Ron Charles

Ron Charles (born 1962 in St. Louis, Missouri) is a book critic at The Washington Post. His awards include the 2008 National Book Critics Circle Award Nona Balakian Citation for book reviews, and 1st Place for A&E Coverage from the Society for Features Journalism in 2011. He was one of three jurors for the 2014 Pulitzer Prize in Fiction.
Before joining the Post in 2005, Charles was the book review editor and staff critic for seven years at The Christian Science Monitor.
Sometime after August 2010, with his review of Jonathan Franzen's Freedom, Charles began a series of video book reviews for The Washington Post called "The Totally Hip Video Book Review". In the series, Charles, sometimes featuring his wife, high school English teacher Dawn Charles, hams it up with sight gags and intentionally bad jokes. It is a satirical look at current books in the news and the art of book reviewing.