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.
-
Mohsin Hamid's surreal new novel centers on a white man who awakens one morning to find that his skin has turned brown. The Last White Man only seriously strains credulity at its very end. -
Gabrielle Zevin's beautifully written novel Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow tells the story of two childhood friends who become legendary names in the world of video game design.
-
We've all heard stories about what an ordeal air travel is this summer: soaring ticket prices, overbooked and canceled flights. These suspenseful "airplane books" can help transport you.
-
Jean Thompson's novel follows an insecure young woman as she's drawn into a clique of poets. The Poet's House is a story about the corrosive power of shame and the primal fear of sounding stupid.
-
Ottessa Moshfegh's Lapvona follows the life of Marek, a 13-year-old peasant boy who lives in a cruel world of sadism and stink, cannibalism and self-flagellation.
-
In David Santos Donaldson's debut novel, a young gay Black man gets some supernatural relationship advice from the Black lover of a famous white British writer, both of them long dead.
-
Lindsey Fitzharris' new book tells the true story of Harold Gillies, a British surgeon whose team worked to reconstruct the faces of some of the 280,000 men who suffered facial trauma during WWI.
-
Book critic Maureen Corrigan has been diving into lighter literary novels and mysteries, searching for books suited for the beginning of summer. Here are some of her picks.
-
Hernan Diaz's novel is constantly pulling a fast one on the reader. It opens with the saga of a Wall Street tycoon, but soon another narrative comes to upend the truth of everything that came before.
-
In this droll, emotionally wrenching and profound memoir, novelist Brian Morton attempts to see his mother as a whole person — not just in relation to him, or, God forbid, as an eccentric "character."
