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.
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.