The Critic at Large: A Conversation with New York Times Writer Parul Sehgal
On March 19, 2026, author and Berkeley Center senior fellow Paul Elie invited Parul Sehgal to speak about her own work, her sense of the state of nonfiction writing circa 2026, and the roles of journalism and higher education in carrying forward a robust, polyphonic conversation about literature and the arts.
Parul Sehgal is one of the most incisive, eloquent, and thought-provoking writers in American public life today. In her role as critic-at-large for The New York Times—and in previous roles with the Times’ books section and as a staff writer for The New Yorker—she has brought her ferocious intelligence and sly, supple voice to bear on books and authors from Mary Shelley to Salman Rushdie to Toni Morrison; at a moment when her peers are prone to fret over the diminished role of literature and the waning attention to books in our society, her work is full of a radiant confidence that the written word matters and depends on critical scrutiny to do so.
The event was co-sponsored by the Journalism Program and the Georgetown Humanities Initiative. Prof. Rebecca Sinderbrand, Journalism Program director, introduced the conversation.