Megan O'Grady

Megan O’Grady is a critic and essayist whose writing encompasses history, memoir, and the lyric essay. Her magazine and newspaper journalism on contemporary art and literature often draw from larger concerns about representation and the construction of identity. Art's capacity to transmute private inquiry into public conversation is an ongoing preoccupation. A frequent contributor to The New York Times, where she created the Culture Therapist column, her work also appears in The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, and Vogue, where she was once a contributing editor. Her book, How It Feels to Be Alive: Encounters with Art and Our Selves (Farrar, Straus & Giroux) examines the impact of books and art on our attention and imagination and the way we move in the world.