James Wood is a literary critic at The New Yorker, and Professor of the Practice of Literary Criticism at Harvard University. He is the author of four books of essays (including The Broken Estate), and a work about fictional technique, How Fiction Works. His second novel, Upstate, was published last year. His work has been twice shortlisted for the National Book Critics Circle Award in Criticism, has won the National Magazine Award, and has been selected three times for the Best American Essays series.