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Biography
Parul Sehgal is a literary critic whose articles have been published in literary magazines and newspapers. She is a book critic at The New York Times Book Review and The New York Times. She teaches at Columbia University and at the City University of New York.
Sehgal was born to Indian parents and was raised in India, Hungary, the Philippines and Northern Virginia. She studied political science at McGill University in Montreal. After graduating, she traveled to Delhi to work at an NGO. After returning to the US, she earned an MFA from Columbia University, after which she gained an editing position at Publishers Weekly. She has authored literary critiques for Bookforum, Slate, Tin House, NPR, the Literary Review, O, The Oprah Magazine, The Plain Dealer, The Irish Times, and Time Out New York.
Sehgal received the 2010 National Book Critics Circle Award Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing. She won the 2008 Pan African Literary Forum’s OneWorld Prize.