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.
Robinson began teaching at the Iowa Writers’ Workshop in 1991 and retired in the spring of 2016. In 2016, Robinson was named in Time magazine’s list 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”.
Download Bio
 Hardcover
|
 Farrar, Straus and Giroux
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 from other ancient literatures that mark the text as derivative. In other words, academic interpretation of Genesis has centered on the question of its basic coherency, just as fundamentalist interpretation has centered on the question of the appropriateness of reading it as literally true.
|
 HARDCOVER
|
JACK A Novel
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Jack is Robinson’s fourth novel in this now-classic series. In it, Robinson tells the story of John Ames Boughton, the prodigal son of Gilead’s Presbyterian minister, and his romance with Della Miles, a high school teacher who is also the child of a preacher. |
 Trade Paperback
|
GILEAD A Novel
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
GILEAD is a hymn of praise and lamentation to the God-haunted existence that Reverend Ames loves passionately, and from which he will soon part. |
 Trade Paperback
|
Lila A Novel
Picador
Lila is a moving expression of the mysteries of existence that is destined to become an American classic. |
 Trade Paperback
|
HOMEA Novel
Picador
Home is a luminous and healing book about families, family secrets, and faith from one of America's most beloved and acclaimed authors. |
 Trade Paperback
|
What Are We Doing Here?Essays
Picador
What Are We Doing Here? is a call for Americans to continue the tradition of those great thinkers and to remake American political and cultural life as “deeply impressed by obligation [and as] a great theater of heroic generosity, which, despite all, is sometimes palpable still.” |
 Trade Paperback
|
THE GIVENNESS OF THINGSEssays
Picador
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 what we are: creatures of singular interest and value, despite our errors and depredations. |
 Trade Paperback
|
Picador
Marilynne Robinson has built a sterling reputation as not only a major American novelist but also a rigorous thinker and an incisive essayist. |
 Trade Paperback
|
THE DEATH OF ADAM
Essays on Modern Thought
Picador
In this award-winning collection, the bestselling author of Gilead offers us other ways of thinking about history, religion, and society. |
 Trade Paperback
|
HOUSEKEEPING
A Novel
Picador
A modern classic, 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, their eccentric and remote aunt. |
 Trade Paperback
|
MOTHER COUNTRYBritain, the Welfare State and Nuclear Pollution
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
The central question of this eloquently impassioned book is: How can a country that we persist in calling a welfare state consciously risk the lives of its people for profit. |
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
— 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 Weekly
Praise 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 Yorker
Praise for GILEAD “Quietly powerful [and] moving.”
— O, The Oprah Magazine (recommended reading)
“At a moment in cultural history dominated by the shallow, the superficial, the quick fix, Marilynne Robinson is a miraculous anomaly: a writer who thoughtfully, carefully, and tenaciously explores some of the deepest questions confronting the human species. . . . Poignant, absorbing, lyrical...Robinson manages to convey the miracle of existence itself.”
—Merle Rubin, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Praise for Lila “Writing in lovely, angular prose that has the high loneliness of an old bluegrass tune, Ms. Robinson has created a balladlike story . . . The novel is powerful and deeply affecting . . . Ms. Robinson renders [Lila's] tale with the stark poetry of Edward Hopper or Andrew Wyeth.”
—Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times
Praise for Home “Remarkable . . . an even stronger accomplishment than Gilead.”
—Claire Messud, The New York Review of Books
“Rich and resonant . . . Gilead and Home fit with and around each other perfectly, each complete on its own, yet enriching and enlivening the other. But both are books of such beauty and power.”
—Emily Barton, Los Angeles Times