wendell Berry. The most recent honoree, Arte Público Press, received significant national media attention for their win, including articles in the Minneapolis Star Tribune, the San Antonio Express-News, Texas Monthly and NBC. They even received a special citation from Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner in honor of their victory.

Any institution or living person can be nominated for the award, and a list of previous winners is available on the NBCC website. If you know of a person or group who you think is deserving of the award, please send their name and a 1-3 paragraph nominating statement to Sandrof Award Committee Chair Michael Schaub at mschaubtx@gmail.com. Nominations are open until Dec. 1, 2019. We’d love to hear from you!

And Now for Some Member Reviews…

Heller McAlpin says that your book club’s next selection should be Susan Choi’s buzzy Trust Exercise in a review for NPR. Over at USA Today, NBCC board member Mark Athitakis concurs.

Speaking of Mark, our man in Arizona puts on his Gen-X flannel shirt and Doc Martens and asks where the great millennial novel is in an essay for the Washington Post.

Also at the Post, NBCC board member Charles Finch considers Isabella Hammad’s debut novel, The Parisian.

Post fever: catch it! The paper’s poetry columnist, Elizabeth Lund, writes about new books by Jericho Brown, Yanyi, Emily Skaja, and Naomi Shihab Nye. And John Domini reviewed Now, Now, Louison” a fictional biography of Louise Bourgeois, for the D.C. newspaper.

Newsday books editor and past NBCC president Tom Beer was astonished by Miriam Toews’ Women Talking.

The always busy David Canfield loved Susan Choi’s Trust Exercise and was conflicted about Nell Freudenberger’s Lost and Wanted. He also profiled Normal People author Sally Rooney for Entertainment Weekly.

Zach Graham also weighs in on Lost and Wanted for Epiphany, as does Michael Lindgren at On the Seawall.

Lanie Tankard reviewed Lia Purpura’s All the Fierce Tethers for the Woven Tale Press.

At the National Book Review, Michael Bobelian reviews Robert A. Caro’s Working.

Hamilton Cain took a look at Nathaniel Rich’s Losing Earth for Chapter 16.

Heather Scott Partington has been making the rest of us look like slackers. She reviewed David Means’ Instructions for a Funeral at On the Seawall, Jennifer duBois’ The Spectators at USA Today, Nell Freudenberger’s Lost and Wanted at Newsday, and Yiyun Li’s Where Reasons End at the National Book Review. She also interviewed JoAnn Chaney at Charge Magazine.

Also keeping busy this week was Katharine Coldiron, with reviews of Mieke Eerkens’ All Ships Follow Me at NPR (her first for the radio network), Brice Matthieussent’s Revenge of the Translator at the Carolina Quarterly, and Molly Dektar’s The Ash Family at the Arts Fuse. She also wrote a recap of this year’s AWP conference for Book & Film Globe.

Rebecca Foster has reviews of Carrianne Leung’s That Time I Loved You for BookBrowse and Amy Hempel’s Sing to It for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.

NBCC board member Ismail Muhammad thinks Bryan Washington’s short story collection Lot is “a debut that announces a writer of uncommon talent and insight.” Read his review at Bookforum.

NBCC board member Michael Schaub reviewed Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans for the Los Angeles Times.

In the mood for a memoir? Jenny Shank has your back. She wrote about five spring memoirs for the Barnes & Noble blog.

Bridget Quinn reviewed Karl Ove Knausgaard’s So Much Longing in So Little Space: The Art of Edvard Munch for Hyperallergic.

Michael Adam Carroll wrote about Hernán Díaz’s In the Distance for Ploughshares and Laila Lalami’s The Other Americans for the Los Angeles Review of Books.

NBCC Emerging Critic J. Howard Rosier reviewed the reissue of Raymond Queneau's The Blue Flowers for Kenyon Review.

Olga Zilberbourg writes about four recent books in translation from Russian in World Literature Today.

Christoph Irmscher just published an essay on Audubon and Haiti in the Public Domain Review.

And Here’s Some Member Interviews and News...

Ryan Chapman interviewed The Old Drift author Namwali Serpell for Bomb.

Celia Bland was interviewed about her new book, Cherokee Road Kill, by David Salvage at the Southern Literary Review.

Harvey Freedenberg interviewed Jennifer L. Eberhardt about her new book, Biased, for BookPage.

Meg Waite Clayton’s forthcoming novel, The Last Train to London, received a prepublication notice in Library Journal. It will be published in 12 countries.

Randall Mann has a new book: The Illusion of Intimacy: On Poetry is being published by Diode Editions.

NBCC members note: Your reviews seed this roundup; please send items, including news about your new publications and recent honors, to NBCCCritics@gmail.com. With reviews, please include title of book and author, as well as name of publication. Make sure to send links that do not require a subscription or username and password.​ We love dedicated URLs. We do not love hyperlinks. We do love coffee, but that’s neither here nor there.