Parul Sehgal is a book critic at The New York Times. She was previously a columnist and senior editor at The New York Times Book Review. Her work has appeared in the Atlantic, Slate, Bookforum, The New Yorker, Tin House, and The Literary Review, among other publications, and she was awarded the Nona Balakian Award from the National Book Critics Circle for her criticism. She has been a featured speaker at TED and teaches at Columbia University and the Center for the Humanities at CUNY.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices