Jonathan Yardley, Pulitzer Prize winning book critic and...

Joy Radio is proud to support Words & Music, a Literary Feast in New Orleans – Nov. 28 – Dec. 2. Please join us on Nov. 8, 2012 as we interview Jonathan Yardley, a Pulitzer Prize winning book critic for The Washington Post and author of several books.

Jonathan Yardley, graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he was the editor of the student newspaper, The Daily Tar Heel, in 1961. After leaving Chapel Hill, Yardley interned at the New York Times as assistant to James Reston, the columnist and Washington Bureau chief. From 1964 to 1974, Yardley worked as an editorial writer and book reviewer at the Greensboro Daily News and, during this time, he was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, academic year 1968-1969. From 1974 to 1978, Yardley served as book editor of the Miami Herald. From 1978 to 1981, he was the book critic at the Washington Star, receiving a Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism in 1981 and then moving to the Washington Post as book critic and columnist. Yardley’s books include biographies of Frederick Exley and Ring Lardner. He wrote his memoir, Our Kind of People, and edited H.L. Mencken's posthumous literary and journalistic memoir, My Life as Author and Editor. Among the talents he has brought to public light and championed are Michael Chabon, Edward P. Jones, Anne Tyler, William Boyd, Olga Grushin and John Berendt. He wrote a famously savage review of Joe McGinniss' book The Last Brother: The Rise and Fall of Teddy Kennedy. In 2003, Yardley began a series called Second Reading. His latest book is a collection from the series, Second Reading: Notableand Neglected Books Revisited.