John Freeman was born in Cleveland, Ohio, grew up in New York, Pennsylvania and California, and graduated from
Swarthmore College
Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...
in 1996.
Career
Freeman's first book, ''The Tyranny of E-mail: The Four-Thousand Year Journey to Your Inbox'', was published in 2009. (It was published in Australia under the title ''Shrinking the World: The 4,000-year story of how email came to rule our lives''.) Freeman's second book, a collection of his interviews with major contemporary writers titled ''How to Read a Novelist'', was published in the US in 2013 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux.''How to Read a Novelist'' page at Macmillan Publishers. (It was originally published in Australia in 2012.) The book features profiles of
Margaret Atwood
Margaret Eleanor Atwood (born November 18, 1939) is a Canadian poet, novelist, literary critic, essayist, teacher, environmental activist, and inventor. Since 1961, she has published 18 books of poetry, 18 novels, 11 books of non-fiction, nin ...
,
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth ...
, Geoff Dyer, Toni Morrison, Haruki Murakami, and others.
During his six years on the board of the National Book Critics Circle, Freeman launched a campaign to raise awareness of the cutbacks in book coverage in national print media and to save book review sections.
Freeman joined the UK-based '' Granta'' magazine in December 2008, became acting editor in May 2009, and he was named its editor in October 2009. While at the magazine, he edited Mary Gaitskill, Kenzaburō Ōe,
Rana Dasgupta
Rana Dasgupta (born 5 November 1971 in Canterbury, England) is a British Indian novelist and essayist. He grew up in Cambridge, England, and studied at Balliol College, Oxford, the Conservatoire Darius Milhaud in Aix-en-Provence, and, as a Fu ...
,
Dinaw Mengestu
Dinaw Mengestu (ዲናው መንግስቱ) (born 30 June 1978) is an Ethiopian-American novelist and writer. In addition to three novels, he has written for ''Rolling Stone'' on the war in Darfur, and for ''Jane Magazine'' on the conflict in north ...
Natsuo Kirino
(born October 7, 1951, in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture) is the pen name of Mariko Hashioka, a Japanese novelist and a leading figure in the recent boom of female writers of Japanese detective fiction.
Biography
Kirino is the middle child of th ...
Tony D'Souza
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Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o
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Richard Russo
Richard Russo (July 15, 1949) is an American novelist, short story writer, screenwriter, and teacher.
Early life and education
Russo was born in Johnstown, New York, and raised in nearby Gloversville. He earned a bachelor's degree, a Master o ...
A. L. Kennedy
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Claire Vaye Watkins
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Her book of short stories '' Battleborn'' (Riverhead Books, 2012), won The Story Prize, among other awards. In 2012 the National Book Foundation named her a "5 under 35" ...
, and Maria Venegas. Freeman left ''Granta'' in 2013.
Freeman edits a series of anthologies of fiction, nonfiction, and poetry entitled ''Freeman's'', published by Grove/Atlantic. The first anthology appeared in October 2015, with new anthologies published once a year. Explaining his vision for ''Freeman's'', he says: "I want it to be a home for the long form... I hope it introduces new writers, and coaxes great ones to do something other than book-length writing." His anthologies are now published yearly and are currently translated into Italian, Chinese, Romanian and other languages.
His book of poetry, ''Maps'', was published in 2017. ''The Park'', his second book of poems, was published in 2020.
Freeman was on the juries for the 2018 National Book Award for nonfiction and the Scotiabank Giller Prize.
Between 2014 and 2020, he edited a trilogy of anthologies about inequality, including ''Tales of Two Cities'', ''Tales of Two Americas'', and ''Tales of Two Planets''. During this time, he also he served as executive director of Literary Hub.
Freeman edits a yearly poetry anthology for the Italian press Edizioni Black Coffee, along with the Italian translator Damiano Abeni. The series is called ''Nuova poesia americana'' and includes poems by six different poets (in the first volume of the series, Freeman and Abeni chose
Tracy K. Smith
Tracy K. Smith (born April 16, 1972) is an American poet and educator. She served as the 22nd Poet Laureate of the United States from 2017 to 2019. She has published four collections of poetry, winning the Pulitzer Prize for her 2011 volume ''Life ...
Layli Long Soldier
Layli Long Soldier is an Oglala Lakota poet, writer, feminist, artist, and activist.
Early life and education
Long Soldier grew up in the four corners region of the Southwest, where she continues to live and work to advocate against the continu ...
,
Robin Coste Lewis
Robin Coste Lewis is an American poet, artist, and scholar. She is known primarily for her debut poetry collection, '' Voyage of the Sable Venus and Other Poems'', which won the National Book Award for Poetry in 2015––the first time a poetry ...
Astra Magazine
Astra may refer to:
People
* Astra (name)
Places
* Astra, Chubut, a village in Argentina
* Astra (Isauria), a town of ancient Isauria, now in Turkey
* Astra, one suggested name for a hypothetical fifth planet (hypothetical), fifth planet that be ...
'' and '' Orion Magazine''.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, he started a California Book Club with Alta magazine, which reads and discusses a work of significant literature from or about California on a monthly zoom call. Guests have included Walter Mosley, Maxine Hong Kingston, Natalie Diaz, and Héctor Tobar, among others.
Freeman joined the publishing company Knopf as an executive editor in 2021.
Personal life
Freeman lives in New York City.
Bibliography
Nonfiction
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Poetry
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As editor
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Books Only in Italian
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* ''Nuova poesia americana'', volume II. Florence: Edizioni Black Coffee. 2020. .
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