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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Beautiful World, Where Are You is a cerebral novel that traces the relationships between four characters, and shifts between themes of sex, friendship and life's dark uncertainty.
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The eight short stories in Yoon Choi's extraordinary collection splinter out in unexpected ways, shifting focus from a single life to decades of complex family history. -
Many of this year's mystery and suspense novels explore literary appropriation — characters in positions of privilege laying their sticky mitts on stories that don't belong to them. -
Sealed into our little Zoom boxes, masked when we're in contact with others, it's easy to feel separated from the world during the pandemic. These 10 books can help break through the solitude. -
Book critic Maureen Corrigan remembers the veteran NYC newsman, who died Aug. 5, as "a tenement kid and high school drop out who never lost connection to where he came from."
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Brit Bennett's new novel centers on two light-skinned African American sisters — one of whom "passes" for white. The Vanishing Half is compelling — if somewhat melodramatic.
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Nancy McKinley mixes screwball humor with social criticism in a collection of interlocking stories about two women who work at a mall in Northeastern Pennsylvania.
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Benjamin Taylor, one of Roth's closest friends during the last decades of his life, has written a memoir that rekindles Roth's voice: brilliant, profane, and so very funny.
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Phuc Tran was a toddler in 1975 when his family fled Vietnam and landed in a small town in Pennsylvania. His memoir is a scrambled story of great books and punk rock.
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With much of the world on lockdown due to the pandemic, critic Maureen Corrigan turns to books for companionship. Her recommended reads span fiction, nonfiction and poetry — some old, some new.
