Sharp: A Discussion of Women and Criticism

Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael… In spite of abysmal byline counts at many publications, the English speaking world has a rich tradition of women critics of books, music, film, and the culture at large. Join some of today’s celebrated women critics for a spirited discussion of the women they’ve been inspired by, the challenges of being a woman of sharp mind and pen, and the question of whether women have a distinct purpose as critics at all.

MAY 8, 2013 @ 7 p.m.
Housing Works Bookstore

More on our panelists!

Kate Bolick is a contributing editor for The Atlantic and writes frequently for Elle, Slate, and The Wall Street Journal, among other publications. Her first book, Among the Suitors: On Being A Woman, Alone, is forthcoming from Crown/Random House in 2014.

Ruth Franklin is a book critic and contributing editor at The New Republic. She has written for many publications, including The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books, Bookforum, Granta, and Salmagundi, to which she contributes a regular film column. Her first book, A Thousand Darknesses: Lies and Truth in Holocaust Fiction, was a finalist for the 2012 Sami Rohr Prize in Jewish Literature. She is currently a fellow at the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library and is also the recipient of a Guggenheim fellowship. She is now writing a biography of the American writer Shirley Jackson.

Laura Miller is a journalist and critic living in New York. She is a co-founder of Salon.com, where she is currently a staff writer, and wrote “The Last Word” column for the New York Times Book Review for two years. Her work has appeared in the New Yorker, the Wall Street Journal, the Guardian, the New Statesman and other publications. She is the author of “The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia” (Little, Brown, 2008) and editor of the “The Salon.com Reader’s Guide to Contemporary Authors” (Penguin, 2000).

Miriam Markowitz is the associate literary editor of The Nation. She worked previously as an editor of Harper’s Magazine and Viet Nam News in Hanoi.

Michelle Orange is the author of This Is Running for Your Life (FSG, 2013). Her writing has appeared in McSweeney’s, The Nation, the Virginia Quarterly Review, the New York Times, the Village Voice, Movieline and other publications.

Parul Sehgal is an editor at the New York Times Book Review, and a regular contributor to Bookforum and NPR. She was the recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.

Michelle Dean is a journalist and critic living in New York who regularly contributes to The Awl, The Nation, and The New Yorker’s Page Turner and Culture Desk blogs, and appears in many other places, too.