When a critic reviews a novel today, she often enjoys easy access to a large raft of supplemental texts: interviews with the author, essays they’ve written, podcasts they’ve been on, their social media presence, their personal blog, even the value of their house. How much should the critic be permitted take this archive into account? To what extent can the novel be considered to have a “personal history”? What aspects of an author’s public or private life are legitimate topics for criticism—and how is the critic to know? Andrea Long Chu is a Pulitzer Prize–winning essayist and critic at New York magazine. Her writing has appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times Magazine, Bookforum, n+1, and elsewhere. Her book Females was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award in Transgender Nonfiction in 2019, and a second edition with a new afterword came out earlier this year. Her new essay collection, Authority, is out now. Parul Sehgal is a critic at large for The New York Times. She was previously a staff writer at The New Yorker and a book critic for The Times, where she also worked as a columnist. She has won awards for her criticism from the Robert B. Silvers Foundation, the New York Press Club, and the National Book Critics Circle.
New York City, NY; NYC