MICHAEL TAECKENS has worked in the publishing business since 1995. He is a cofounder of Broadside PR (broadsidepr.com).
KATE TUTTLE OF THE BOSTON GLOBE
From 2014 to 2020, Tuttle served on the board of the National Book Critics Circle-a non-profit organization with nearly eight hundred members: critics, authors, literary bloggers, book publishing professionals, and students-starting out as chair of the nonfiction committee and vice president of awards. She was board president for her last two years there.
Tuttle was born in Lawrence, Kansas, which the critic affectionately refers to as "a small haven of blue politics in a sea of red." She attended the University of Kansas, where her father taught in the History department, and soon after graduating she moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she spent years working as a writer and editor on large reference projects, including the now-defunct Africana.com, for which she served as managing editor from 1999 to 2004, and the African American National Biography series, working as senior executive editor from 2004 to 2006. Tuttle began writing literary criticism in the mid-1990s and has remained an active reviewer ever since. Her writing has appeared in many national publications, including the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, Newsday, Salon, HuffPost, and the Rumpus. Her most recent contribution to Poets & Writers Magazine was an interview with author Samantha Hunt in the May/June 2022 issue.
What was your path to becoming a literary critic?
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Literary MagNet
When Greg Marshall began writing the essays that would become his memoir, Leg: The Story of a Limb and the Boy Who Grew From It (Abrams Press, June 2023), he wanted to explore growing up in Utah and what he calls \"the oddball occurrences in my oddball family.\" He says, \"I wanted to call the book Long-Term Side Effects of Accutane and pitch it as Six Feet Under meets The Wonder Years.\" But in 2014 he discovered his diagnosis of cerebral palsy, information his family had withheld from him for nearly thirty years, telling him he had \"tight tendons\" in his leg. This revelation shifted the focus of the project, which became an \"investigation into selfhood, uncovering the untold story of my body,\" says Marshall. Irreverent and playful, Leg reckons with disability, illness, queerness, and the process of understanding our families and ourselves.
THE MEUSEUM OF HUMAN HISTORY
READING The Museum of Human History felt like listening to a great harmonic hum. After I finished it I found the hum lingering in my ears. Its echo continued for days.
The Sea Elephants
SHASTRI Akella's poised, elegant debut, The Sea Elephants, is a bildungsroman of a young man who joins a street theater group in India after fleeing his father's violent disapproval, the death of his twin sisters, and his mother's unfathomable grief.
The History of a Difficult Child
MIHRET Sibhat's debut novel begins with God dumping rain on a small Ethiopian town as though. He were mad at somebody.
The Sorrows of Others
AS I read each story in Ada Zhang’s brilliant collection, The Sorrows of Others, within the first few paragraphs— sometimes the first few sentences— I felt I understood the characters intimately and profoundly, such that every choice they made, no matter how radical, ill-advised, or baffling to those around them, seemed inevitable and true to me.
We Are a Haunting
TYRIEK White’s debut novel, We Are a Haunting, strikes me as both a love letter to New York City and a kind of elegy.
RADICAL ATTENTION
IN HER LATEST BOOK, THE LIGHT ROOM: ON ART AND CARE, PUBLISHED BY RIVERHEAD BOOKS IN JULY, KATE ZAMBRENO CELEBRATES THE ETHICAL WORK OF CAREGIVING, THE SMALL JOYS OF ORDINARY LIFE, AND AN ENGAGEMENT WITH THE NATURAL WORLD WITHIN HUMAN SPACES.
The Fine Print
HOW TO READ YOUR BOOK CONTRACT
First
GINA CHUNG'S SEA CHANGE
Blooming how she must
WITH ROOTS IN NATURE WRITING, ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE, POETRY, AND PHOTOGRAPHY, CAMILLE T. DUNGY'S NEW BOOK, SOIL: THE STORY OF A BLACK MOTHER'S GARDEN, DELVES INTO THE PERSONAL AND POLITICAL ACT OF CULTIVATING AND DIVERSIFYING A GARDEN OF HERBS, VEGETABLES, FLOWERS, AND OTHER PLANTS IN THE PREDOMINANTLY WHITE COMMUNITY OF FORT COLLINS, COLORADO.
