Mira Jacob’s book is a finalist for National Book Critics Circle Awards

Author Mira Jacob’s “Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations,” is among finalists of the National Book Critics Circle. The awards, established in 1974, “honor outstanding writing and foster a national conversation about reading, criticism and literature.”

Like many six-year-olds, Jacob’s half-Jewish, half-Indian son, Z, has questions about everything. At first they are innocuous enough, but as tensions from the 2016 election spread from the media into his family, they become much, much more complicated. Trying to answer him honestly, Jacob has to think back to where she’s gotten her own answers: her most formative conversations about race, color, sexuality, and, of course, love.

According to Jacob’s website, “Good Talk: A Memoir in Conversations,” written with humor and vulnerability, “is a love letter to the art of conversation — and to the hope that hovers in our most difficult questions.”

Jacob’s critically-acclaimed novel, “The Sleepwalker’s Guide to Dancing,” was a Barnes & Noble Discover New Writers pick, shortlisted for India’s Tata First Literature Award, and longlisted for the Brooklyn Literary Eagles Prize. It was named one of the best books of 2014 by Kirkus Reviews, the Boston Globe, Goodreads, Bustle, and The Millions. Jacob’s writing and drawings have appeared in The New York Times, Electric Literature, Tin House, Literary Hub, Guernica, Vogue, the Telegraph, and Buzzfeed,  and she has a drawn column on Shondaland.  She currently teaches at The New School, and she is a founding faculty member of the MFA Program at Randolph College. She is the co-founder of Pete’s Reading Series in Brooklyn, New York, where she spent 13 years bringing literary fiction, non-fiction, and poetry to Williamsburg. She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, documentary filmmaker Jed Rothstein, and their son.

The NBCC awards will be presented on March 12 at the New School in New York City. They are preceded by a finalists’ reading on March 11.