John Freeman will be in conversation with Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty member Marilynne Robinson to talk about his new book, How to Read a Novelist, at 5 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 16, in a free reading at Prairie Lights Books in downtown Iowa City. The discussion also will be streamed live on the University of Iowa Writing University website.

As a critic for more than 200 newspapers worldwide, the onetime president of the National Book Critics Circle, and editor of Granta, Freeman has reviewed thousands of books and interviewed scores of writers. In How to Read a Novelist, which pulls together his very best profiles of the very best novelists of our time, he shares what he's learned.

Freeman has written about books for publications including the New York Times Book Review, the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, La Repubblica, and La Vanguardia. His first book was The Tyranny of E-mail. His poetry has been published in the New Yorker, ZYZZYVA, and the Paris Review.

Robinson is the author of the novels Housekeeping, Gilead (which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2005), and Home, and the nonfiction works When I Was a Child I Read Books, Absence of Mind, The Death of Adam, and Mother Country. Housekeeping was included in the New York Times Books of the Century and listed as one of the 100 greatest novels of all time by the UK Guardian Observer. In 1997 she received a Strauss Living Award from the American Academy of Arts. Robinson was among 12 people to receive the 2012 National Humanities Medal.

Individuals with disabilities are encouraged to attend all UI-sponsored events. If you are a person with a disability who requires a reasonable accommodation in order to attend this reading, call Jan Weissmiller in advance at Prairie Lights at 319-337-2681.

For a UI arts calendar and details about upcoming events visit the Arts Iowa website.