Maureen Corrigan
Maureen Corrigan, book critic for NPR's Fresh Air, is The Nicky and Jamie Grant Distinguished Professor of the Practice in Literary Criticism at Georgetown University. She is an associate editor of and contributor to Mystery and Suspense Writers (Scribner) and the winner of the 1999 Edgar Award for Criticism, presented by the Mystery Writers of America. In 2019, Corrigan was awarded the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing by the National Book Critics Circle.
Corrigan served as a juror for the 2012 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction. Her book So We Read On: How The Great Gatsby Came To Be and Why It Endures was published by Little, Brown in September 2014. Corrigan is represented by Trinity Ray at The Tuesday Lecture Agency: trinity@tuesdayagency.com
Corrigan's literary memoir, Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading! was published in 2005. Corrigan is also a reviewer and columnist for The Washington Post's Book World. In addition to serving on the advisory panel of The American Heritage Dictionary, she has chaired the Mystery and Suspense judges' panel of the Los Angeles TimesBook Prize.
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The short chapters in Laila Lalami's novel are narrated by a rotating cast of characters. They conjure a murder mystery, a cross-cultural romance, an immigrant saga, war stories and family dramas.
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Squeeze into the rumble seat — Yuval Taylor brings readers along on a 1927 summer road trip taken by Zora Neale Hurston and Langston Hughes. Their friendship turned out to be a very bumpy ride.
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The Lady from the Black Lagoontells the story of Milicent Patrick, who designed the Creature's monster suit. Giraffes on Horseback Saladwas a Marx Brothers script scenario written by Salvador Dalí.
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Patrick Radden Keefe's new book begins with the 1972 disappearance of a 38-year-old widowed mother in Belfast, then spins into an epic account of Northern Ireland's bloody sectarian conflict.
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Valeria Luiselli's Lost Children Archive centers on a family's tense road trip to the Southwestern U.S. border. Critic Maureen Corrigan says it's an epic and elegant work.
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Emily Bernard was recovering from a knife attack — a "bizarre act of violence" — when she decided to write a book of essays rooted, autobiographically, in the blackness of her own body.
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Maureen Corrigan recommends two books that grapple with real-life mysteries: Laura Thompson's biography of the sphinxlike Agatha Christie, and I'll Be Gone In The Dark,by the late Michelle McNamara.
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Seventeen-year-old Lucy Adler loves basketball but struggles to fit in with her peers. Critic Maureen Corrigan says Dana Czapnik's protagonist reminded her of Francie from A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
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Sarah Moss' beautifully written novel is set in the 1970s in the rugged countryside of the far north of England, where a group of campers are reenacting the daily lives of Iron Age Britons.
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Sophie Mackintosh's debut novel centers on four women living in a decrepit hotel on an isolated island. Critic Maureen Corrigan says The Water Cure is "everything this age seems to be demanding."