John Freeman is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf, one of publishing’s most prestigious imprints. His writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, Granta, and The New York Times: in other words, he has more than arrived at the “so-called center of the literary universe,” which happens to be located on the Atlantic seaboard. Yet in his estimation, his home state of California is the true literary mecca.
As the host of Alta Journal’s popular California Book Club, Freeman has led readers through literature produced in and about the Golden State. Now, his California Rewritten offers fifty essays exploring the depth and complexity of the writing created right in our neighborhoods (or within a short drive, just like our beaches, mountains, and deserts). Delving into the work of a roster of authors including Percival Everett, Rebecca Solnit, Michael Connelly, and Julie Otsuka, John shows us how the novels, essays, reporting, and poetry made in California can help us—beautifully—understand our past and present.
Join us as Freeman speaks with Elaine Castillo and Tommy Orange, two novelists whose work features prominently in California Rewritten.
John Freeman has hosted Alta’s California Book Club since its founding in 2020. He is an executive editor at Alfred A. Knopf, and he edited Freeman’s (2015–2023), a literary annual of new writing. His books include How to Read a Novelist and Dictionary of the Undoing, as well as the anthologies Tales of Two Americas, Tales of Two Planets, The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story, and Sacramento Noir. He is also the author of three poetry collections, Maps, The Park, and Wind, Trees. His work is translated into more than twenty languages, and has appeared in The New Yorker, The Paris Review, and The New York Times. The former editor of Granta, he lives in New York.
Elaine Castillo, named one of “30 of the Planet’s Most Exciting Young People” by the Financial Times, was born and raised in the Bay Area. Her debut novel, America Is Not the Heart, was a finalist for numerous prizes including the Elle Big Book Award, the Center for Fiction Prize, and the Aspen Words Literary Prize and was named a best book of 2018 by NPR, Real Simple, Lit Hub, The Boston Globe, San Francisco Chronicle, The New York Post, Kirkus Reviews, and the New York Public Library.
Tommy Orange is a graduate of the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. An enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma, he was born and raised in Oakland, California. His first book, There There, was a finalist for the 2019 Pulitzer Prize and received the 2019 American Book Award. He lives in Oakland, California.
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