Megan O’Grady is a critic and essayist whose writing draws from art history, memoir, and the lyric essay. Her magazine and newspaper journalism on contemporary art and literature—our experience of the work artists and writers make, its social and personal context—are often extensions of larger concerns about representation and identity, explored through immersive reading and looking. The origins of creativity and the way in which art negotiates cultural conversations over time are ongoing preoccupations. Subjects of her long-form profiles have included Glenn Ligon, Carrie Mae Weems, Beverly Pepper, Frank Stella, Elena Ferrante, Arthur Jafa, Pope.L, and Barbara Kruger. A frequent contributor to The New York Times, where she created the Culture Therapist column, her work also appears in The New Yorker and Vogue. Her book project is an inquiry into the way we live in books and art, their influence on our self-conception and the way we move in the world.
Megan has taught at Pratt Institute and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. In 2012, she was the Arts Fellow at the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University. She has an MFA from New York University and a BA from Rice University.