Thalia Book Club: Gilead with author Marilynne Robinson

Interviewed by James Wood

Marilynne Robinson discusses her Pulitzer prize-winning and New York Times-best selling second novel, which tells the unforgettable story of Minister John Ames.

Performance playlist:

CONVERSATION
Marilynne Robinson and James Wood

READING
Peter Gerety

Peter Gerety's Broadway credits include Never Gonna Dance, Macbeth, Conversations with My Father, and The Hot House. He has appeared in over a hundred productions with the Trinity Repertory Company of Providence, Rhode Island. On television, he was a regular for two years on Homicide and had recurring roles on The Wire and on Law & Order. His film work includes War of the Worlds, K-Pax, People I Know, The Legend of Bagger Vance and Surviving Picasso. Upcoming work includes the soon-to-open Syriana, with George Clooney; Inside Man, directed by Spike Lee; and the independent film Things That Hang From Trees. He just wrapped production on a new WB television series : The Bedford Diaries; and is starting work on the new Martin MCDonagh play, The Lieutenant of Inishmore, which begins previews February 8^th at the Atlantic Theater Company

Marilynne Robinson is the author of Gilead, winner of both the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and the 2004 National Book Critic Circle Award. She is also the author of the modern classic Housekeeping, which won the PEN/Ernest Hemingway Award for First Fiction and the Richard and Linda Rosenthal Award from the Academy of American Arts and Letters, and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize. Robinson received a Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Writer's Award in 1990 and the prestigious Mildred and Harold Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1998. She is also the author of two books of nonfiction, Mother Country and The Death of Adam, which has just been reissued by Picador. She teaches at the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop.

James Wood was chief literary critic of The Guardian and is senior editor at the New Republic. He is the Author of the novel The Book Against God, which was  New York Times Notable Book and a Los Angeles Times Best Book; as well as the essay collections the Broken Estate: Essays on Literature and Belief and The Irresponsible Self: On Laughter and the Novel. He teaches the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University.