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Joy Radio interviews Joanthan Yardley, a Pulitzer Prize winning book critic for The Washington Post and author of several books, on November 8, 2012 at 11 a.m., ET.

Joy Radio is proud to support Words & Music, a Literary Feast in New Orleans – Nov. 28 – Dec. 2. In September we completed a series of seven shows showcasing editors and agents who will be critiquing manuscripts at the conference. In October, we moved into the second part of the series, interviewing authors who will be present at W & M. Jonathan Yardley, is last, but not least, in the succession.

Jonathan Yardley, a Pulitzer Prize winning book critic for The Washington Post and author of several books, is a graduate of 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, where he studied American literature and literary biography. 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. His memoir about his family, Our Kind of People, describes his parents’ 50-year marriage and casts a wry eye on the American WASP experience. He edited H.L. Mencken’s posthumous literary and journalistic memoir, My Life as Author and Editor. He also has written introductions to books by Graham Greene, A.L. Liebling, Booth Tarkington and others. Yardley is known simultaneously as a scathingly frank critic and a star-maker. 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, saying “Not merely is it a textbook example of shoddy journalistic and publishing ethics; it is also a genuinely, unrelievedly rotten book…” In early 2003, Yardley began a series called Second Reading, described as “An occasional series in which the Post’s book critic reconsiders notable and/or neglected books from the past.” Every month or so, for the next seven years, he published essays about notable books from the past, many of which had gone out of print or were in some way seen as neglected. It was in this series that he gained attention for his highly critical look at The Catcher in the Rye. His latest book is a collection from the series, Second Reading: Notableand Neglected Books Revisited, was published by Europa Editions recently. He is married to novelist Maria Arana, writer-at-large for the Washington Post and formerly Editor of Washington Post Book World.