
The Critic and Her Publics
Welcome to Season Two of The Critic and Her Publics: The Art of Editing. This season, in a series of live conversations, Merve Emre asks the smartest and savviest editors how the sausage gets made. What happens behind the scenes at a magazine? How does an idea become a book? And how do you work with those strange and difficult creatures we call writers?Hosted by Merve Emre • Edited by Michele Moses • Music by Dani Lencioni • Art by Leanne Shapton • Sponsored by Alfred A. KnopfThe Critic and Her Publics is a co-production between the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, New York Review of Books, and Lit Hub.
Latest episodes

Feb 13, 2024 • 42min
Sophie Pinkham: "Wordlessness in Labor"
Sophie Pinkham is a writer, journalist, and critic specializing in Russian and Ukrainian literature, culture, and politics. She is the author of Black Square: Adventures in Post-Soviet Ukraine (2016) and the forthcoming The Spirit in the Trees, for which she has received a National Endowment for the Humanities Public Scholar grant. A frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books, Pinkham writes primarily (though not exclusively) about Russia and Ukraine. Her work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Economist 1843 Magazine, The New Yorker, New Left Review, The Washington Post, and many other publications.Recorded October 10, 2023 at the Shapiro Center at Wesleyan UniversityEdited by Michele MosesMusic by Dani LencioniArt by Leanne ShaptonSponsored by the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, New York Review of Books, Lit Hub, and Knopf

Jan 30, 2024 • 45min
Andrea Long Chu: "I Want a Critic"
Andrea Long Chu is a Pulitzer Prize–winning essayist and critic at New York magazine. Her book Females, an extended annotation of a lost play by Valerie Solanas, was published by Verso in 2019 and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction. Her writing has also appeared in n+1, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Artforum, Bookforum, Boston Review, Chronicle of Higher Education, 4Columns, and Jewish Currents.Recorded September 26, 2023 at the Shapiro Center at Wesleyan UniversityEdited by Michele MosesMusic by Dani LencioniArt by Leanne ShaptonSponsored by the Shapiro Center for Creative Writing and Criticism at Wesleyan University, New York Review of Books, Lit Hub, and Knopf

Jan 22, 2024 • 1min
Coming Soon
Introducing The Critic and Her Publics, a new podcast series from The New York Review of Books and Lit Hub. Hosted by Merve Emre.New episodes every other week beginning Tuesday January 30th.