John Freeman

Tracy K. Smith

This kaleidoscopic portrait of an unprecedented time brings together some of our most treasured writers today--Edwidge Danticat, Layli Long Soldier, Monica Youn, Julia Alvarez, Reginald Dwayne Betts, Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor--to give voice to the unthinkable grief and hopeful possibilities born in an era of revolution and change. "A maelstrom of grief, anger, fear and confusion, with glimmers of gratitude and hope: a comprehensive emotional document of a moment."--New York Times Book Review Now is an extraordinary time. Across the country, people are losing their loved ones, their livelihoods, their homes, and even their own lives to COVID-19. Despite the pandemic, countless protests erupted this summer over the recurring loss of Black lives. Reverberations of shock and outrage remain with us all. There's a Revolution Outside, My Love captures and articulates all of these roiling sentiments unleashed by a profound national reckoning. Drawing its title from a powerful letter to her son by Kirsten West Savali, the book fans out from there, offering a rich and intimate view of the change we underwent. Composed of searing letters, essays, poems, reflections, and screeds, There's a Revolution Outside, My Love highlights the work of some of our most powerful and insightful writers who hail from across a range of backgrounds and from almost all fifty states. Among them, these writers have brought home four Pulitzers, two National Book Awards, a fistful of Whitings, and numerous citations in best American poetry, short story, and essay compilations. They are noisy with beauty, and their pieces ring louder and clearer than ever before. Galvanizing and lyrical, this is a deeply profound anthology of writing filled with pain and beauty, warmth and intimacy. A remarkable feat of empathy, There's a Revolution Outside, My Love offers solace in a time of swirling protest, change, and violence--reminding us of the human scale of the upheaval, and providing hope for a kinder future.

Letters from a Crisis

There's a Revolution Outside, My Love

Thirty-six major contemporary writers examine life in a deeply divided America--including Anthony Doerr, Ann Patchett, Roxane Gay, Rebecca Solnit, Hector Tobar, Joyce Carol Oates, Edwidge Danticat, Richard Russo, Eula Bliss, Karen Russell, and many more America is broken. You don't need a fistful of statistics to know this. Visit any city, and evidence of our shattered social compact will present itself. From Appalachia to the Rust Belt and down to rural Texas, the gap between the wealthiest and the poorest stretches to unimaginable chasms. Whether the cause of this inequality is systemic injustice, the entrenchment of racism in our culture, the long war on drugs, or immigration policies, it endangers not only the American Dream but our very lives. In Tales of Two Americas, some of the literary world's most exciting writers look beyond numbers and wages to convey what it feels like to live in this divided nation. Their extraordinarily powerful stories, essays, and poems demonstrate how boundaries break down when experiences are shared, and that in sharing our stories we can help to alleviate a suffering that touches so many people.

Stories of Inequality in a Divided Nation

Tales of Two Americas

A selection of the best and most representative contemporary American short fiction from 1970 to 2020, including such authors as Ursula K. LeGuin, Toni Cade Bambara, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandra Cisneros, and Ted Chiang, hand-selected by celebrated editor and anthologist John Freeman In the past fifty years, the American short story has changed dramatically. New voices, forms, and mixtures of styles have brought this unique genre a thrilling burst of energy. The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story celebrates this avalanche of talent. This rich anthology begins in 1970 and brings together a half century of powerful American short stories from all genres, including—for the first time in a collection of this scale—science fiction, horror, and fantasy, placing writers such as Ursula K. Le Guin, Ken Liu, and Stephen King next to some beloved greats of the literary form: Raymond Carver, Grace Paley, Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, and Denis Johnson. Culling widely, John Freeman, the former editor of Granta and now editor of his own literary annual, brings forward some astonishing work to be regarded in a new light. Often overlooked tales by Dorothy Allison, Percival Everett, and Charles Johnson will recast the shape and texture of today’s enlarging atmosphere of literary dialogue. Stories by Lauren Groff and Ted Chiang raise the specter of engagement in ecocidal times. Short tales by Tobias Wolff, George Saunders, and Lydia Davis rub shoulders with near novellas by Susan Sontag and Andrew Holleran. This book will be a treasure trove for readers, writers, and teachers alike.

The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story

How to Read a Novelist is the ultimate booklovers book. John Freeman, author and editor of Granta magazine, has interviewed nearly every name in fiction and the literary world. In this collection Freeman has compiled the most insightful and fascinating of his interviews, essays and articles. Paul Theroux on the state of sex in America, Margaret Atwood as inventor, John Updike as relationship advisor and Geoff Dyer as England's hippest middle-aged novelist, among many others including Philip Roth, Siri Hustevdt, Doris Lessing, Kirin Desai, Toni Morrison, Kazuo Ishiguro, Tom Wolfe and Peter Carey. Interviews, essays and articles: Toni Morrison, 2004 Jonathan Safran Foer, 2005 Haruki Murakami, 2008 Richard Ford, 2007 Ngugi wa Thiong’o, 2006 Gunter Grass, 2007 Nadine Gordimer, 2007 David Foster Wallace, 2006 Khaled Hosseini, 2007 Doris Lessing, 2006 Hisham Matar, 2007 Siri Hustvedt & Paul Auster, 2008 Kazuo Ishiguro, 2005 Charles Frazier, 2006 Edmund White, 2005 Geraldine Brooks, 2008 Imre Kertész, 2004 Oliver Sacks, 2007 Kiran Desai, 2006 Philip Roth, 2006 Lawrence Ferlinghetti, 2006 Dave Eggers, 2005 Vikram Chandra, 2007 Adrienne Rich, 2006 Tom Wolfe, 2004 Robert M. Pirsig, 2006 Elif Shafak, 2007 Peter Carey, 2008 Mo Yan, 2012 Donna Leon, 2005 John Updike, 2003 Seamus Heaney, 2006 Joyce Carol Oates, 2007 Paul Theroux, 2005 Don DeLillo, 2006 Louise Erdrich, 2008 Norman Mailer, 2007 James Wood, 2008 Margaret Atwood, 2006 Mohsin Hamid, 2007 Richard Powers, 2006 Alan Hollinghurst, 2004 Ian McEwan, 2005 Caryl Phillips, 2005 Wole Soyinka, 2007 Salman Rushdie, 2005 Jim Crace, 2007 Marilynne Robinson, 2012 Edmundo Paz Soldán, 2006 Amitav Ghosh, 2008 Ayu Utami, 2006 Frank McCourt, 2005 Sebastian Junger, 2006 Geoff Dyer, 2003 A. S. Byatt, 2005

How to Read a Novelist

Freeman takes an entertaining look at the nature of correspondence through the ages, considers the consequences of email overload, and enters a plea for communication that is more selective and nuanced and, above all, more sociable.

the four-thousand-year journey to your inbox

The tyranny of e-mail

John Freeman explores how parks--tiny microcosims of the world--are simultaneously natural and constructed, exclusionary and open, welcome and threatening.

The Park

"From Ghana to Great Britain, New Delhi to New York, the balance of power remains tipped towards men. Granta 115: The F Word explores the ways in which feminism continues to inform, address and complicate that balance"--Publisher's description.

The F word

For John Freeman—literary critic, essayist, editor, poet, “one of the preeminent book people of our time” (Dave Eggers)—it is the rare moment when words are not enough. But in the wake of the election of 2016, words felt useless, even indulgent. Action was the only reasonable response. He took to the streets in protest, and the sense of community and collective conviction felt right. But the assaults continued—on citizens’ rights and long-held compacts, on the core principles of our culture and civilization, and on our language itself. Words seemed to be losing the meanings they once had and Freeman was compelled to return to their defense. The result is his Dictionary of the Undoing. From A to Z, “Agitate” to “Zygote,” Freeman assembled the words that felt most essential, most potent, and began to build a case for their renewed power and authority, each word building on the last. The message that emerged was not to retreat behind books, but to emphatically engage in the public sphere, to redefine what it means to be a literary citizen. With an afterword by Valeria Luiselli, Dictionary of the Undoing is a necessary, resounding cri de coeur in defense of language, meaning, and our ability to imagine, describe, and build a better world.

Dictionary of the Undoing

In Wind, Trees, John Freeman presents a meditation on power and loss, change and adaptation. What can the trees teach us about inhabiting space together? What might we gain if we admit we do not control the wind, and cannot possibly carry all we’ve been handed? Offering a stark moral critique of pandemic self-preservation—as “justifications grew / with greed like vines / up the side of a tree / taking everything”—Wind, Trees joins the ranks of politically urgent yet timeless collections like The Lice by W.S. Merwin. Through narrative lyric and metaphysical pulse, meandering thought and punctuating quiet, Freeman studies the devastating failings of humanity and the redemptive possibilities of love.

Wind, Trees

John Freeman’s first poetry collection charts the impact of place on human experience. In Beirut, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Rome, and the foothills of a childhood hometown, Freeman navigates legacies of ruin and construction, illness and memory. Warm, mournful, and distinctly urban, Maps offers a compassionate perspective from the experience of one American embroiled in empire.

Maps

Home

Freeman's

Stories of Inequality in Today's United States

The third literary anthology in the series that has been called ‘ambitious’ (O Magazine) and ‘strikingly international’ (Boston Globe), Freeman’s: Home, continues to push boundaries in diversity and scope, with stunning new pieces from emerging writers and literary luminaries alike. Viet Thanh Nguyen offers a haunting piece of fiction about those fleeing Vietnam after the war. Rabih Alameddine leaves his mother’s Beirut apartment to connect with Syrian refugees who are rebuilding a semblance of normalcy, even beauty. Nir Baram takes us on a journey to the West Bank. Gerald Murnane celebrates winning a literary prize named after his home town. Danez Smith explores everyday alienation in a poem about an encounter at a bus stop. Kerri Arsenault returns to the ailing mill town where she grew up, while Xiaolu Guo reflects on her childhood in a remote Chinese fishing village. Also including Thom Jones, Emily Raboteau, Rawi Hage, Barry Lopez, Herta Müller, Amira Hass and more— writers from around the world ask: what is it to build, leave, return to, lose, and love a home?

It is a nation defined by tradition and built on expansion. Now it has more languages spoken within its capital than any other city in the world. What are the stories Britain is telling about itself today?

Britain

Cum să citeşti un romancier

Women in the twenty-first century - from Kent to Accra - still live in a world in which the balance of power remains tipped towards men. This bold, political issue of Granta will explore this dynamic from a wide variety of literary genres and perspectives. Rachel Cusk provides a startlingly honest account of a marriage, its breakdown, and the aftermath; Caroline Moorehead gives voice to women who took part in the French Resistance--and were sent to Nazi death camps for their involvement. Urvashi Butalia writes of a male-to-female transsexual in India, who discovers all the obstacles of her adopted sex; A.S. Byatt lays bare the sexism of 1960s academia. The issue features new fiction from Edwidge Danticat, Julie Otsuka, Louise Erdrich and Jeanette Winterson. In 'Night Thoughts', Helen Simpson hilariously sends up all the sacred pieties of the male provider. 'The Sex Lives of African Girls', introduces an astonishing new voice, Taiye Selasi, who spins a haunting story about the way adult sexuality can be imposed upon the young. With award-winning reportage, memoir and fiction, over the years Granta has illuminated the most complex issues of modern life through the refractory light of literature. 'The F Word' will continue this tradition by addressing a theme many readers know has never lost its urgency.

The F-Word

Granta 115

A latest edition of the influential and best-selling international anthology by the creators of the Best Young British Novelists celebrates emerging talents from Brazil and will be supported by online interviews, podcasts and interactive features on the granta.com website. Original.

The Best of Young Brazilian Novelists

Granta 121

A latest collection of horror stories examines the phenomenon of how one person's interests can be another person's torment, in an anthology edited by a former president of the National Book Critics Circle that includes contributions by such genre masters as Rajesh Parameswaran, Nic Dunlop and Mark Doty. Original.

Horror

In a world of the future, people exist in a perpetual state of rehearsing evacuations, and one man's rehearsal involves leaving his parents behind. A firespotter knows all too well that where there's smoke, there's fire - but fails to spot the blaze that consumes half her family. Then there's the Custer impersonator who takes his role in a re-enactment too literally, and too far. And the massage therapist struggling to help a veteran whose biggest regret is tattooed across his back. With award-winning reportage, memoir, fiction and photography, Granta has illuminated the most complex issues of modern life through the refractory light of literature. Feel the sting of betrayal via new writing by Ben Marcus, Janine di Giovanni, Samantha Harvey, Colin Robinson, Jennifer Vanderbes, Callan Wink, John Burnside, Andre Aciman and more.

John Freeman

Books

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