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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In The Rest of Our Lives, the narrator drops his daughter off to college — then keeps on driving, leaving his marriage behind. Ben Markovits' novel was shortlisted for the Booker Prize. -
Fresh Air's book critic says her picks tilt a bit to nonfiction, but the novels that made the cut redress the imbalance by their sweep and intensity. Karen Russell's The Antidote was her favorite. -
A woman with a terminal diagnosis asks her husband to leave the house in Ann Packer's new novel. Some Bright Nowhere is an absorbing book about end-of-life care and what the living owe the dying. -
Smith revisits her childhood and offers insights into her marriage in a new memoir. Bread of Angels offers an intimate, if imperfect, view of the visionary punk poet.
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Heart the Lover is both a prequel and a sequel to King's 2020 novel Lovers & Writers. It's a story about screwing up, wising up, finding yourself and realizing what you may have lost in the process. -
Rebecca dominates du Maurier's legacy, but she wrote plenty of other macabre novels and short stories. A collection called After Midnight gathers 13 of these tales, with an intro by Stephen King. -
This is an epic novel to be savored. At nearly 700 pages, this multi-character, multi-stranded story explores exile and displacement — not only from one's home, but also from one's own sense of self. -
Patrick Ryan's novel focuses on two married couples and stretches from pre-WWII to the close of the 20th century, capturing both the sweep of history and the mundane particularity of everyday life. -
Dan Fesperman's spy caper Pariah follows a disgraced comic-politician who's recruited by the CIA. The Dancing Face, by Mike Phillips, is a crime caper that confronts the spoils of colonialism. -
Gentlemen Prefer Blondes is about two flappers on the prowl for sugar daddies. First published in 1925, Anita Loos' cheeky comic novel has now been reissued in paperback.
