John Freeman, in conversation with Marilynne Robinson, talking about his new book, How to Read a Novelist, on Live from Prairie Lights, October 16, 2013. As a critic for more than two hundred newspapers worldwide, the onetime president of the National Book Critics Circle, and editor of Granta, Freeman has reviewed thousands of books and interviewed scores of writers.

In How to Read a Novelist, which pulls together his very best profiles of the very best novelists of our time, he shares with us what he’s learned. Freeman has written about books for more than two hundred publications worldwide, including The New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, The Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, La Repubblica, and La Vanguardia. His first book was The Tyranny of E-mail.

His poetry has been published in The New Yorker ZYZZYVA, and The Paris Review. He lives in New York City.