Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne Robinson is the recipient of a 2012 National Humanities Medal, awarded by President Barack Obama, for “her grace and intelligence in writing.” She is the author of Gilead, winner of the 2005 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction and the National Book Critics Circle Award; Home, winner of the Orange Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize; and Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. Her first novel, Housekeeping, won the Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award. Robinson’s nonfiction books include The Givenness of Things, When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother Country.
Marilynne Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016. In 2016, TIME Magazine included her on their ist of 100 most influential people. She lives in Iowa City, Iowa. In March 2021, Oprah announced The Gilead Novels as Oprah’s Book Club Picks. Oprah recognized Robinson as “one of our greatest living authors” and referred to The Gilead novels as “masterpieces”.
Her latest book, Reading Genesis, is an instant New York Times bestseller. Publishers Weekly gave it a starred review, stating, “Robinson skillfully melds her literary interpretation with her theological one . . . Like the biblical book it explicates, Robinson’s offering is demanding, intense, and best read slowly.”
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INSTANT NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
One of our greatest novelists and thinkers presents a radiant, thrilling interpretation of the book of Genesis.
For generations, the book of Genesis has been treated by scholars as a collection of documents by various hands, expressing different factional interests, with borrowings...Read More
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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK OF THE YEAR
NAMED A BEST OF THE YEAR BY: NPR, TIME, ESQUIRE, THE GUARDIAN, LIT HUB, ELECTRIC LITERATURE, THE FINANCIAL TIMES, THE NEW YORK PUBLIC LIBRARY.
“With the sublime JackRead More
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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER• OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER• A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • MORE THAN 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD
“Quietly powerful [and] moving.” O, The Oprah Magazine (recommended ...Read More
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Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award
A modern classic, Marilynne Robinson's Housekeeping is the story of Ruth and her younger sister, Lucille, who grow up haphazardly, first under the care of their competent grandmother, then of two comically bumbling great-aunts, and finally of Sylvie, the eccentric and remote sister of their dead...Read More
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A moving novel about families, family secrets, and the passing of the generations from the Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist who brought us Gilead....Read More
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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER • A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK
"Marilynne Robinson's LILA is an enthralling meditation on belief, suffering and grace." —O, the Oprah Magazine
"Writing...Read More
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A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER• OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE FOR FICTION • NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD WINNER• A NEW YORK TIMES NOTABLE BOOK • MORE THAN 1 MILLION COPIES SOLD
“Quietly powerful [and] moving.” O, The Oprah Magazine (recommended ...Read More
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"In the plain-spokenness of its language, the grace and dignity of its characters, the simplicity of its story and its intimations of spiritual transcendence, Housekeeping is a book that transformed how I see my place in the world." - David Marchese, The New York Times Magazine
Winner of the Pen/Hemingway Award
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New essays on theological, political, and contemporary themes, by the Pulitzer Prize winner
Marilynne Robinson has plumbed the human spirit in her renowned novels, including Lila, winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, and Gilead, winner of the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. In this new...Read More
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WITH A TWO-PART INTERVIEW BETWEEN MARILYNNE ROBINSON AND PRESIDENT OBAMA THAT FIRST APPEARED IN THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS
The incomparable Marilynne Robinson has delivered an impassioned critique of contemporary society—our addiction to technology, our materialism—while arguing that reverence must be given to who we are and ...Read More
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A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice
A New York Times Bestseller
A New York Magazine Best Book of the Year
An Economist Best Book of the Year
Pulitzer Prize–Winning Author of Gilead
Marilynne Robinson has built a sterling reputation as a writer of sharp, subtly moving prose, not...Read More
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In this award-winning collection, the bestselling author of Gilead offers us other ways of thinking about history, religion, and society. Whether rescuing "Calvinism" and its creator Jean Cauvin from the repressive "puritan" stereotype, or considering how the McGuffey readers were inspired by Midwestern abolitionists, or the divide between t...Read More
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A Conversation with Marilynne Robinson
Marilynne can speak to the craft of writing novels and her prolific writing career.
Read an adapted excerpt of Reading Genesis in the Washington Post.
Religion Unplugged published a piece on Reading Genesis.
Robinson discussed Reading Genesis in an interview with Christian Wiman for the Commonweal podcast, and the title was named one of the 10 Best Books of March by the Christian Science Monitor.
Marilynne Robinson discussed Reading Genesis in an interview for Conversations with Tyler, and the book was selected as an Editor’s Choice by the New York Times Book Review. Reviews appeared in the National Catholic Reporter and the Marginalia Review of Books. An excerpt from the book ran in Literary Hub, where it was also named a Best Reviewed Book of the Week (3/15).
Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis debuts at #5 on the New York Times Bestseller List for Hardcover Nonfiction. The book was also #3 on the Indie Bestsellers List for Hardcover Nonfiction.
Marilynne Robinson discussed Reading Genesis in an interview for Christianity Today‘s The Russell Moore Show.
Reviews of the Reading Genesis have additionally appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Guardian, America, Presbyterian Outlook, the Washington Independent Review of Books, Fare Forward, Book Post, and the Bulwark.
Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis was featured in roundups of best new releases from Book Riot, Kirkus Reviews, and the Englewood Review of Books.
Robinson’s Housekeeping was featured as one of the great American novels by The Atlantic (3/14).
Listen to Marilynne Robinson’s interview for The New York Times’s The Ezra Klein Show.
WNYC/All Of It recommended Marilynne Robinson‘s Reading Genesis in its Spring Books Preview.
Read Marilynne Robinson’s New York Times Magazine “Talk” interview with David Marchese. Marchese writes: “Like so much of Robinson’s writing, [Reading Genesis] is alive with questions of kindness, community and how to express what we so often struggle to put into words.”
A review of Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis appeared in the Atlantic (March 2024 print issue; online 2/10).
Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis is featured on book lists from major media outlets and retailers including: Literary Hub, Most Anticipated Books of 2024, Book Riot/The Podcast, Most Anticipated Books of 2024, Financial Times, What to Read in 2024, and Irish Times, Nonfiction to Look Out For in 2024.
An excerpt from Marilynne Robinson’s Reading Genesis ran in Harper’s (February print issue), and a review appeared in Booklist’s 2/15/24 print issue.
Check out Marilynne’s writing in The New York Review
Read Marilynne’s feature on Oprahdaily
Follow Marilynne on Facebook
Praise for Reading Genesis
“Deeply thoughtful . . . In this illuminating work of biblical analysis, Pulitzer Prize–winning novelist Robinson, [whose Gilead series contains a variety of Christian themes], takes readers on a dedicated layperson’s journey through the Book of Genesis. The author meanders delightfully through the text, ruminating on one tale after another while searching for themes and mining for universal truths. Robinson approaches Genesis with a reverence and level of faith uncommon to modern mainstream writers, yet she’s also equipped with the appropriate tools for cogent criticism.”
— Kirkus Reviews, starred review“[An] immersive close reading of the book of Genesis. Employing literary and theological lenses, the author frames the biblical book as an exemplary narrative and the figures within it as characters with agency, motive, and backstory . . . Robinson skillfully melds her literary interpretation with her theological one . . . Like the biblical book it explicates, Robinson’s offering is demanding, intense, and best read slowly. Patient readers will be rewarded.”
— Publishers WeeklyPraise for Jack
“For Marilynne Robinson’s devotees, John Ames Boughton, the titular Jack of the fourth volume of her award-winning Gilead novels, is one of the most eagerly awaited literary figures since Godot. . . Robinson is acclaimed for her numinous accounts of faith, forgiveness and hope, but read in this electrifying year of national crisis, the Gilead books are unified as well by her unsparing indictment of the American history of racism and inequality, and Christianity’s uneven will to fight them . . . I am looking forward to a fifth volume that will fill in their saga, and I hope it will be called Della.”
— Elaine Showalter, The New York Times Book Review“Jack is the fourth novel in Robinson’s Gilead series, an intergenerational saga of race, religion, family, and forgiveness centered on a small Iowa town. But it is not accurate to call it a sequel or a prequel. Rather, this book and the others—Gilead, Home, and Lila—are more like the Gospels, telling the same story four different ways.”
— Casey Cep, The New YorkerPraise for GILEAD
“Quietly powerful [and] moving.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine (recommended reading)Book This Speaker
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