Changes at Granta

Recent changes at Granta are garnering some attention. Editor Alex Clark stepped down last week after only eight months in the position. Taking her place is John Freeman, a freelance book critic who has been with Granta as its American editor since December. The New York Observer has this very interesting profile of Freeman, positioning him as perhaps the "salve" to the "chapped" publishing industry. "The publishing industry needs a hero," notes the Observer's Leon Neyfakh, and though perhaps Freeman isn't the likeliest candidate, Neyfakh argues that "in his various roles—editor, prolific book critic, ardent reader, former president of the National Book Critics Circle—he provides a kind of cold comfort to the industry, a steady and measured voice arguing that maybe not everything has to change, that simply loving to read and loving books could be enough to keep book publishing as it exists going a little bit longer."

Said Freeman, “I couldn’t do this job or the National Book Critics Circle job or the job of the critic if I didn’t believe fundamentally that there’s a fighting chance for keeping the experience of reading at the center of human life.”