The Critic and Her Publics

Jan 27 2025 14 ep. 40 mins 78

The Critic and Her Publics Podcast artwork

The best and most prominent critics working today perform criticism on the spot, on an object they’ve never seen before. It’s a glimpse into brilliant minds at work as they perform how to think about art and culture. From the New York Review of Books and Literary Hub, The Critic and Her Publics is a limited series hosted by Merve Emre.

Edited by Michele Moses

Music by Dani Lencioni

Art by Leanne Shapton

Sponsored by the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, New York Review of Books, Lit Hub, and Knopf

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Emily Greenhouse: "Your Whole Self"

Jan 27 2025 37 mins

Emily Greenhouse is the editor of the New York Review of Books. She is the former managing editor of The New Yorker. For the full episode transcript, visit the NYRB Recorded September 17, 2024 at the Shapiro Center at Wesleyan University Edited by Michele Moses Music by Dani Lencioni Art by Leanne Shapton Sponsored by Alfred A. Knopf The Critic and Her Publics is a production of

The Lit Hub Podcast: Nov 29, 2024

Nov 28 2024 47 mins

We've got some exciting news regarding the future of The Critic and Her Publics—and here to bring it to you is the latest episode of Literary Hub's The Lit Hub Podcast. If you don't know The Lit Hub Podcast, it's the in-house show at Lit Hub, hosted by podcasts editor Drew Broussard. This week features Merve Emre talking about what's next for TCAHP as well as Lit Hub's editor-in

Christine Smallwood: "Why Do You Do It This Way?"

Jul 08 2024 41 mins

Christine Smallwood is the author of La Captive (Fireflies Press, 2024) and the novel The Life of the Mind (Hogarth, 2021), which Time magazine named one of the top ten fiction books of the year. Her essays, reviews, and profiles have been published in Harper’s, The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker, Bookforum, and The New York Times Magazine, where she is a contributing w

Carina del Valle Schorske: "The Tuning Fork in the Ear"

Jun 25 2024 40 mins

Carina del Valle Schorske is a writer, translator, and wannabe backup dancer. Her debut essay collection, The Other Island, is forthcoming from Riverhead Books. It was recently awarded a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant. She writes about Caribbean culture, literary politics, diasporic dramas, and the songs she can’t stop singing to herself. Her essays have been published many pl

Maggie Doherty: "The Problem of Other Minds"

Jun 10 2024 49 mins

Maggie Doherty is the author of The Equivalents: A Story of Art, Female Friendship, and Liberation in the 1960s (2020), which won the Marfield Prize for Arts Writing and was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award for Biography. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Review of Books, the New York Times, and the Nation, among other publications. Rec

Doreen St. Félix: "Documents of Mundanity"

May 27 2024 46 mins

Doreen St. Félix has been a staff writer at The New Yorker since 2017. Previously, she was a culture writer at MTV News. Her writing has appeared in the Times Magazine, New York, Vogue, The Fader, and Pitchfork. St. Félix was named on the Forbes “30 Under 30” media list in 2016. In 2017, she was a finalist for a National Magazine Award for Columns and Commentary, and, in 2019

Lauren Michele Jackson: "Why Not Memes?"

May 13 2024 43 mins

Lauren Michele Jackson is an assistant professor of English at Northwestern University and a contributing writer at The New Yorker. She is the author of the essay collection White Negroes and is currently working on a second book, with Amistad Press. She is part of New America’s 2022 class of National Fellows. Recorded March 5, 2024 at the Shapiro Center at Wesleyan University

Jo Livingstone: "Into the Cave"

Apr 08 2024 38 mins

Jo Livingstone is a medieval literature scholar, a critic, and the 2020 National Book Critics Circle recipient of the Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. After receiving a BA in English literature from the University of Oxford and a PhD in medieval literature from New York University, Livingstone went on to write cultural criticism for The New Republic and currently

Moira Donegan: "A Gender Emergency"

Mar 25 2024 49 mins

Moira Donegan is writer in residence for the Clayman Institute, where she participates in the intellectual life of the Institute, hosts its artist salon series, teaches a class in feminist, gender, and sexuality studies, and mentors students, while continuing her own projects and writing. Her criticism, essays, and commentary, which cover the intersection of gender, politics, and t

Anahid Nersessian: "The Channeler"

Mar 11 2024 46 mins

Anahid Nersessian is a literary critic and Professor of English at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her first book, Utopia, Limited: Romanticism and Adjustment, was published by Harvard University Press in 2015, and her second, The Calamity Form: On Poetry and Social Life, by the University of Chicago Press in 2020. Her latest, Keats's Odes: A Lover's Discourse was releas