John Freeman is the host of the California Book Club. He is the editor of The Penguin Book of the Modern American Short Story and Freeman’s and an executive editor at Knopf. His latest book is Wind, Trees. He lives in New York.
Jaime Cortez’s Gordo, the December California Book Club selection, evokes the senses in telling stories about tiny acts of decency.
Julie Otsuka’s third novel, the California Book Club selection for September, performs a rescue of what might otherwise be forgotten.
Maggie Nelson’s book-length essay, the May CBC selection, soups up an age-old genre.
Trees, baseball, and summer memories converge in this poem by John Freeman.
In I Hotel, the California Book Club pick for March, Karen Tei Yamashita calls up local and global history but works like a poet.
Natalie Diaz’s Postcolonial Love Poem, the California Book Club selection for February, amplifies our lexicon of love and desire.
The writer’s new and selected poems show her gracefully pivoting between light and dark and channeling grief into joy.
Héctor Tobar’s story of a domestic worker reveals fault lines of race and class across Southern California’s planned communities.
His debut novel, There There, contains songs of wonder, grief, and the search for identity.
The author of A Paradise Built in Hell finds utopian possibilities during times of great crisis.
Dana Johnson’s debut novel reveals a universe hidden within a simple phrase: “I’m just from California.”
In A Paradise Built in Hell, Rebecca Solnit rethinks disaster and community.
The resonant grace of the poet’s work springs from how he saw his world—and it influences how writer John Freeman sees his.
The enduring power of William Finnegan’s memoir depends on far more than a passion for surfing.
Voyage of the Sable Venus hopscotches across geography, time, and history.
Myriam Gurba’s fresh approach to the trauma of sexual assault upends the familiar, uplifting survivor narrative.
Nina Revoyr’s novel excavates the traumatic, hidden pasts of families and neighborhoods.
Paul Beatty’s prose dazzles us with energy and verve as it holds everyone accountable.
Elaine Castillo's novel weaves the epic and the mundane.
A long white Cadillac and a pair of John Williams novels help set the story straight about America’s frontier.
Walter Mosley’s debut novel presented Easy Rawlins as a guide to the complexities of life as a Black man in post-WWII Los Angeles.
Reyna Grande’s The Distance Between Us explores the unexpected toll of crossing for families on either side of the U.S.-Mexico border.
C Pam Zhang’s debut novel is the California Book Club’s October 2020 selection.
A new wave of literature represents the glorious wonder and humanity of the Golden State.
