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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This year, our Fresh Air book critic highlights alternative history, suspense, satire — and some of the most extraordinary letters ever written. Here are Maureen Corrigan's 10 best books of 2024. -
Set in a small Irish village in the weeks leading up to Christmas 1962, Niall Williams' latest novel avoids cliché by investing specificity and life into characters and places. -
Sometimes, the right book shows up just at the right time. Our book critic encountered two such books this week: Water, Water, by Billy Collins, and The Dog Who Followed the Moon, by James Norbury. -
With 23 short essays on creatures ranging from the wombat to the spider, Katherine Rundell's new book is essential reading for anyone whose wonder could use a jumpstart. -
In Charles Baxter's new novel, a small-town insurance salesman buys a blood test that can predict romantic entanglements, promotions — and more. It's a screwball satire of all-American zaniness. -
Chilean author Alia Trabucco Zerán has written an intense novel about the kind of deep down rot that lingers, despite the most vigorous scrubbing. -
Betsy Lerner's debut novel weaves together the ordinary and the erratic to tell the story of a middle-class Jewish family whose suburban life is turned upside down by mental illness. -
Rumaan Alam’s previous novel was an inspired swirl of suspense, social commentary and apocalyptic disaster. His latest is about a young Black woman working for a uber-rich white philanthropist. -
In Creation Lake, a hard-drinking American spy infiltrates a radical farming collective in a remote region of France. Kushner challenges readers to keep up with her and not to flinch. -
Ian Frazier’s signature voice — droll, ruminative, generous — draws readers in. But his underlying subject here is even bigger than the Bronx: It’s the way the past “bleeds through” the present.
