George Scialabba

George Scialabba (born 1948) is an American book critic and retired building manager at Harvard University. His reviews have appeared in Agni, The Boston Globe, Dissent, the Virginia Quarterly Review, The Nation, The American Prospect, Commonweal, and many other publications. In 1991, Scialabba received the first annual Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing from the National Book Critics Circle.

Life

Scialabba was born and raised in East Boston to working-class Italian-American parents. In his younger days, he was a member of Opus Dei. He is an alumnus of Harvard University (AB, 1969) and Columbia University (MA, 1972). After working as a substitute teacher and a social worker (Massachusetts Department of Public Welfare, 1974–1980), he was a building manager at Harvard from 1980 until 2015. In acknowledgement of his retirement, Cambridge City council declared an official "George Scialabba Day".

Writing

Scialabba has been writing freelance book reviews since 1980. In 2015, after retiring from Harvard, he began writing a books column for The Baffler.