James Wood

New Yorker staff writer and book critic since 2007 and professor of Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University. Chief literary critic of The Guardian in London since 1992 and Senior Editor of The New Republic since 1996. His reviews and essays have appeared frequently in the New York Times, The New York Review of Books, and the London Review of Books, where he is a member of its editorial board. Winner of the acclaimed British Press Young Journalist of the Year Award in 1990, as well as the National Magazine Award in 2009. His critical essays are collected in “The Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief”; “The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel,” which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award; and “The Fun Stuff: And Other Essays.” He is also the author of a novel, “The Book Against God,” and a study of technique in the novel, “How Fiction Works.” He is Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University.