James Wood (critic)

James Wood (born 1965 in Durham, England ) is a literary critic, essayist and novelist. Since 2010 he is professor of Literary Criticism at Harvard University and is a full-time employee at the New Yorker.

Life

James Woods father was a professor of zoology at Durham University. James Wood attended the Chorister School in Durham and Eton College, where he received a music scholarship. At Jesus College ( Cambridge ), he studied English literature.

From 1992 to 1995 Wood was chief literary critic of The Guardian and was one of the judges for the Booker Prize in 1994. 1995 he was a senior editor at the political magazine The New Republic in the United States. 2007 Wood was a permanent employee at the New Yorker. His reviews and essays appeared also in the New York Times, The New York Review of Books and the London Review of Books.

At Boston University Wood taught literature together with Saul Bellow. He also taught at Kenyon College in Ohio, and since September 2003, part-time position at Harvard University, first as a guest lecturer and now as a professor. Wood is also a guest lecturer at the Center for Humanities at Tufts University.

Wood is married to Claire Messud. With their two children live in Cambridge (Massachusetts ).

Prizes and awards

Works (selection)

• The Book Against God. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 2003, ISBN 0-374-11538-9 ( autobiographical novel ).

• The Broken Estate. Essays on Literature and Belief (Modern Library). Random House, New York 2000, ISBN 978-0-3757-5263-6.
• The Irreponsible Self. On Laughter and the Novel. Farrar, Straus & Giroux, New York 2004, ISBN 0-374-17737-6.
• The art of storytelling ( "How Fiction Works", 2008). Rowohlt, Reinbek 2011, ISBN 978-3-498-07367-1 ( translated by Imma clamping Ortheil ).