Bøger af John Freeman

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.

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.As the refugee crisis continues to convulse whole swathes of the world and there are daily updates about the rise of homelessness in different parts of America, the idea and meaning of home is at the forefront of many people’s minds. Viet Thanh Nguyen harks to an earlier age of displacement with a haunting piece of fiction about the middle passage made by those fleeing Vietnam after the war. Rabih Alameddine brings us back to the present, as he leaves his mother’s Beirut apartment to connect with Syrian refugees who are building a semblance of normalcy, and even beauty, in the face of so much loss. Home can be a complicated place to claim, because of race—the everyday reality of which Danez Smith explores in a poem about a chance encounter at a bus stop—or because of other types of fraught history. In “Vacationland,” Kerri Arsenault returns to her birthplace of Mexico, Maine, a paper mill boomtown turned ghost town, while Xiaolu Guo reflects on her childhood in a remote Chinese fishing village with grandparents who married across a cultural divide. Many readers and writers turn to literature to find a home: Leila Aboulela tells a story of obsession with a favorite author.Also including Thom Jones, Emily Raboteau, Rawi Hage, Barry Lopez, Herta Müller, Amira Hass, and more—writers from around the world lend their voices to the theme and what it means to build, leave, return to, lose, and love a home.

We live today in constant motion, traveling distances rapidly, small ones daily, arriving in new states. In this inaugural edition of Freeman's, a new biannual of unpublished writing, former Granta editor and NBCC president John Freeman brings together the best new fiction, nonfiction, and poetry about that electrifying moment when we arrive.Strange encounters abound. David Mitchell meets a ghost in Hiroshima Prefecture; Lydia Davis recounts her travels in the exotic territory of the Norwegian language; and in a Dave Eggers story, an elderly gentleman cannot remember why he brought a fork to a wedding. End points often turn out to be new beginnings. Louise Erdrich visits a Native American cemetery that celebrates the next journey, and in a Haruki Murakami story, an aging actor arrives back in his true self after performing a role, discovering he has changed, becoming a new person.Featuring startling new fiction by Laura van den Berg, Helen Simpson, and Tahmima Anam, as well as stirring essays by Aleksandar Hemon, Barry Lopez, and Garnette Cadogan, who relearned how to walk while being black upon arriving in NYC, Freeman's announces the arrival of an essential map to the best new writing in the world.

Featuring new work from Mieko Kawakami, Camonghne Felix and more, the latest instalment of the acclaimed literary journal Freeman's explores the irrevocably intertwined lives of animals and the humans that exist alongside them.

"Published in collaboration with the MFA in Creative Writing at The New School"--Title page verso.

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

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

Freeman's poetry debut maps the present by way of the past, drawing inspiration from childhood memories, family, and former loves.

A selection of the best contemporary American short fiction from 1970 to 2020, including such authors as Ursula K. LeGuin, Toni Cade Bambara, Jhumpa Lahiri, Sandra Cisneros, and Ted ChiangIn the past fifty years, the American short story has changed dramatically. New voices, forms, and 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 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 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 editor of his own literary annual, brings forward some astonishing work to be regarded in a new light, including often overlooked tales by Dorothy Allison, Percival Everett, and Charles Johnson. 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.

There's no question that e-mail is an incredible phenomenon that represents a kind of cultural and technological advancement. The first e-mail was sent less than forty years ago; by 2011, there will be 3.2 billion e-mail users. The average corporate worker now receives upwards of two hundred e-mails per day. The flood of messages is ceaseless and follows us everywhere. In The Tyranny of E-mail, John Freeman takes an entertaining look at the unrelenting nature of correspondence through the ages. Put down your smart phone and consider the consequences. As the toll of e-mail mounts, reducing our time for leisure and contemplation and separating us in an unending and lonely battle with the overfull inbox, John Freeman--one of America's preeminent literary critics--enters a plea for communication that is more selective and nuanced and, above all, more sociable.

Featuring thrilling new work from Lauren Groff, Ocean Vuong, Sayaka Murata and more, the latest installment of the acclaimed literary journal Freeman's explores the hope and pain of the ever-changing present.

The latest instalment from 'a powerful force in the literary world'(Los Angeles Times) Freeman's turns to one of the greatest elevating forces of life: love.

Building from his acclaimed anthology Tales of Two Americas, beloved writer and editor John Freeman draws together some of our greatest writers from around the world to help us see how the environmental crisis is hitting some of the most vulnerable communities where they live.In the past five years, John Freeman, previously editor of Granta, has launched a celebrated international literary magazine, Freeman's, and compiled two acclaimed anthologies that deal with income inequality as it is experienced, first in New York and then throughout the United States. In the course of this work, one major theme has come up repeatedly: how climate change is making already dire inequalities much worse, devastating further the already devastated. The effects of global warming are especially disruptive in less well-off nations, sending refugees to the US and elsewhere in the wealthier world, where they often encounter the problems that perennially face outsiders: lack of access to education, health care, decent housing, employment, and even basic nutrition. But the problems of climate change are not restricted to those from the less developed world. American citizens are suffering too, as the stories of distress resulting from recent hurricanes testify: People who can't sell their home because the building is on a flood plain, people who get displaced and cannot find work, and more. And this doesn't even take on board the situation in much of the Caribbean, or south of the Rio Grande in Mexico and Central America. Galvanized by his conversations with writers and activists around the world, Freeman has engaged with some of today's most eloquent writers, many of whom hail from the places under the most acute stress. The response has been extraordinary: a literary all-points bulletin of fiction, essays, poems, and reportage. Margaret Atwood conjures with a dystopian future in three remarkable poems. Lauren Groff takes us to Florida; Edwidge Danticat to Haiti; Tahmima Anam to Bangladesh. Eka Kurniawan takes us to Indonesia and Chinelo Okparanta to Nigeria. As the anthology unfolds, clichés fall away and we are brought closer to the real, human truth of what is happening to our world, and the dystopia to which we are heading. These are news stories with the emphasis on story, about events that should be found in the headlines but often are not, about the most important crisis of our times.

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.

For the last fifteen years, if a novel was published, John Freeman has been there to greet it. As a critic for more than two hundred newspapers worldwide, he has reviewed thousands of books and interviewed scores of writers, and in How to Read a Novelist, he shares with us what he has learned.From such international stars as Doris Lessing, Haruki Murakami, Salman Rushdie and Mo Yan; to British talents including Ian McEwan, Jim Crace, A. S. Byatt and Alan Hollinghurst; American masters such as Don DeLillo, Norman Mailer, Toni Morrison and Philip Roth; to the new guard of Jennifer Egan, Junot D az, Dave Eggers and Jonathan Franzen Freeman has talked to everyone.How to Read a Novelist is essential reading for every aspiring writer and engaged reader; the perfect companion for anyone who's ever curled up with a novel and wanted to know a bit more about the person who made that moment possible.

New Performance/New Writing offers contextualisation and guidance on innovative approaches to writing for performance. It explores a wide range of performance practices, including immersive and solo theatre, autoethnography and applied drama.

The sixth volume in one of the most exciting and innovative literary series of recent years, Freeman's: California features stunning new work by Tommy Orange, Elaine Castillo, Rachel Kushner, William T. Vollmann and more.

The latest instalment of the 'strikingly international' (Boston Globe) literary anthology continues to probe the big issues of our time.