TALKING WITH MAUREEN CORRIGAN, PROFESSIONAL BOOKWORM, Confessions of a critic ALL EDITIONS

• Published in: Newsday
• Main Author: CELIA WREN. Celia Wren is a writer in Virginia
• Format: Newspaper Article
• Language: English
• Published: Long Island, N.Y Newsday LLC 04.09.2005
• Edition: Combined editions
• Subjects: Corrigan, Maureen

You wouldn't want to be [MAUREEN CORRIGAN]'s mailman. The book reviewer for National Public Radio's "Fresh Air" program for the past 16 years, Corrigan receives about 50 new volumes a week at her home address - and that's not counting the copies that publishers ship to her office at Georgetown University, where she teaches literature. The house is, in fact, something of a shrine to the passion that has consumed Corrigan's life, from her literature-saturated childhood in Sunnyside through her current career as a teacher and critic (in addition to her NPR gig, she pens a column on mysteries for The Washington Post and reviews for other publications, including Newsday). As she confesses in the just-published "Leave Me Alone, I'm Reading: Finding and Losing Myself in Books" (Random House, $24.95), "When I'm in the company of others - even my nearest and dearest - there always comes a moment when I'd rather be reading a book." Mr. [Darcy] never showed, but she did meet her husband, Richard Yeselson, through a mutual friend who was a Village Voice editor. That editor gave Corrigan her first reviewing assignments. And, in another happy book-related outcome, Corrigan is sure that her years of reading - necessitating empathy with diverse characters and worlds - prepped her psychologically for adopting a baby from China. (Molly, now 7, is, naturally, a bookworm in the making.)