Jonathan Yardley

Jonathan Yardley (born 1939) is the book critic of The Washington Post, and at one time of the Washington Star. In 1981 he received the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism.

Background and education

Yardley was born in Pittsburgh in 1939. His father was a teacher of English and the classics, as well as an Episcopal minister and a headmaster at two East Coast private schools. 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. Yardley is married to Marie Arana, the former editor of Washington Post Book World. His sons, Jim Yardley and William Yardley, by a previous marriage, are New York Times reporters. He and his son Jim are one of two father-son recipients of the Pulitzer Prize.

Career

After leaving Chapel Hill, Yardley interned at the New York Times as assistant to James Reston. From 1964 to 1974, Yardley worked as an editorial writer and book reviewer at the Greensboro Daily News; during this time, he was also a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University, academic year 1968-1969. From 1974 to 1978, Yardley served as book editor for 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. In 1981, Yardley became book critic and columnist at the Washington Post.

Yardley is author of several books, among them 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.

Yardley is known simultaneously as a scathingly frank critic and a starmaker. Among the talents he has brought to public light and championed are Michael Chabon, Edward P. Jones, Anne Tyler and John Berendt. In early 2003, Jonathan 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 reviews of notable books from the past which had gone out of print or were in some way seen as neglected by reviewers. It was in this series (in 2004) that he gained attention for his highly critical look at The Catcher in the Rye. A collection of the Second Reading columns will be published by Europa Editions in July 2011.

Awards

Yardley was awarded the 1981 Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. Yardley has been a Nieman Fellow.

Bibliography

• Monday Morning Quarterback. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1998. ISBN 0847692043 ISBN 978-0847692040
• Misfit: The Strange Life of Frederick Exley. New York: Random House, 1997. ISBN 0679439498 ISBN 978-0679439493
• Out of Step: Notes From a Purple Decade. New York: Random House, 1993. ISBN 0517106280 ISBN 978-0517106280
• States of Mind: A Personal Journey Through the Mid-Atlantic. Villard, 1993. ISBN 0394589114 ISBN 978-0394589114
• Our Kind of People: The Story of an American Family. New York: Grove Press, 1989. ISBN 1555841740 ISBN 978-1555841744
• Ring: A Biography of Ring Lardner. New York: Random House, 1977. ISBN 0394498119 ISBN 978-0394498119

As editor

• H.L. Mencken, My Life as Author and Editor. New York: Knopf, 1993. ISBN 0679413154 ISBN 978-0679413158

See also

• Michael Dirda
• Ron Charles

External links

• Inventory of the Jonathan Yardley Papers, 1792-2006, in the Southern Historical Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill.
• IMDB.com entry on Jonathan Yardley
• Interview at Washington Technology
• Book reviews, by Yardley at The Washington Post