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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There’s something about the shadowy moral recesses of crime and suspense fiction that makes those genres especially appealing as temperatures soar. Here are four novels that turn the heat up. -
Catherine Newman's novel Sandwich centers on a woman vacationing with her young adult children and her elderly parents. Julie Satow’s When Women Ran Fifth Avenue profiles three NYC department stores. -
Messud draws from her grandfather's handwritten memoir as she tells a cosmopolitan, multigenerational story about a family forced to move from Algeria to Europe to South and North America. -
The Letters of Emily Dickinson collects 1,304 letters, starting with one she wrote at age 11. Her singular voice comes into its own in the letters of the 1860s, which often blur into poems. -
Adelle Waldman's novel is a workplace ensemble set in a Costco-like store. But, because Help Wanted is a group portrait, it tends to visit, rather than settle in with, its working class characters. -
Tricia Romano's The Freaks Came Out To Write chronicles the passion and talent that made a great American newspaper — and the forces that killed it. -
Hisashi Kashiwai's charming novel centers on a diner where carefully reconstructed meals help unlock mysteries of memory and regret. -
Stephen McCauley's comic novel offers readers the gift of laughter as well as a more expansive image of what family can be. Book critic Maureen Corrigan says it was a perfect January read. -
Fresh Air's book critic says 2023 was an outstanding year for reading. Corrigan shares 10 of her favorite titles – a wide-ranging list of fiction and nonfiction. -
A critic becomes an amateur detective in order to avoid becoming a murder suspect in Alexis Soloski's Here in the Dark. In The Mystery Guest, by Nita Prose, a hotel's maid has to clean up a real mess.
