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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Wolitzer's new novel centers on a legendary feminist and the young woman whose life she transforms. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls The Female Persuasion an absorbing and compelling work.
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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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In his experimental new memoir, Matt Young conveys the chaos of his three deployments in Iraq. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls Young "a frank, funny and mercilessly self-lacerating narrator." -
Smith's massive new essay collection covers a wide assortment of topics, but critic Maureen Corrigan says Feel Free is strongest when it focuses on art and identity.
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An artist's photograph of a young boy's death leads to a terrible dilemma in Rachel Lyon's new novel. Critic Maureen Corrigan calls the book a "striking debut."
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Novelists Nella Larsen, Wallace Thurman and George S. Schuyler forged their art in what W.E.B. Du Bois famously called the "double-consciousness" of African-Americans.
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Leila Slimani's taut new novel centers on a nanny who kills her two young charges. Critic Maureen Corrigan says despite its retrograde message, The Perfect Nanny is a guilty pleasure. -
A new collection features five stand-alone stories by Johnson, who died in 2017. Critic Maureen Corrigan says The Largesse of the Sea Maiden is "the kind of work every writer would like to go out on." -
Grafton revolutionized what had become fossilized formula fiction. She tossed out the genre's sexist, racist and nativist clichés and helped make the detective novel matter again. -
Fresh Air's book critic says her 2017 list is chaotic in a good way. "These books zing off in all directions: They're fresh, unruly and dismissive of the canned and contrived."
